Medium Dave Lilywhite, the last of the five, looked around. There were indeed a number of solitary figures in the low, dark room. Most of them wore cloaks with big hoods. They sat alone, in corners, hidden by the hoods. None of them looked very friendly.
'Don't be daft, Peachy,' Catseye murmured.
'That's the sort of thing they do,' Peachy insisted. 'They're masters of disguise!'
'With that eye of his?'
'That guy sitting by the fire has got an eye patch,' said Medium Dave. Medium Dave didn't speak much. He watched a lot.
The others turned to stare.
'He'll wait till we're off our guard then go ahahaha,' said Peachy.
'They can't kill you unless it's for money,' said Catseye. But now there was a soupcon of doubt in his voice.
They kept their eyes on the hooded man. He kept his eye on them.
If asked to describe what they did for a living, the five men around the table would have said something like 'This and that' or 'The best I can', although in Banjo's case he'd have probably said 'Dur?' They were, by the standards of an uncaring society, criminals, although they wouldn't have thought of themselves as such and couldn't even spell words like 'nefarious'. What they generally did was move things around. Sometimes the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, say, or in the wrong house. Sometimes the things were in fact people who were far too unimportant to trouble the Assassins' Guild with, but who were nevertheless inconveniently positioned where they were and could much better be located on, for example, a sea bed somewhere[5]. None of the five belonged to any formal guild and they generally found their clients among those people who, for their own dark reasons, didn't want to put the guilds to any trouble, sometimes because they were guild members themselves. They had plenty of work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B or, of course, to the bottom of the C.
'Any minute now,' said Peachy, as the waiter brought their beers.
Banjo cleared his throat. This was a sign that another thought had arrived.
'What I don' unnerstan,' he said, 'is:'
'Yes?' said his brother.[6]
'What I don' unnerstan is, how longaz diz place had waiters?'
'Good evening,' said Teatime, putting down the tray.
They stared at him in silence.
He gave them a friendly smile.
Peachy's huge hand slapped the table.
'You crept up on us, you little— he began.
Men in their line of business develop a certain prescience. Medium Dave and Catseye, who were sitting on either side of Peachy, leaned away nonchalantly.
'Hi!' said Teatime. There was a blur, and a knife shuddered in the table between Peachy's thumb and index finger.
He looked down at it in horror.
'My name's Teatime,' said Teatime.'Which one are you?'
'I'm ... Peachy,' said Peachy, still staring at the vibrating knife.
'That's an interesting name,' said Teatime. 'Why are you called Peachy, Peachy?'
Medium Dave coughed.
Peachy looked up into Teatime's face. The glass eye was a mere ball of faintly glowing grey. The other eye was a little dot in a sea of white. Peachy's only contact with intelligence had been to beat it up and rob it whenever possible, but a sudden sense of selfpreservation glued him to his chair.
' cos I don't shave,' he said.
'Peachy don't like blades, mister,' said Catseye.
'And do you have a lot of friends, Peachy?' said Teatime.
'Got a few, yeah.'
With a sudden whirl of movement that made the men start, Teatime spun away, grabbed a chair, swung it up to the table and sat down on it. Three of them had already got their hands on their swords.
'I don't have many,' he said, apologetically. 'Don't seem to have the knack. On the other hand ... I don't seem to have any enemies at all. Not one. Isn't that nice?'
Teatime had been thinking, in the cracking, buzzing firework display that was his head. What he had been thinking about was immortality.
He might have been quite, quite insane, but he was no fool. There were, in the Assassins' Guild, a number of paintings and busts of famous members who had, in the past, put ... no, of course, that wasn't right. There were paintings and busts of the famous clients of members, with a noticeably modest brass plaque screwed somewhere nearby, bearing some unassuming little comment like 'Departed this vale of tears on Grune 3, Year of the Sideways Leech, with the assistance of the Hon. K. W. Dobson (Viper House)'. Many fine old educational establishments had dignified memorials in some hall listing the Old Boys who had laid down their lives for monarch and country. The Guild's was very similar, except for the question of whose life had been laid.
Every Guild member wanted to be up there somewhere. Because getting up there represented immortality. And the bigger your client, the more incredibly discreet and restrained would be the little brass plaque, so that everyone couldn't help but notice your name.
In fact, if you were very, very renowned, they wouldn't even have to write down your name at all...
The men around the table watched him. It was always hard to know what Banjo was thinking, or even if he was thinking at all, but the other four were thinking along the lines of: bumptious little tit, like all Assassins. Thinks he knows it all. I could take him down one-handed, no trouble. But ... you hear stories. Those eyes give me the creeps...
'So what's the job?' said Chickenwire.
'We don't do jobs,' said Teatime. 'We perform services. And the service will earn each of you ten thousand dollars.'
'That's a lot more'n Thieves' Guild rate,' said Medium Dave.
'I've never liked the Thieves' Guild,' said Teatime, without turning his head.
'Why not?'
'They ask too many questions.'
'We don't ask questions,' said Chickenwire quickly.
'We shall suit one another perfectly,' said Teatime. 'Do have another drink while we wait for the other members of our little troupe.'
Chickenwire saw Medium Dave's lips start to frame the opening letters 'Who-'. These letters he deemed inauspicious at this time. He kicked Medium Dave's leg under the table.
The door opened slightly. A figure came in, but only just. It inserted itself in the gap and sidled along the wall in a manner calculated not to attract attention. Calculated, that is, by someone not good at this sort of calculation.
It looked at them over its turned-up collar.
'That's a wizard,' said Peachy.
The figure hurried over and dragged up a chair.
'No I'm not!' it hissed. 'I'm incognito!'
'Right, Mr Gnito,' said Medium Dave. 'You're just someone in a pointy hat. This is my brother Banjo, that's Peachy, this is Chick—'
The wizard looked desperately at Teatime.
'I didn't want to come!'
'Mr Sideney here is indeed a wizard,' said Teatime. 'A student, anyway. But down on his luck at the moment, hence his willingness to join us on this venture.'
'Exactly how far down on his luck?' said Medium Dave.
The wizard tried not to meet anyone's gaze.
'I made a misjudgement to do with a wager,' he said.
'Lost a bet, you mean?' said Chickenwire.
'I paid up on time,' said Sideney.
'Yes, but Chrysoprase the troll has this odd little thing about money that turns into lead the next day,' said Teatime cheerfully. 'So our friend needs to earn a little cash in a hurry and in a climate where arms and legs stay on.'
'No one said anything about there being magic in all this,' said Peachy.
'Our destination is ... probably you should think of it as something like a wizard's tower, gentlemen,' said Teatime.
'It isn't an actual wizard's tower, is it?' said Medium Dave. 'They got a very odd sense of humour when it comes to booby traps.'
'No.'
'Guards?'
'I believe so. According to legend. But nothing very much.'
Medium Dave narrowed his eyes. 'There's valuable stuff in this ... tower?'
'Oh, yes.'
'Why ain't there many guards, then?'
'The ... person who owns the property probably does not realize the value of what ... of what they have.'
'Locks?' said Medium Dave.
'On our way we shall be picking up a locksmith.'
'Who?'
'Mr Brown.'
They nodded. Everyone — at least, everyone in 'the business', and everyone in 'the business' knew what 'the business' was, and if you didn't know what 'the business' was you weren't a businessman — knew Mr Brown. His presence anywhere around a job gave it a certain kind of respectability. He was a neat, elderly man who'd invented most of the tools in his big leather bag. No matter what cunning you'd used to get into a place, or overcome a small army, or find the secret treasure room, sooner or later you sent for Mr Brown, who'd turn up with his leather bag and his little springy things and his little bottles of strange alchemy and his neat little boots. And he'd do nothing for ten minutes but look at the lock, and then he'd select a piece of bent metal from a ring of several hundred almost identical pieces, and under an hour later he'd be walkingaway with a neat ten per cent of the takings. Of course, you didn't have to use Mr Brown's services. You could always opt to spend the rest of your life looking at a locked door.
'All right. Where is this place?' said Peachy.
Teatime turned and smiled at him. 'If I'm paying you, why isn't it me who's asking the questions?'
Peachy didn't even try to outstare the glass eye a second time.
'Just want to be prepared, that's all,' he mumbled.
'Good reconnaissance is the essence of a successful operation,' said Teatime. He turned and looked up at the bulk that was Banjo and added, 'What is this?'
'This is Banjo,' said Medium Dave, rolling himself a cigarette.
'Does it do tricks?'
Time stood still for a moment. The other men looked at Medium Dave. He was known to Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right. He was reliable in a tight spot and, above all, he was honest, because good criminals have to be honest. If he had a fault, it was a tendency to deal out terminal and definitive retribution to anyone who said anything about his brother.
If he had a virtue, it was a tendency to pick his time. Medium Dave's fingers tucked the tobacco into the paper and raised it to his lips.
'No,' he said.
Chickenwire tried to defrost the conversation. 'He's not what you'd call bright, but he's always useful. He can lift two men in each hand. By their necks.'
'Yur,' said Banjo.
'He looks like a volcano,' said Teatime.
'Really?' said Medium Dave Lilywhite. Chickenwire reached out hastily and pushed him back down in his seat.
Teatime turned and smiled at him.
'I do so hope we're going to be friends, Mr Medium Dave,' he said. 'It really hurts to think I might not be among friends.' He gave him another bright smile. Then he turned back to the rest of the table.
'Are we resolved, gentlemen?'
They nodded. There was some reluctance, given the consensus view that Teatime belonged in a room with soft walls, but ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars. possibly even more.
'Good,' said Teatime. He looked Banjo up and down. 'Then I suppose we might as well make a start.'
And he hit Banjo very hard in the mouth.
Death in person did not turn up upon the cessation of every life. It was not necessary. Governments govern, but prime ministers and presidents do not personally turn up in people's homes to tell them how to run their lives, because of the mortal danger this would present. There are laws instead.
But from time to time Death checked up to see that things were functioning properly or, to put it another and more accurate way, properly ceasing to function in the less significant areas of his jurisdiction.
And now he walked through dark seas.
Silt rose in clouds around his feet as he strode along the trench bottom. His robes floated out around him.
There was silence, pressure and utter, utter darkness. But there was life down here, even this far below the waves. There were giant squid, and lobsters with teeth on their eyelids. There were spidery things with their stomachs on their feet, and fish that made their own light. It was a quiet, black nightmare world, but life lives everywhere that life can. Where life can't, this takes a little longer.
Death's destination was a slight rise in the trench floor. Already the water around him was getting warmer and more populated, by creatures that looked as though they had been put together from the bits left over from everything else.
Unseen but felt, a vast column of scalding hot water was welling up from a fissure. Somewhere below were rocks heated to near incandescence by the Disc's magical field.
Spires of minerals had been deposited around this vent. And, in this tiny oasis, a type of life had grown up. It did not need air or light. It did not even need food in the way that most other species would understand the term.
It just grew at the edge of the streaming column of water, looking like a cross between a worm and a flower.
Death kneeled down and peered at it, because it was so small. But for some reason, in this world without eyes or light, it was also a brilliant red. The profligacy of life in these matters never ceased to amaze him.
He reached inside his robe and pulled out a small roll of black material, like a jeweller's toolkit. With great care he took from one of its pouches a scythe about an inch long, and held it expectantly between thumb and forefinger.
Somewhere overhead a shard of rock was dislodged by a stray current and tumbled down, raising little puffs of silt as it bounced off the tubes.
It landed just beside the living flower and then rolled, wrenching it from the rock.
Death flicked the tiny scythe just as the bloom faded ...
The omnipotent eyesight of various supernatural entities is often remarked upon. It is said they can see the fall of every sparrow.
And this may be true. But there is only one who is always there when it hits the ground.
The soul of the tube worm was very small and uncomplicated. It wasn't bothered about sin. it had never coveted its neighbour's polyps. It had never gambled or drunk strong liquor. It had never bothered itself with questions like 'Why am I here?' because it had no concept at all of 'here' or, for that matter, of 'I'.
Nevertheless, something was cut free under the surgical edge of the scythe and vanished in the roiling waters.
Death carefully put the instrument away and stood up. All was well, things were functioning satisfactorily, and...
...but they weren't.
In the same way that the best of engineers can hear the tiny change that signals a bearing going bad long before the finest of instruments would detect anything wrong, Death picked up a discord in the symphony of the world. It was one wrong note among billions but all the more noticeable for that, like a tiny pebble in a very large shoe.
He waved a finger in the waters. For a moment a blue, door-shaped outline appeared He ste pped through it and was gone.
The tube creatures didn't notice him go.
They hadn't noticed him arrive. They never ever noticed anything.
A cart trundled through the freezing foggy streets, the driver hunched in his seat. He seemed to be all big thick brown overcoat.
A figure darted out of the swirls and was suddenly on the box next to him
'Hi!' it said. 'My name's Teatime. What's yours?'
'Here, you get down, I ain't allowed to give li...'
The driver stopped. It was amazing how Teatime had been able to thrust a knife through four layers of thick clothing and stop it just at the point where it pricked the flesh.
'Sorry?' said Teatime, smiling brightly.
'Er — there ain't nothing valuable, y'know, nothing valuable, only a few bags of...'
'Oh, dear,' said Teatime, his face a sudden acre of concern. 'Well, we'll just have to see, won't we ... What is your name, sir?'
'Ernie. Er. Ernie,' said Ernie. 'Yes. Ernie. Er... '
Teatime turned his head slightly.
'Come along, gentlemen. This is my friend Ernie. He's going to be our driver for tonight.'
Ernie saw half a dozen figures emerge from the fog and climb into the cart behind him. He didn't turn to look at them. By the pricking of his kidneys he knew this would not be an exemplary career move. But it seemed that one of the figures, a huge shambling mound of a creature, was carrying a long bundle over its shoulder. The bundle moved and made muffled noises.
'Do stop shaking, Ernie. We just need a lift said Teatime, as the cart rumbled over the cobbles.
'Where to, mister?'
'Oh, we don't mind. But first, I'd like you to stop in Sator Square, near the second fountain.'
The knife was withdrawn. Ernie stopped trying to breathe through his ears.
'Er...'
'What is it? You do seem tense, Ernie. I always find a neck massage helps.'
'I ain't rightly allowed to carry passengers, see Charlie'll give me a right telling-off ...'
'Oh, don't you worry about that,' said Tea time, slapping him on the back. 'We're all friends here!'
'What're we bringing the girl for?' said a voice behind them.
''s not right, hittin' girls,' said a deep voice. 'Our mam said no hittin' girls. Only bad boys do that, our mam said!'
'You be quiet, Banjo.'
'Our mam said...'
'Shssh! Emie here doesn't want to listen to our troubles,' said Teatime, not taking his gaze off the driver.
'Me? Deaf as a post, me,' burbled Ernie, who in some ways was a very quick learner. 'Can't hardly see more'n a few feet, neither. Cot no recollection for them faces that I do see, come to that. Bad memory? Hah! Talk about bad memory. Cor, sometimes I can be like as it were on the cart, talking to people, hah, just like I'm talking gone, hah, remember anything about them or how many they were or what they were carrying or anything about any to you now, and then when they're try as I might, do you think I car girl or anything?' By this time his voice was a highpitched wheeze. 'Hah! Sometimes I forget me own name!'
'It's Ernie, isn't it?' said Teatime, giving him a happy smile. 'Ah, and here we are. Oh dear. There seems to be some excitement.'
There was the sound of fighting somewhere ahead, and then a couple of masked trolls ran past with three Watchmen after them. They all ignored the cart.
'I heard the De Bris gang were going to have a go at Packley's strongroom tonight,' said a voice behind Ernie.
' Looks like Mr Brown won't be joining us, then,' said another voice. There was a snigger.
'Oh, I don't know about that, Mr Lilywhite, I don't know about that at all,' said a third voice, and this one was from the direction of the fountain. 'Could you take my bag while I climb up, please? Do be careful, it's a little heavy.'
It was a neat little voice. The owner of a voice like that kept his money in a shovel purse and always counted his change carefully. Ernie thought all this, and then tried very hard to forget that he had.
'On you go, Ernie,' said Teatime. 'Round behind the University, I think.'
As the cart rolled on, the neat little voice said, 'You grab all the money and then you get out very smartly. Am I right?'
There was a murmur of agreement.
'Learned that on my mother's knee, yeah.'
'You learned a lot of stuff across your ma's knee, Mr Lilywhite.'
'Don't you say nuffin' about our mam!' The voice was like an earthquake.
'This is Mr Brown, Banjo. You smarten up.'
'He dint ort to tork about our mam!'
'All right! All right! Hello, Banjo ... I think I may have a sweet somewhere ... Yes, there you' are. Yes, your ma knew the way all right. You go in quietly, you take your time, you get what you came for and you leave smartly and in good order. You don't hang around at the scene to count it out and tell one another what brave lads you are, am I right?'
'You seem to have done all right, Mr Brown.' The cart rattled towards the other side of the square.
'Just a little for expenses, Mr Catseye. A little Hogswatch present, you might say. Never take the lot and run. Take a little and walk. Dress neat. That's my motto. Dress neat and walk away slowly. Never run. Never run. The Watch'Il always chase a running man. They're like terriers for giving chase. No, you walk out slow, you walk round the corner, you wait till there's a lot of excitement, then you turn around and walk back. They can't cope with that, see. Half the time they'll stand aside to let you walk past. "Good evening, officers," you say, and then you go home for your tea.'
'Wheee! Gets you out of trouble, I can see that. If you've got the nerve.'
'Oh, no, Mr Peachy. Doesn't get you out of. Keeps You out of.'
It was like a very good schoolroom, Ernie thought (and immediately tried to forget). Or a back-street gym when a champion prizefighter had just strolled in.
'What's up with your mouth, Banjo?'
'He lost a tooth, Mr Brown,' said another voice, and sniggered.
'Lost a toot, Mr Brown,' said the thunder that was Banjo.
'Keep your eyes on the road, Ernie,' said Teatime beside him. 'We don't want an accident, do we. . .'
The road here was deserted, despite the bustle of the city behind them and the bulk of the University nearby. There were a few streets, but the buildings were abandoned. And something was happening to the sound. The rest of AnkhMorpork seemed very far away, the sounds arriving as if through quite a thick wall. They were entering that scorned little corner of AnkhMorpork that had long been the site of the University's rubbish pits and was now known as the Unreal Estate.
'Bloody wizards,' muttered Ernie, automatically.
'I beg your pardon?' said Teatime.
'My great-grandpa said we used t'own prop'ty round here. Low levels of magic, my arse! Hah, it's all right for them wizards, they got all kindsa spells to protect 'em. Bit of magic here, bit of magic there... Stands to reason it's got to go somewhere, right?'
'There used to be warning signs up,' said the neat voice from behind.
'Yeah, well, warning signs in Ankh-Morpork might as well have "Good firewood" written on them,' said someone else.
'I mean, stands to reason, they chuck out an old spell for exploding this, and another one for twiddlin' that, and another one for making carrots grow, they finish up interfering with one another, who knows what they'll end up doing?' said Ernie. 'Great-grandpa said sometimes they'd wake up in the morning and the cellar'd be higher than the attic. And that weren't the worst,' he added darkly.
'Yeah, I heard where it got so bad you could walk down the street and meet yourself coming the other way,' someone supplied. 'It got so's you didn't know it was bum or breakfast time, I heard.'
'The dog used to bring home all kinds of stuff,' said Ernie. 'Great-grandpa said half the time they used to dive behind the sofa if it came in with anything in its mouth. Corroded fire spells startin' to fizz, broken wands with green smoke coming out of 'em and I don't know what else ... and if you saw the cat playing with anything, it was best not to try to find out what it was, I can tell you.'
He twitched the reins, his current predicament almost forgotten in the tide of hereditary resentment.
'I mean, they say all the old spell books and stuff was buried deep and they recycle the used spells now, but that don't seem much comfort when your potatoes started walkin' about,' he grumbled. 'My great-grandpa went to see the head wizard about it, and he said' — he put on a strangled nasal voice which was his idea of how you talked when you'd got an education — ' " Oh, there might be some temp'ry inconvenience now, my good man, but just you come back in fifty thousand years." Bloody wizards.'
The horse turned a corner.
This was a dead-end street. Half-collapsed houses, windows smashed, doors stolen, leaned against one another on either side.
'I heard they said they were going to clean up this place,' said someone.
'Oh, yeah,' said Ernie, and spat. When it hit the ground it ran away. 'And you know what? You get loonies coming in all the time now, poking around, pulling things about...'
'Just at the wall up ahead,' said Teatime conversationally. 'I think you generally go through just where there's a pile of rubble by the old dead tree, although you wouldn't see it unless you looked closely. But I've never seen how you do it ... '
'' ere, I can't take you lot through,' said Ernie. 'Lifts is one thing, but not taking people through— '
Teatime sighed. 'And we were getting on so well. Listen, Ernie ... Ern ... you will take us through or, and I say this with very considerable regret, I will have to kill you. You seem a nice man. Conscientious. A very serious overcoat and sensible boots.'
'But if'n I take you through-'
'What's the worst that can happen?' said Teatime. 'You'll lose your job. Whereas if you don't, you'll die. So if you look at it like that, we're actually doing you a favour. Oh, do say yes.'
'Er . . .' Ernie's brain felt twisted up. The lad was definitely what Ernie thought of as a toff, and he seemed nice and friendly, but it didn't all add up. The tone and the content didn't match.
'Besides,' said Teatime, 'if you've been coerced, it's not your fault, is it? No one can blame you. No one could blame anyone who'd been coerced at knife point.'
'Oh, well, I s'pose, if we're talking coerced:' Ernie muttered. Going along with things seemed to be the only way.
The horse stopped and stood waiting with the patient look of an animal that probably knows the route better than the driver.
Ernie fumbled in his overcoat pocket and took out a small tin, rather like a snuff box. He opened it. There was glowing dust inside.
'What do you do with that?' said Teatime, all interest.
'Oh, you just takes a pinch and throws it in the air and it goes twing and it opens the soft place,' said Ernie.
'SO ... you don't need any special training or anything?'
'Er... you just chucks it at the wall there and it goes twing,' said Ernie.
'Really? May I try?'
Teatime took the tin from his unresisting hand and threw a pinch of dust into the air in front of the horse. It hovered for a moment and then produced a narrow, glittering arch in the air. It sparkled and went:
... twing.
'Aw,' said a voice behind them. 'Innat nice, eh, our Davey?'
'Yeah.'
'All pretty sparkles...'
'And then you just drive forward?' said Teatime.
'That's right,' said Ernie. 'Quick, mind. It only stays open for a little while.'
Teatime pocketed the little tin. 'Thank you very much, Ernie. Very much indeed.'
His other hand lashed out. There was a glint of metal. The carter blinked, and then fell sideways off his seat.
There was silence from behind, tinted with horror and possibly just a little terrible admiration.
'Wasn't he dull?' said Teatime, picking up the reins.
Snow began to fall. It fell on the recumbent shape of Ernie, and it also fell through several hooded grey robes that hung in the air.
There appeared to be nothing inside them. You could believe they were there merely to make a certain point in space.
Well, said one, we are frankly impressed.
Indeed, said another. We would never have thought of doing it this way.
He is certainly a resourceful human, said a third.
The beauty of it all, said the first — or it may have been the second, because, absolutely nothing distinguished the robes — is that there is so much else we will control.
Quite, said another. It is really amazing how they think. A sort of ... illogical logic.
Children, said another. Who would have thought it? But today the children, tomorrow the world.
Give me a child until he is seven and he's mine for life, said another.
There was a dreadful pause.
The consensus beings that called themselves the Auditors did not believe in anything, except possibly immortality. And the way to be immortal, they knew, was to avoid living. Most of all they did not believe in personality. To be a personality was to be a creature with a beginning and an end. And since they reasoned that in an infinite universe any life was by comparison unimaginably short, they died instantly. There was a flaw in their logic, of course, but by the time they found this out it was always too late. In the meantime, they scrupulously avoided any comment, action or experience that set them apart ...
You said 'me', said one.
Ah. Yes. But, you see, we were quoting, said the other one hurriedly. Some religious person said that. About educating children. And so would logically say 'me'. But I wouldn't use that term of myself, of — damn!
The robe vanished in a little puff of smoke.
Let that be a lesson to us, said one of the survivors, as another and totally indistinguishable robe popped into existence where the stricken colleague had been.
Yes, said the newcomer. Well, it certainly appears...
It stopped. A dark shape was approaching through the snow.
It's him, it said.
They faded hurriedly — not simply vanishing, but spreading out and thinning until they were just lost in the background.
The dark figure stopped by the dead carter and reached down.
COULD I GIVE YOU A HAND?
Ernie looked up gratefully.
'Cor, yeah,' he said. He got to his feet, swaying a little. 'Here, your fingers're cold, mister!'
SORRY.
'What'd he go and do that for? I did what he said. He could've killed me.'
Ernie felt inside his overcoat and pulled out a small and, at this point, strangely transparent silver flask.
'I always keep a nip on me these cold nights,' he said. 'Keeps me spirits up.'
YES INDEED. Death looked around briefly and sniffed the air.
'How'm I going to explain all this, then, eh?' said Ernie, taking a pull.
SORRY? THAT WAS VERY RUDE OF ME. I WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION.
'I said what'm I going to tell people? Letting some blokes ride off with my cart neat as you like ... That's gonna be the sack for sure, I'm gonna be in big trouble . . .'
All. WELL. THERE AT LEAST I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS, ERNEST. AND, THEN AGAIN, I HAVE SOME BAD NEWS.
Ernie listened. Once or twice he looked at the corpse at his feet. He looked smaller from the outside. He was bright enough not to argue. Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.
'So I'm dead, then,' he concluded.
CORRECT.
'Er ... The priest said that ... you know. after you're dead . . . it's like going through a door and on one side of it there's ... He. . . well, a terrible place ... ?'
Death looked at his worried, fading face.
THROUGH A DOOR...
'That's what he said . .
I EXPECT IT DEPENDS ON THE DIRECTION YOU'RE WALKING IN.
When the street was empty again, except for the fleshy abode of the late Ernie, the grey shapes came back into focus.
Honestly, he gets worse and worse, said one.
He was looking for us, said another. Did you notice? He suspects something. He gets so ... concerned about things.
Yes ... but the beauty of this plan, said a third, is that he can't interfere.
He can go everywhere, said one.
No, said another. Not quite everywhere.
And, with ineffable smugness, they faded into the foreground.
It started to snow quite heavily.
It was the night before Hogswatch. All through the house...
...one creature stirred. It was a mouse.
And someone, in the face of all appropriateness, had baited a trap. Although, because it was the festive season, they'd used a piece of pork crackling. The smell of it had been driving the mouse mad all day but now, with no one about, it was prepared to risk it.
The mouse didn't know it was a trap. Mice aren't good at passing on information. Young mice aren't taken up to famous trap sites and told, 'This is where your Uncle Arthur passed away.' All it knew was that, what the hey, here was something to eat. On a wooden board with some wire round it.
A brief scurry later and its jaw had closed on the rind.
Or, rather, passed through it.
The mouse looked around at what was now lying under the big spring, and thought, 'Oops . . .'
Then its gaze went up to the black-clad figure that had faded into view by the wainscoting.
'Squeak?' it asked.
SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats.
And that was it, more or less.
Afterwards, the Death of Rats looked around with interest. In the nature of things his very important job tended to take him to brickyards and dark cellars and the inside of cats and all the little dank holes where rats and mice finally found out if there was a Promised Cheese. This place was different.
It was brightly decorated, for one thing. Ivy and mistletoe hung in bunches from the bookshelves. Brightly coloured streamers festooned the walls, a feature seldom found in most holes or even quite civilized cats.
The Death of Rats took a leap onto a chair and from there on to the table and in fact right into a glass of amber liquid, which tipped over and broke. A puddle spread around four turnips and began to soak into a note which had been written rather awkwardly on pink writing paper.
It read:
Then he leapt down from the table and left sherryflavoured footprints all the way to the tree that stood in a pot in the corner. It was really only a bare branch of oak, but so much shiny holly and mistletoe had been wired onto it that it gleamed in the fight of the candles.
There was tinsel on it, and glittering ornaments, and small bags of chocolate money.
The Death of Rats peered at his hugely distorted reflection in a glass ball, and then looked up at the mantelpiece.
He reached it in one jump, and ambled curiously through the cards that had been ranged along it. His grey whiskers twitched at messages like 'Wifhin you Joye and all Goode Cheer at Hogswatchtime & All Through The Yeare'. A couple of them had pictures of a big jolly fat man carrying a sack. In one of them he was riding in a sledge drawn by four enormous pigs.
The Death of Rats sniffed at a couple of long stockings that had been hung from the mantelpiece, over the fireplace in which a fire had died down to a few sullen ashes.
He was aware of a subtle tension in the air, a feeling that here was a scene that was also a stage, a round hole, as it were, waiting for a round peg
There was a scraping noise. A few lumps of soot thumped into the ashes.
The Grim Squeaker nodded to himself.
The scraping became louder, and was followed by a moment of silence and then a clang as something landed in the ashes and knocked over a set of ornamental fire irons.
The rat watched carefully as a red-robed figure pulled itself upright and staggered across the hearthrug, rubbing its shin where it had been caught by the toasting fork.
It reached the table and read the note. The Death of Rats thought he heard a groan.
The turnips were pocketed and so, to the Death of Rats' annoyance, was the pork pie. He was pretty sure it was meant to be eaten here, not taken away.
The figure scanned the dripping note for a moment, and then turned around and approached the mantelpiece. The Death of Rats pulled back slightly behind 'Seafon's Greetings!'
A red-gloved hand took down a stocking. There was some creaking and rustling and it was replaced, looking a lot fatter — the larger box sticking out of the top had, just visible, the words 'Victim Figures Not Included. 3-10 yrs'.
The Death of Rats couldn't see much of the donor of this munificence. The big red hood hid all the face, apart from a long white beard.
Finally, when the figure finished, it stood back and pulled a list out of its pocket. It held it up to the hood and appeared to be consulting it. It waved its other hand vaguely at the fireplace, the sooty footprints, the empty sherry glass and the stocking. Then it bent forward, as if reading some tiny print.
AH, YES, it said. ER... HO. HO. HO.
With that, it ducked down and entered the chimney. There was some scrabbling before its boots gained a purchase, and then it was gone.
The Death of Rats realized he'd begun to knaw his little scythe's handle in sheer shock.
SQUEAK?
He landed in the ashes and swarmed up the sooty cave of the chimney. He emerged so fast that he shot out with his legs still scrabbling and landed in the snow on the roof.
There was a sledge hovering in the air by the gutter.
The red-hooded figure had just climbed in and appeared to be talking to someone invisible behind a pile of sacks.
HERE'S ANOTHER PORK PIE.
'Any mustard?' said the sacks. 'They're a treat with mustard.'
IT DOES NOT APPEAR SO.
'Oh, well. Pass it over anyway.'
IT LOOKS VERY BAD.
'Nah, 's just where something's nibbled it—'
I MEAN THE SITUATION. MOST OF THE LETTERS ... THEY DON'T REALLY BELIEVE. THEY PRETEND TO
BELIEVE, JUST IN CASE[7]. I FEAR IT MAY BE TOO LATE. IT HAS SPREAD SO FAST AND BACK IN TIME, TOO.
'Never say die, master. That's our motto, eh?' said the sacks, apparently with their mouth full.
I CAN'T SAY IT'S EVER REALLY BEEN MINE.
'I meant we're not going to be intimidated by the certain prospect of complete and utter failure, master.'
AREN'T WE? OH, GOOD. WELL, I SUPPOSE WE'D BETTER BE GOING. The figure picked up the reins. UP, GOUGER! UP, ROOTER! UP, TUSKER! UP, SNOUTER! GIDDYUP!
The four large boars harnessed to the sledge did not move.
WHY DOESN'T THAT WORK? said the figure in a puzzled, heavy voice.
'Beats me, master,' said the sacks.
IT WORKS ON HORSES.
'You could try "Pig-hooey! "'
PIG-HOOEY. They waited. NO ... DOESN'T SEEM TO REACH THEM.
There was some whispering.
REALLY? YOU THINK THAT WOULD WORK?
'It'd bloody well work on me if I was a pig, master.'
VERY WELL, THEN.
The figure gathered up the reins again.
APPLE! SAUCE!
The pigs' legs blurred. Silver light flicked across them, and exploded outwards. They dwindled to a dot, and vanished.
SQUEAK?
The Death of Rats skipped across the snow, slid down a drainpipe and landed on the roof of a shed.
There was a raven perched there. It was staring disconsolately at something.
SQUEAK!
'Look at that, willya?' said the raven rhetorically. It waved a claw at a bird table in the garden below. 'They hangs up half a bloody coconut, a lump of bacon rind, a handful of peanuts in a bit of wire and they think they're the gods' gift to the nat'ral world. Huh. Do I see eyeballs? Do I see entrails? I think not. Most intelligent bird in the temperate latitudes an' I gets the cold shoulder just because I can't hang upside down and go twit, twit. Look at robins, now. Stroppy little evil buggers, fight like demons, but all they got to do is go bob-bob-bobbing along and they can't move for breadcrumbs. Whereas me myself can recite poems and repeat many hum'rous phrases...'
SQUEAK!
'Yes? What?'
The Death of Rats pointed at the roof and then the sky and jumped up and down excitedly. The raven swivelled one eye upwards.
'Oh, yes. Him,' he said. 'Turns up at this time of year. Tends to be associated distantly with robins, which-'
SQUEAK! SQUEE IK IR IK! The Death of Rats pantomimed a figure landing in a grate and walking around a room. SQUEAK EEK IK IK, SQUEAK 'HEEK HEEK HEEK'! IK IK SQUEAK!
'Been overdoing the Hogswatch cheer, have you? Been rustling around in the brandy butter?'
SQUEAK?
The raven's eyes revolved.
'Look, Death's Death. It's a full-time job right?
it's not as though you can run, like, a window cleaning round on the side or nip round after work cutting people's lawns.'
SQUEAK!
'Oh, please yourself.'
The raven crouched a little to allow the tiny figure to hop on to its back, and then lumbered into the air.
'Of course, they can go mental, your occult types,' it said, as it swooped over the moonlit garden. 'Look at Old Man Trouble, for one...'
SQUEAK.
'Oh, I'm not suggestin...'
Susan didn't like Biers but she went there anyway, when the pressure of being normal got too much. Biers, despite the smell and the drink and the company, had one important virtue. In Biers no one took any notice. Of anything. Hogswatch was traditionally supposed to be a time for families but the people who drank in Biers probably didn't have families; some of them looked as though they might have had litters, or clutches. Some of them looked as though they'd probably eaten their relatives, or at least someone's relatives.
'Don't be daft, Peachy,' Catseye murmured.
'That's the sort of thing they do,' Peachy insisted. 'They're masters of disguise!'
'With that eye of his?'
'That guy sitting by the fire has got an eye patch,' said Medium Dave. Medium Dave didn't speak much. He watched a lot.
The others turned to stare.
'He'll wait till we're off our guard then go ahahaha,' said Peachy.
'They can't kill you unless it's for money,' said Catseye. But now there was a soupcon of doubt in his voice.
They kept their eyes on the hooded man. He kept his eye on them.
If asked to describe what they did for a living, the five men around the table would have said something like 'This and that' or 'The best I can', although in Banjo's case he'd have probably said 'Dur?' They were, by the standards of an uncaring society, criminals, although they wouldn't have thought of themselves as such and couldn't even spell words like 'nefarious'. What they generally did was move things around. Sometimes the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, say, or in the wrong house. Sometimes the things were in fact people who were far too unimportant to trouble the Assassins' Guild with, but who were nevertheless inconveniently positioned where they were and could much better be located on, for example, a sea bed somewhere[5]. None of the five belonged to any formal guild and they generally found their clients among those people who, for their own dark reasons, didn't want to put the guilds to any trouble, sometimes because they were guild members themselves. They had plenty of work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B or, of course, to the bottom of the C.
'Any minute now,' said Peachy, as the waiter brought their beers.
Banjo cleared his throat. This was a sign that another thought had arrived.
'What I don' unnerstan,' he said, 'is:'
'Yes?' said his brother.[6]
'What I don' unnerstan is, how longaz diz place had waiters?'
'Good evening,' said Teatime, putting down the tray.
They stared at him in silence.
He gave them a friendly smile.
Peachy's huge hand slapped the table.
'You crept up on us, you little— he began.
Men in their line of business develop a certain prescience. Medium Dave and Catseye, who were sitting on either side of Peachy, leaned away nonchalantly.
'Hi!' said Teatime. There was a blur, and a knife shuddered in the table between Peachy's thumb and index finger.
He looked down at it in horror.
'My name's Teatime,' said Teatime.'Which one are you?'
'I'm ... Peachy,' said Peachy, still staring at the vibrating knife.
'That's an interesting name,' said Teatime. 'Why are you called Peachy, Peachy?'
Medium Dave coughed.
Peachy looked up into Teatime's face. The glass eye was a mere ball of faintly glowing grey. The other eye was a little dot in a sea of white. Peachy's only contact with intelligence had been to beat it up and rob it whenever possible, but a sudden sense of selfpreservation glued him to his chair.
' cos I don't shave,' he said.
'Peachy don't like blades, mister,' said Catseye.
'And do you have a lot of friends, Peachy?' said Teatime.
'Got a few, yeah.'
With a sudden whirl of movement that made the men start, Teatime spun away, grabbed a chair, swung it up to the table and sat down on it. Three of them had already got their hands on their swords.
'I don't have many,' he said, apologetically. 'Don't seem to have the knack. On the other hand ... I don't seem to have any enemies at all. Not one. Isn't that nice?'
Teatime had been thinking, in the cracking, buzzing firework display that was his head. What he had been thinking about was immortality.
He might have been quite, quite insane, but he was no fool. There were, in the Assassins' Guild, a number of paintings and busts of famous members who had, in the past, put ... no, of course, that wasn't right. There were paintings and busts of the famous clients of members, with a noticeably modest brass plaque screwed somewhere nearby, bearing some unassuming little comment like 'Departed this vale of tears on Grune 3, Year of the Sideways Leech, with the assistance of the Hon. K. W. Dobson (Viper House)'. Many fine old educational establishments had dignified memorials in some hall listing the Old Boys who had laid down their lives for monarch and country. The Guild's was very similar, except for the question of whose life had been laid.
Every Guild member wanted to be up there somewhere. Because getting up there represented immortality. And the bigger your client, the more incredibly discreet and restrained would be the little brass plaque, so that everyone couldn't help but notice your name.
In fact, if you were very, very renowned, they wouldn't even have to write down your name at all...
The men around the table watched him. It was always hard to know what Banjo was thinking, or even if he was thinking at all, but the other four were thinking along the lines of: bumptious little tit, like all Assassins. Thinks he knows it all. I could take him down one-handed, no trouble. But ... you hear stories. Those eyes give me the creeps...
'So what's the job?' said Chickenwire.
'We don't do jobs,' said Teatime. 'We perform services. And the service will earn each of you ten thousand dollars.'
'That's a lot more'n Thieves' Guild rate,' said Medium Dave.
'I've never liked the Thieves' Guild,' said Teatime, without turning his head.
'Why not?'
'They ask too many questions.'
'We don't ask questions,' said Chickenwire quickly.
'We shall suit one another perfectly,' said Teatime. 'Do have another drink while we wait for the other members of our little troupe.'
Chickenwire saw Medium Dave's lips start to frame the opening letters 'Who-'. These letters he deemed inauspicious at this time. He kicked Medium Dave's leg under the table.
The door opened slightly. A figure came in, but only just. It inserted itself in the gap and sidled along the wall in a manner calculated not to attract attention. Calculated, that is, by someone not good at this sort of calculation.
It looked at them over its turned-up collar.
'That's a wizard,' said Peachy.
The figure hurried over and dragged up a chair.
'No I'm not!' it hissed. 'I'm incognito!'
'Right, Mr Gnito,' said Medium Dave. 'You're just someone in a pointy hat. This is my brother Banjo, that's Peachy, this is Chick—'
The wizard looked desperately at Teatime.
'I didn't want to come!'
'Mr Sideney here is indeed a wizard,' said Teatime. 'A student, anyway. But down on his luck at the moment, hence his willingness to join us on this venture.'
'Exactly how far down on his luck?' said Medium Dave.
The wizard tried not to meet anyone's gaze.
'I made a misjudgement to do with a wager,' he said.
'Lost a bet, you mean?' said Chickenwire.
'I paid up on time,' said Sideney.
'Yes, but Chrysoprase the troll has this odd little thing about money that turns into lead the next day,' said Teatime cheerfully. 'So our friend needs to earn a little cash in a hurry and in a climate where arms and legs stay on.'
'No one said anything about there being magic in all this,' said Peachy.
'Our destination is ... probably you should think of it as something like a wizard's tower, gentlemen,' said Teatime.
'It isn't an actual wizard's tower, is it?' said Medium Dave. 'They got a very odd sense of humour when it comes to booby traps.'
'No.'
'Guards?'
'I believe so. According to legend. But nothing very much.'
Medium Dave narrowed his eyes. 'There's valuable stuff in this ... tower?'
'Oh, yes.'
'Why ain't there many guards, then?'
'The ... person who owns the property probably does not realize the value of what ... of what they have.'
'Locks?' said Medium Dave.
'On our way we shall be picking up a locksmith.'
'Who?'
'Mr Brown.'
They nodded. Everyone — at least, everyone in 'the business', and everyone in 'the business' knew what 'the business' was, and if you didn't know what 'the business' was you weren't a businessman — knew Mr Brown. His presence anywhere around a job gave it a certain kind of respectability. He was a neat, elderly man who'd invented most of the tools in his big leather bag. No matter what cunning you'd used to get into a place, or overcome a small army, or find the secret treasure room, sooner or later you sent for Mr Brown, who'd turn up with his leather bag and his little springy things and his little bottles of strange alchemy and his neat little boots. And he'd do nothing for ten minutes but look at the lock, and then he'd select a piece of bent metal from a ring of several hundred almost identical pieces, and under an hour later he'd be walkingaway with a neat ten per cent of the takings. Of course, you didn't have to use Mr Brown's services. You could always opt to spend the rest of your life looking at a locked door.
'All right. Where is this place?' said Peachy.
Teatime turned and smiled at him. 'If I'm paying you, why isn't it me who's asking the questions?'
Peachy didn't even try to outstare the glass eye a second time.
'Just want to be prepared, that's all,' he mumbled.
'Good reconnaissance is the essence of a successful operation,' said Teatime. He turned and looked up at the bulk that was Banjo and added, 'What is this?'
'This is Banjo,' said Medium Dave, rolling himself a cigarette.
'Does it do tricks?'
Time stood still for a moment. The other men looked at Medium Dave. He was known to Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right. He was reliable in a tight spot and, above all, he was honest, because good criminals have to be honest. If he had a fault, it was a tendency to deal out terminal and definitive retribution to anyone who said anything about his brother.
If he had a virtue, it was a tendency to pick his time. Medium Dave's fingers tucked the tobacco into the paper and raised it to his lips.
'No,' he said.
Chickenwire tried to defrost the conversation. 'He's not what you'd call bright, but he's always useful. He can lift two men in each hand. By their necks.'
'Yur,' said Banjo.
'He looks like a volcano,' said Teatime.
'Really?' said Medium Dave Lilywhite. Chickenwire reached out hastily and pushed him back down in his seat.
Teatime turned and smiled at him.
'I do so hope we're going to be friends, Mr Medium Dave,' he said. 'It really hurts to think I might not be among friends.' He gave him another bright smile. Then he turned back to the rest of the table.
'Are we resolved, gentlemen?'
They nodded. There was some reluctance, given the consensus view that Teatime belonged in a room with soft walls, but ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars. possibly even more.
'Good,' said Teatime. He looked Banjo up and down. 'Then I suppose we might as well make a start.'
And he hit Banjo very hard in the mouth.
Death in person did not turn up upon the cessation of every life. It was not necessary. Governments govern, but prime ministers and presidents do not personally turn up in people's homes to tell them how to run their lives, because of the mortal danger this would present. There are laws instead.
But from time to time Death checked up to see that things were functioning properly or, to put it another and more accurate way, properly ceasing to function in the less significant areas of his jurisdiction.
And now he walked through dark seas.
Silt rose in clouds around his feet as he strode along the trench bottom. His robes floated out around him.
There was silence, pressure and utter, utter darkness. But there was life down here, even this far below the waves. There were giant squid, and lobsters with teeth on their eyelids. There were spidery things with their stomachs on their feet, and fish that made their own light. It was a quiet, black nightmare world, but life lives everywhere that life can. Where life can't, this takes a little longer.
Death's destination was a slight rise in the trench floor. Already the water around him was getting warmer and more populated, by creatures that looked as though they had been put together from the bits left over from everything else.
Unseen but felt, a vast column of scalding hot water was welling up from a fissure. Somewhere below were rocks heated to near incandescence by the Disc's magical field.
Spires of minerals had been deposited around this vent. And, in this tiny oasis, a type of life had grown up. It did not need air or light. It did not even need food in the way that most other species would understand the term.
It just grew at the edge of the streaming column of water, looking like a cross between a worm and a flower.
Death kneeled down and peered at it, because it was so small. But for some reason, in this world without eyes or light, it was also a brilliant red. The profligacy of life in these matters never ceased to amaze him.
He reached inside his robe and pulled out a small roll of black material, like a jeweller's toolkit. With great care he took from one of its pouches a scythe about an inch long, and held it expectantly between thumb and forefinger.
Somewhere overhead a shard of rock was dislodged by a stray current and tumbled down, raising little puffs of silt as it bounced off the tubes.
It landed just beside the living flower and then rolled, wrenching it from the rock.
Death flicked the tiny scythe just as the bloom faded ...
The omnipotent eyesight of various supernatural entities is often remarked upon. It is said they can see the fall of every sparrow.
And this may be true. But there is only one who is always there when it hits the ground.
The soul of the tube worm was very small and uncomplicated. It wasn't bothered about sin. it had never coveted its neighbour's polyps. It had never gambled or drunk strong liquor. It had never bothered itself with questions like 'Why am I here?' because it had no concept at all of 'here' or, for that matter, of 'I'.
Nevertheless, something was cut free under the surgical edge of the scythe and vanished in the roiling waters.
Death carefully put the instrument away and stood up. All was well, things were functioning satisfactorily, and...
...but they weren't.
In the same way that the best of engineers can hear the tiny change that signals a bearing going bad long before the finest of instruments would detect anything wrong, Death picked up a discord in the symphony of the world. It was one wrong note among billions but all the more noticeable for that, like a tiny pebble in a very large shoe.
He waved a finger in the waters. For a moment a blue, door-shaped outline appeared He ste pped through it and was gone.
The tube creatures didn't notice him go.
They hadn't noticed him arrive. They never ever noticed anything.
A cart trundled through the freezing foggy streets, the driver hunched in his seat. He seemed to be all big thick brown overcoat.
A figure darted out of the swirls and was suddenly on the box next to him
'Hi!' it said. 'My name's Teatime. What's yours?'
'Here, you get down, I ain't allowed to give li...'
The driver stopped. It was amazing how Teatime had been able to thrust a knife through four layers of thick clothing and stop it just at the point where it pricked the flesh.
'Sorry?' said Teatime, smiling brightly.
'Er — there ain't nothing valuable, y'know, nothing valuable, only a few bags of...'
'Oh, dear,' said Teatime, his face a sudden acre of concern. 'Well, we'll just have to see, won't we ... What is your name, sir?'
'Ernie. Er. Ernie,' said Ernie. 'Yes. Ernie. Er... '
Teatime turned his head slightly.
'Come along, gentlemen. This is my friend Ernie. He's going to be our driver for tonight.'
Ernie saw half a dozen figures emerge from the fog and climb into the cart behind him. He didn't turn to look at them. By the pricking of his kidneys he knew this would not be an exemplary career move. But it seemed that one of the figures, a huge shambling mound of a creature, was carrying a long bundle over its shoulder. The bundle moved and made muffled noises.
'Do stop shaking, Ernie. We just need a lift said Teatime, as the cart rumbled over the cobbles.
'Where to, mister?'
'Oh, we don't mind. But first, I'd like you to stop in Sator Square, near the second fountain.'
The knife was withdrawn. Ernie stopped trying to breathe through his ears.
'Er...'
'What is it? You do seem tense, Ernie. I always find a neck massage helps.'
'I ain't rightly allowed to carry passengers, see Charlie'll give me a right telling-off ...'
'Oh, don't you worry about that,' said Tea time, slapping him on the back. 'We're all friends here!'
'What're we bringing the girl for?' said a voice behind them.
''s not right, hittin' girls,' said a deep voice. 'Our mam said no hittin' girls. Only bad boys do that, our mam said!'
'You be quiet, Banjo.'
'Our mam said...'
'Shssh! Emie here doesn't want to listen to our troubles,' said Teatime, not taking his gaze off the driver.
'Me? Deaf as a post, me,' burbled Ernie, who in some ways was a very quick learner. 'Can't hardly see more'n a few feet, neither. Cot no recollection for them faces that I do see, come to that. Bad memory? Hah! Talk about bad memory. Cor, sometimes I can be like as it were on the cart, talking to people, hah, just like I'm talking gone, hah, remember anything about them or how many they were or what they were carrying or anything about any to you now, and then when they're try as I might, do you think I car girl or anything?' By this time his voice was a highpitched wheeze. 'Hah! Sometimes I forget me own name!'
'It's Ernie, isn't it?' said Teatime, giving him a happy smile. 'Ah, and here we are. Oh dear. There seems to be some excitement.'
There was the sound of fighting somewhere ahead, and then a couple of masked trolls ran past with three Watchmen after them. They all ignored the cart.
'I heard the De Bris gang were going to have a go at Packley's strongroom tonight,' said a voice behind Ernie.
' Looks like Mr Brown won't be joining us, then,' said another voice. There was a snigger.
'Oh, I don't know about that, Mr Lilywhite, I don't know about that at all,' said a third voice, and this one was from the direction of the fountain. 'Could you take my bag while I climb up, please? Do be careful, it's a little heavy.'
It was a neat little voice. The owner of a voice like that kept his money in a shovel purse and always counted his change carefully. Ernie thought all this, and then tried very hard to forget that he had.
'On you go, Ernie,' said Teatime. 'Round behind the University, I think.'
As the cart rolled on, the neat little voice said, 'You grab all the money and then you get out very smartly. Am I right?'
There was a murmur of agreement.
'Learned that on my mother's knee, yeah.'
'You learned a lot of stuff across your ma's knee, Mr Lilywhite.'
'Don't you say nuffin' about our mam!' The voice was like an earthquake.
'This is Mr Brown, Banjo. You smarten up.'
'He dint ort to tork about our mam!'
'All right! All right! Hello, Banjo ... I think I may have a sweet somewhere ... Yes, there you' are. Yes, your ma knew the way all right. You go in quietly, you take your time, you get what you came for and you leave smartly and in good order. You don't hang around at the scene to count it out and tell one another what brave lads you are, am I right?'
'You seem to have done all right, Mr Brown.' The cart rattled towards the other side of the square.
'Just a little for expenses, Mr Catseye. A little Hogswatch present, you might say. Never take the lot and run. Take a little and walk. Dress neat. That's my motto. Dress neat and walk away slowly. Never run. Never run. The Watch'Il always chase a running man. They're like terriers for giving chase. No, you walk out slow, you walk round the corner, you wait till there's a lot of excitement, then you turn around and walk back. They can't cope with that, see. Half the time they'll stand aside to let you walk past. "Good evening, officers," you say, and then you go home for your tea.'
'Wheee! Gets you out of trouble, I can see that. If you've got the nerve.'
'Oh, no, Mr Peachy. Doesn't get you out of. Keeps You out of.'
It was like a very good schoolroom, Ernie thought (and immediately tried to forget). Or a back-street gym when a champion prizefighter had just strolled in.
'What's up with your mouth, Banjo?'
'He lost a tooth, Mr Brown,' said another voice, and sniggered.
'Lost a toot, Mr Brown,' said the thunder that was Banjo.
'Keep your eyes on the road, Ernie,' said Teatime beside him. 'We don't want an accident, do we. . .'
The road here was deserted, despite the bustle of the city behind them and the bulk of the University nearby. There were a few streets, but the buildings were abandoned. And something was happening to the sound. The rest of AnkhMorpork seemed very far away, the sounds arriving as if through quite a thick wall. They were entering that scorned little corner of AnkhMorpork that had long been the site of the University's rubbish pits and was now known as the Unreal Estate.
'Bloody wizards,' muttered Ernie, automatically.
'I beg your pardon?' said Teatime.
'My great-grandpa said we used t'own prop'ty round here. Low levels of magic, my arse! Hah, it's all right for them wizards, they got all kindsa spells to protect 'em. Bit of magic here, bit of magic there... Stands to reason it's got to go somewhere, right?'
'There used to be warning signs up,' said the neat voice from behind.
'Yeah, well, warning signs in Ankh-Morpork might as well have "Good firewood" written on them,' said someone else.
'I mean, stands to reason, they chuck out an old spell for exploding this, and another one for twiddlin' that, and another one for making carrots grow, they finish up interfering with one another, who knows what they'll end up doing?' said Ernie. 'Great-grandpa said sometimes they'd wake up in the morning and the cellar'd be higher than the attic. And that weren't the worst,' he added darkly.
'Yeah, I heard where it got so bad you could walk down the street and meet yourself coming the other way,' someone supplied. 'It got so's you didn't know it was bum or breakfast time, I heard.'
'The dog used to bring home all kinds of stuff,' said Ernie. 'Great-grandpa said half the time they used to dive behind the sofa if it came in with anything in its mouth. Corroded fire spells startin' to fizz, broken wands with green smoke coming out of 'em and I don't know what else ... and if you saw the cat playing with anything, it was best not to try to find out what it was, I can tell you.'
He twitched the reins, his current predicament almost forgotten in the tide of hereditary resentment.
'I mean, they say all the old spell books and stuff was buried deep and they recycle the used spells now, but that don't seem much comfort when your potatoes started walkin' about,' he grumbled. 'My great-grandpa went to see the head wizard about it, and he said' — he put on a strangled nasal voice which was his idea of how you talked when you'd got an education — ' " Oh, there might be some temp'ry inconvenience now, my good man, but just you come back in fifty thousand years." Bloody wizards.'
The horse turned a corner.
This was a dead-end street. Half-collapsed houses, windows smashed, doors stolen, leaned against one another on either side.
'I heard they said they were going to clean up this place,' said someone.
'Oh, yeah,' said Ernie, and spat. When it hit the ground it ran away. 'And you know what? You get loonies coming in all the time now, poking around, pulling things about...'
'Just at the wall up ahead,' said Teatime conversationally. 'I think you generally go through just where there's a pile of rubble by the old dead tree, although you wouldn't see it unless you looked closely. But I've never seen how you do it ... '
'' ere, I can't take you lot through,' said Ernie. 'Lifts is one thing, but not taking people through— '
Teatime sighed. 'And we were getting on so well. Listen, Ernie ... Ern ... you will take us through or, and I say this with very considerable regret, I will have to kill you. You seem a nice man. Conscientious. A very serious overcoat and sensible boots.'
'But if'n I take you through-'
'What's the worst that can happen?' said Teatime. 'You'll lose your job. Whereas if you don't, you'll die. So if you look at it like that, we're actually doing you a favour. Oh, do say yes.'
'Er . . .' Ernie's brain felt twisted up. The lad was definitely what Ernie thought of as a toff, and he seemed nice and friendly, but it didn't all add up. The tone and the content didn't match.
'Besides,' said Teatime, 'if you've been coerced, it's not your fault, is it? No one can blame you. No one could blame anyone who'd been coerced at knife point.'
'Oh, well, I s'pose, if we're talking coerced:' Ernie muttered. Going along with things seemed to be the only way.
The horse stopped and stood waiting with the patient look of an animal that probably knows the route better than the driver.
Ernie fumbled in his overcoat pocket and took out a small tin, rather like a snuff box. He opened it. There was glowing dust inside.
'What do you do with that?' said Teatime, all interest.
'Oh, you just takes a pinch and throws it in the air and it goes twing and it opens the soft place,' said Ernie.
'SO ... you don't need any special training or anything?'
'Er... you just chucks it at the wall there and it goes twing,' said Ernie.
'Really? May I try?'
Teatime took the tin from his unresisting hand and threw a pinch of dust into the air in front of the horse. It hovered for a moment and then produced a narrow, glittering arch in the air. It sparkled and went:
... twing.
'Aw,' said a voice behind them. 'Innat nice, eh, our Davey?'
'Yeah.'
'All pretty sparkles...'
'And then you just drive forward?' said Teatime.
'That's right,' said Ernie. 'Quick, mind. It only stays open for a little while.'
Teatime pocketed the little tin. 'Thank you very much, Ernie. Very much indeed.'
His other hand lashed out. There was a glint of metal. The carter blinked, and then fell sideways off his seat.
There was silence from behind, tinted with horror and possibly just a little terrible admiration.
'Wasn't he dull?' said Teatime, picking up the reins.
Snow began to fall. It fell on the recumbent shape of Ernie, and it also fell through several hooded grey robes that hung in the air.
There appeared to be nothing inside them. You could believe they were there merely to make a certain point in space.
Well, said one, we are frankly impressed.
Indeed, said another. We would never have thought of doing it this way.
He is certainly a resourceful human, said a third.
The beauty of it all, said the first — or it may have been the second, because, absolutely nothing distinguished the robes — is that there is so much else we will control.
Quite, said another. It is really amazing how they think. A sort of ... illogical logic.
Children, said another. Who would have thought it? But today the children, tomorrow the world.
Give me a child until he is seven and he's mine for life, said another.
There was a dreadful pause.
The consensus beings that called themselves the Auditors did not believe in anything, except possibly immortality. And the way to be immortal, they knew, was to avoid living. Most of all they did not believe in personality. To be a personality was to be a creature with a beginning and an end. And since they reasoned that in an infinite universe any life was by comparison unimaginably short, they died instantly. There was a flaw in their logic, of course, but by the time they found this out it was always too late. In the meantime, they scrupulously avoided any comment, action or experience that set them apart ...
You said 'me', said one.
Ah. Yes. But, you see, we were quoting, said the other one hurriedly. Some religious person said that. About educating children. And so would logically say 'me'. But I wouldn't use that term of myself, of — damn!
The robe vanished in a little puff of smoke.
Let that be a lesson to us, said one of the survivors, as another and totally indistinguishable robe popped into existence where the stricken colleague had been.
Yes, said the newcomer. Well, it certainly appears...
It stopped. A dark shape was approaching through the snow.
It's him, it said.
They faded hurriedly — not simply vanishing, but spreading out and thinning until they were just lost in the background.
The dark figure stopped by the dead carter and reached down.
COULD I GIVE YOU A HAND?
Ernie looked up gratefully.
'Cor, yeah,' he said. He got to his feet, swaying a little. 'Here, your fingers're cold, mister!'
SORRY.
'What'd he go and do that for? I did what he said. He could've killed me.'
Ernie felt inside his overcoat and pulled out a small and, at this point, strangely transparent silver flask.
'I always keep a nip on me these cold nights,' he said. 'Keeps me spirits up.'
YES INDEED. Death looked around briefly and sniffed the air.
'How'm I going to explain all this, then, eh?' said Ernie, taking a pull.
SORRY? THAT WAS VERY RUDE OF ME. I WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION.
'I said what'm I going to tell people? Letting some blokes ride off with my cart neat as you like ... That's gonna be the sack for sure, I'm gonna be in big trouble . . .'
All. WELL. THERE AT LEAST I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS, ERNEST. AND, THEN AGAIN, I HAVE SOME BAD NEWS.
Ernie listened. Once or twice he looked at the corpse at his feet. He looked smaller from the outside. He was bright enough not to argue. Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.
'So I'm dead, then,' he concluded.
CORRECT.
'Er ... The priest said that ... you know. after you're dead . . . it's like going through a door and on one side of it there's ... He. . . well, a terrible place ... ?'
Death looked at his worried, fading face.
THROUGH A DOOR...
'That's what he said . .
I EXPECT IT DEPENDS ON THE DIRECTION YOU'RE WALKING IN.
When the street was empty again, except for the fleshy abode of the late Ernie, the grey shapes came back into focus.
Honestly, he gets worse and worse, said one.
He was looking for us, said another. Did you notice? He suspects something. He gets so ... concerned about things.
Yes ... but the beauty of this plan, said a third, is that he can't interfere.
He can go everywhere, said one.
No, said another. Not quite everywhere.
And, with ineffable smugness, they faded into the foreground.
It started to snow quite heavily.
It was the night before Hogswatch. All through the house...
...one creature stirred. It was a mouse.
And someone, in the face of all appropriateness, had baited a trap. Although, because it was the festive season, they'd used a piece of pork crackling. The smell of it had been driving the mouse mad all day but now, with no one about, it was prepared to risk it.
The mouse didn't know it was a trap. Mice aren't good at passing on information. Young mice aren't taken up to famous trap sites and told, 'This is where your Uncle Arthur passed away.' All it knew was that, what the hey, here was something to eat. On a wooden board with some wire round it.
A brief scurry later and its jaw had closed on the rind.
Or, rather, passed through it.
The mouse looked around at what was now lying under the big spring, and thought, 'Oops . . .'
Then its gaze went up to the black-clad figure that had faded into view by the wainscoting.
'Squeak?' it asked.
SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats.
And that was it, more or less.
Afterwards, the Death of Rats looked around with interest. In the nature of things his very important job tended to take him to brickyards and dark cellars and the inside of cats and all the little dank holes where rats and mice finally found out if there was a Promised Cheese. This place was different.
It was brightly decorated, for one thing. Ivy and mistletoe hung in bunches from the bookshelves. Brightly coloured streamers festooned the walls, a feature seldom found in most holes or even quite civilized cats.
The Death of Rats took a leap onto a chair and from there on to the table and in fact right into a glass of amber liquid, which tipped over and broke. A puddle spread around four turnips and began to soak into a note which had been written rather awkwardly on pink writing paper.
It read:
Dere Hogfather,The Death of Rats nibbled a bit of the pork pie because when you are the personification of the death of small rodents you have to behave in certain ways. He also piddled on one of the turnips for the same reason, although only metaphorically, because when you are a small skeleton in a black robe there are also some things you technically cannot do.
For Hogswatch I would like a drum an a dolly an a teddybear an a Gharstley Omnian Inquisision Torchure Chamber with Wind-up Rack and Nearly Real Blud You Can Use Again, you can get it From the toyshoppe in Short Strete, it is $5.99p. I have been good an here is a glars of Sherre an a Pork pie for you and turnips for Gouger an Rooter an Snot Snouter. I hop the Chimney is big enough but my friend Willaim Says you are your father really.
Yrs. Virginia Prood
Then he leapt down from the table and left sherryflavoured footprints all the way to the tree that stood in a pot in the corner. It was really only a bare branch of oak, but so much shiny holly and mistletoe had been wired onto it that it gleamed in the fight of the candles.
There was tinsel on it, and glittering ornaments, and small bags of chocolate money.
The Death of Rats peered at his hugely distorted reflection in a glass ball, and then looked up at the mantelpiece.
He reached it in one jump, and ambled curiously through the cards that had been ranged along it. His grey whiskers twitched at messages like 'Wifhin you Joye and all Goode Cheer at Hogswatchtime & All Through The Yeare'. A couple of them had pictures of a big jolly fat man carrying a sack. In one of them he was riding in a sledge drawn by four enormous pigs.
The Death of Rats sniffed at a couple of long stockings that had been hung from the mantelpiece, over the fireplace in which a fire had died down to a few sullen ashes.
He was aware of a subtle tension in the air, a feeling that here was a scene that was also a stage, a round hole, as it were, waiting for a round peg
There was a scraping noise. A few lumps of soot thumped into the ashes.
The Grim Squeaker nodded to himself.
The scraping became louder, and was followed by a moment of silence and then a clang as something landed in the ashes and knocked over a set of ornamental fire irons.
The rat watched carefully as a red-robed figure pulled itself upright and staggered across the hearthrug, rubbing its shin where it had been caught by the toasting fork.
It reached the table and read the note. The Death of Rats thought he heard a groan.
The turnips were pocketed and so, to the Death of Rats' annoyance, was the pork pie. He was pretty sure it was meant to be eaten here, not taken away.
The figure scanned the dripping note for a moment, and then turned around and approached the mantelpiece. The Death of Rats pulled back slightly behind 'Seafon's Greetings!'
A red-gloved hand took down a stocking. There was some creaking and rustling and it was replaced, looking a lot fatter — the larger box sticking out of the top had, just visible, the words 'Victim Figures Not Included. 3-10 yrs'.
The Death of Rats couldn't see much of the donor of this munificence. The big red hood hid all the face, apart from a long white beard.
Finally, when the figure finished, it stood back and pulled a list out of its pocket. It held it up to the hood and appeared to be consulting it. It waved its other hand vaguely at the fireplace, the sooty footprints, the empty sherry glass and the stocking. Then it bent forward, as if reading some tiny print.
AH, YES, it said. ER... HO. HO. HO.
With that, it ducked down and entered the chimney. There was some scrabbling before its boots gained a purchase, and then it was gone.
The Death of Rats realized he'd begun to knaw his little scythe's handle in sheer shock.
SQUEAK?
He landed in the ashes and swarmed up the sooty cave of the chimney. He emerged so fast that he shot out with his legs still scrabbling and landed in the snow on the roof.
There was a sledge hovering in the air by the gutter.
The red-hooded figure had just climbed in and appeared to be talking to someone invisible behind a pile of sacks.
HERE'S ANOTHER PORK PIE.
'Any mustard?' said the sacks. 'They're a treat with mustard.'
IT DOES NOT APPEAR SO.
'Oh, well. Pass it over anyway.'
IT LOOKS VERY BAD.
'Nah, 's just where something's nibbled it—'
I MEAN THE SITUATION. MOST OF THE LETTERS ... THEY DON'T REALLY BELIEVE. THEY PRETEND TO
BELIEVE, JUST IN CASE[7]. I FEAR IT MAY BE TOO LATE. IT HAS SPREAD SO FAST AND BACK IN TIME, TOO.
'Never say die, master. That's our motto, eh?' said the sacks, apparently with their mouth full.
I CAN'T SAY IT'S EVER REALLY BEEN MINE.
'I meant we're not going to be intimidated by the certain prospect of complete and utter failure, master.'
AREN'T WE? OH, GOOD. WELL, I SUPPOSE WE'D BETTER BE GOING. The figure picked up the reins. UP, GOUGER! UP, ROOTER! UP, TUSKER! UP, SNOUTER! GIDDYUP!
The four large boars harnessed to the sledge did not move.
WHY DOESN'T THAT WORK? said the figure in a puzzled, heavy voice.
'Beats me, master,' said the sacks.
IT WORKS ON HORSES.
'You could try "Pig-hooey! "'
PIG-HOOEY. They waited. NO ... DOESN'T SEEM TO REACH THEM.
There was some whispering.
REALLY? YOU THINK THAT WOULD WORK?
'It'd bloody well work on me if I was a pig, master.'
VERY WELL, THEN.
The figure gathered up the reins again.
APPLE! SAUCE!
The pigs' legs blurred. Silver light flicked across them, and exploded outwards. They dwindled to a dot, and vanished.
SQUEAK?
The Death of Rats skipped across the snow, slid down a drainpipe and landed on the roof of a shed.
There was a raven perched there. It was staring disconsolately at something.
SQUEAK!
'Look at that, willya?' said the raven rhetorically. It waved a claw at a bird table in the garden below. 'They hangs up half a bloody coconut, a lump of bacon rind, a handful of peanuts in a bit of wire and they think they're the gods' gift to the nat'ral world. Huh. Do I see eyeballs? Do I see entrails? I think not. Most intelligent bird in the temperate latitudes an' I gets the cold shoulder just because I can't hang upside down and go twit, twit. Look at robins, now. Stroppy little evil buggers, fight like demons, but all they got to do is go bob-bob-bobbing along and they can't move for breadcrumbs. Whereas me myself can recite poems and repeat many hum'rous phrases...'
SQUEAK!
'Yes? What?'
The Death of Rats pointed at the roof and then the sky and jumped up and down excitedly. The raven swivelled one eye upwards.
'Oh, yes. Him,' he said. 'Turns up at this time of year. Tends to be associated distantly with robins, which-'
SQUEAK! SQUEE IK IR IK! The Death of Rats pantomimed a figure landing in a grate and walking around a room. SQUEAK EEK IK IK, SQUEAK 'HEEK HEEK HEEK'! IK IK SQUEAK!
'Been overdoing the Hogswatch cheer, have you? Been rustling around in the brandy butter?'
SQUEAK?
The raven's eyes revolved.
'Look, Death's Death. It's a full-time job right?
it's not as though you can run, like, a window cleaning round on the side or nip round after work cutting people's lawns.'
SQUEAK!
'Oh, please yourself.'
The raven crouched a little to allow the tiny figure to hop on to its back, and then lumbered into the air.
'Of course, they can go mental, your occult types,' it said, as it swooped over the moonlit garden. 'Look at Old Man Trouble, for one...'
SQUEAK.
'Oh, I'm not suggestin...'
Susan didn't like Biers but she went there anyway, when the pressure of being normal got too much. Biers, despite the smell and the drink and the company, had one important virtue. In Biers no one took any notice. Of anything. Hogswatch was traditionally supposed to be a time for families but the people who drank in Biers probably didn't have families; some of them looked as though they might have had litters, or clutches. Some of them looked as though they'd probably eaten their relatives, or at least someone's relatives.