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“Oh, just a declaration of good faith,” said Cosmo, as the coach stopped. “One day you might feel inclined to ask me for the other half. But understand me, Mr. Lipwig, I don’t usually take the trouble to do things the hard way. ” “Don’t bother to do so on my account, please,” said Moist, wrenching the door open. Sator Square was outside, full of carts and people and embarrassingly potential witnesses. For a moment, Cosmo’s forehead did that…eyebrow thing again. He gave it a slap, and said, “Mr. Lipwig, you misunderstand. This was the hard way. Good-bye. My regards to your young lady. ” Moist spun on the cobbles, but the door had slammed shut and the coach was speeding away. “Why didn’t you add ‘We know where your children will go to school’?” he shouted after it. What now? Hell’s bells, he had been dropped right in it! A little way up the street, the palace beckoned. Vetinari had some questions to answer. How had the man arranged it? The Watch said she’d died of natural causes! But he’d been trained as an assassin, yes? A real one, specializing in poisons, maybe? He strode in through the open gates, but the guards stopped him at the building itself. Moist knew them of old. There was probably an entrance exam for them. If they answered the question “What is your name?” and got it wrong, they were hired. There were trolls that could outthink them. But you couldn’t fool them, or talk them round. They had a list of people who could walk right in, and another of people who needed an appointment. If you weren’t on either, you didn’t get in. However, one of their captains, bright enough to read large type, did recognize “Postmaster General” and “Chairman of the Royal Bank” and sent one of the lads knuckling off to see Drumknott, carrying a scribbled note. To Moist’s surprise, ten minutes later, he was being ushered into the Oblong Office. Seats around the big conference table at one end of the room were fully occupied. Moist recognized a few guild leaders, but quite a few were average-looking citizens, working men, men who looked ill at ease indoors. Maps of the city were strewn across the table. He’d interrupted something. Or, rather, Vetinari had interrupted something for him. Lord Vetinari got up as soon as Moist entered, and beckoned him forward. “Please excuse me, ladies, gentlemen, but I do need some time with the postmaster general. Drumknott, do take everyone through the figures again, will you? Mr. Lipwig, this way if you please. ” Moist thought he heard muffled laughter behind them as he was ushered into what he at first thought was a high-ceilinged corridor, but which turned out to be a sort of an art gallery. Vetinari shut the door behind them. The click seemed, to Moist, to be very loud. His anger was draining fast, to be replaced by a very chilly feeling. Vetinari was a tyrant, after all. If Moist was never seen again, his lordship’s reputation would only be enhanced. “Do put down Mr. Fusspot,” said Vetinari. “It will do the little chap good to run about. ” Moist lowered the dog to the ground. It was like dropping a shield. And now he could take in what it was this gallery exhibited. What he’d thought were carved stone busts were faces, made of wax. And Moist knew how and when they were made, too. They were death masks. “My predecessors,” said Vetinari, strolling down the gallery. “Not a complete collection, of course. In some cases the head could not be found or was, as you might say, in a rather untidy state. ” There was a silence. Foolishly, Moist filled it. “It must be strange, having them look down on you every day,” he managed. “Oh, do you think so? I have to say I’d rather look down on them. Gross men, for the most part, greedy, venal, and clumsy. Cunning can do duty for thought up to a point, and then you die. Most of them died rich, fat, and terrified. They left the city the worse for their incumbency and the better for their death. But now the city works, Mr. Lipwig. We progress. We would not do so if the ruler was the kind of man who would kill elderly ladies, do you understand?” “I never said—” “I know exactly what you never said. You refrained from saying it very loudly. ” Vetinari raised an eyebrow. “I am extremely angry, Mr. Lipwig. ” “But I’ve been dropped right in it!” “Not by me,” said Vetinari. “I can assure you that if I had, as your ill-assumed street patois has it, ‘dropped you in it,’ you would fully understand all meanings of ‘drop’ and have an unenviable knowledge of ‘it. ’” “You know what I mean!” “Dear me, is this the real Moist von Lipwig speaking, or is it just the man looking forward to his very nearly gold chain? Topsy Lavish knew she was going and simply changed her will. I salute her for it. The staff will accept you more easily, too. And she’s done you a great favor. ” “Favor? I was shot at!” “That was just the Assassins’ Guild dropping you a note to say they are watching you. ” “There were two shots!” “Possibly for emphasis?” said Vetinari, sitting down on a velvet-covered chair. “Look, banking is supposed to be dull! Numbers, pensions, a job for life!” “For life possibly, but apparently not for long,” said Vetinari, clearly enjoying this. “Can’t you do something?” “About Cosmo Lavish? Why should I? Offering to buy a dog is not illegal. ” “But the whole family is—how did you know that? I didn’t tell you!” Vetinari waved a hand dismissively. “Know the man, know the method. I know Cosmo. In this sort of situation he will not resort to force if money will work. He can be very personable when he wants to be. ” “But I’ve heard about the rest of them. They sound a pretty poisonous bunch. ” “I couldn’t possibly comment. However, Topsy has helped you there. The Assassins’ Guild won’t take out a second contract on you. Conflict of interests, you see. I suppose technically they could accept a contract on the chairman, but I doubt if they will. Killing a lapdog? It would not look good on anyone’s résumé. ” “I didn’t sign up to deal with something like this!” “No, Mr. Lipwig, you signed up to die,” snapped Vetinari, his voice suddenly as cold and deadly as a falling icicle. “You signed up to be justly hanged by the neck until dead for crimes against the city, against the public good, against the trust of man for man. And you were resurrected, because the city required you to be. This is about the city, Mr. Lipwig. It is always about the city. You know, of course, that I have plans?” “It was in the Times. The Undertaking. You want to build roads and drains and streets under the city. There’s some dwarf machine we’ve got hold of, called a Device. And the dwarfs can make waterproof tunnels. The Artificers’ Guild is very excited about it all. ” “I gather by your somber tones that you are not?” Moist shrugged. Engines of any sort had never interested him. “I don’t think much about it one way or another. ” “Astonishing,” said Vetinari, taken aback. “Well, Mr. Lipwig, you can at least guess at what we will need in very large amounts for this project. ” “Shovels?” “Finance, Mr. Lipwig. And I would have it, if we had a banking system suitable for the times. I have every confidence in your ability to…shake things up a little. ” Moist tried one last throw. “The Post Office needs me—” he began. “At the moment it does not, and you chafe at the thought,” said Vetinari. “You are not a man for the humdrum. I hereby grant you leave of absence. Mr. Groat has been your deputy, and while he may not have your…flair, let us say, he will, I am sure, keep things moving along. ” He stood up, indicating that the audience was at an end. “The city bleeds, Mr. Lipwig, and you are the clot I need. Go away and make money. Unlock the wealth of Ankh-Morpork. Mrs. Lavish gave you the bank in trust. Run it well. ” “It’s the dog that’s got the bank, you know!” “And what a trusting little face he has,” said Vetinari, ushering Moist to the door. “Don’t let me detain you, Mr. Lipwig. Remember—it’s all about the city. ” THERE WAS ANOTHER protest march going on when Moist walked to the bank. You got more and more of them lately.

It was a funny thing, but everyone seemed to want to live under the despotic rule of the tyrannical Lord Vetinari. They poured into the city whose streets were apparently paved with gold. It wasn’t gold. But the influx was having an effect, no doubt about it. Wages were falling, to start with. This march was against the employment of golems, who uncomplainingly did the dirtiest jobs, worked around the clock, and were so honest they paid their taxes. But they weren’t human and they had glowing eyes, and people could get touchy about that sort of thing. Mr. Bent must have been waiting behind a pillar. Moist was no sooner through the doors of the bank, Mr. Fusspot tucked happily under his arm, when the chief cashier was by his side. “The staff are very concerned sir,” he said, piloting Moist toward the stairs. “I took the liberty of telling them that you would speak to them later. ” Moist was aware of the worried stares. And of other things, too, now that he was looking with an almost proprietorial eye. Yes, the bank had been built well, out of fine materials, but get past that and you could see the neglect and the marks of time. It was like the now-inconveniently-large house of a poor old widow who just couldn’t see the dust anymore. The brass was rather tarnished, the red velvet curtains frayed and a little bald in places, the marble floor was only erratically shiny— “What?” he said. “Oh, yes. Good idea. Can you get this place cleaned up?” “Sir?” “The carpets are mucky, the plush ropes are unraveled, the curtains have seen better centuries, and the brass needs a jolly good scrub. The bank should look smart, Mr. Bent. You might give money to a beggar but you wouldn’t lend it to him, eh?” Bent’s eyebrows rose. “And that’s the chairman’s view, is it?” he said. “The chairman? Oh, yes. Mr. Fusspot’s very keen on clean. Isn’t that right, Mr. Fusspot?” Mr. Fusspot stopped growling at Mr. Bent long enough to bark a couple of times. “See?” said Moist. “When you don’t know what to do, comb your hair and clean your shoes. Words of wisdom, Mr. Bent. Jump to it. ” “I shall elevate myself to the best of my ability, sir,” said Bent. “Meanwhile, a young lady has called, sir. She seemed reluctant to give her name but said you would be pleased to see her. I have ushered her into the small boardroom. ” “Did you have to open a window?” said Moist hopefully. “No, sir. ” That ruled out Adora Belle, then, to replace her with a horrifying thought. “She’s not one of the Lavish family, is she?” “No, sir. And it’s time for Mr…. it’s time for the chairman’s lunch, sir. He has cold, boned chicken because of his stomach. I’ll have it sent along to the small boardroom, shall I?” “Yes, please. Could you rustle up something for me?” “Rustle, sir?” Bent looked puzzled. “You mean steal?” Ah, that kind of man, Moist thought. “I meant find me something to eat,” he translated. “Certainly, sir. There is a small kitchen in the suite and we have a chef on call. Mrs. Lavish has lived here for some time. It will be interesting to have a master of the Royal Mint again. ” “I like the sound of master of the Royal Mint,” Moist said. “How about that, Mr. Fusspot?” On cue, the chairman barked. “Hmm,” said Bent. “One final thing, sir. Could you please sign these?” He indicated a pile of paperwork. “What are they? They’re not minutes, are they? I don’t do minutes. ” “They are various formalities, sir. Basically, they add up to you signing a receipt for the bank on the chairman’s behalf, but I am advised that Mr. Fusspot’s paw mark should appear in the places ticked. ” “Does he have to read all this?” said Moist. “No, sir. ” “Then I won’t. It’s a bank. You’ve given me the big tour. It’s not as though it’s got a wheel missing. Just show me where to sign. ” “Just here, sir. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here…” THE LADY IN the conference room was certainly an attractive woman, but since she worked for the Times, Moist felt unable to award her total ladylike status. Ladies didn’t fiendishly quote exactly what you said but didn’t exactly mean, or hit you around the ear with unexpectedly difficult questions. Well, come to think of it, they did, quite often, but she got paid for it. But, he had to admit, Sacharissa Cripslock was fun. “Sacharissa! This is a should-have-been-expected surprise!” he declared, as he stepped into the room. “Mr. Lipwig! Always a pleasure!” said the woman. “So you are a dog’s body now?” That kind of fun. A bit like juggling knives. You were instantly on your toes. It was as good as a workout. “Writing the headlines already, Sacharissa?” he said. “I am merely carrying out the terms of Mrs. Lavish’s will. ” He put Mr. Fusspot on the polished tabletop and sat down. “So you are now chairman of the bank?” “No, Mr. Fusspot here is the chairman,” said Moist. “Bark circumspectly at the nice lady with the busy pencil, Mr. Fusspot!” “Woof,” said Mr. Fusspot. “Mr. Fusspot is the chairman,” said Sacharissa, rolling her eyes. “Of course. And you take orders from him, do you?” “Yes. I am master of the Royal Mint, by the way. ” “A dog and his master,” said Sacharissa. “How nice. And I expect you can read his thoughts because of some mystic bond between dog and man?” “Sacharissa, I could not have put it better. ” They smiled at each other. This was only round one. Both knew they were barely warming up. “So, I take it that you would not agree with those who say that this is one last ruse by the late Mrs. Lavish to keep the bank out of the hands of the rest of her family, believed by some to be totally incapable of running it anywhere but further into the ground? Or would you confirm the opinion of many that the Patrician has every intention of bringing the city’s uncooperative banking industry to heel, and finds in this situation the perfect opportunity?” “Some who believe, those who say…who are these mysterious people?” said Moist, trying to raise an eyebrow as good as Vetinari’s. “And how is it that you know so many of them?” Sacharissa sighed. “And you wouldn’t describe Mr. Fusspot as really little more than a convenient sock puppet?” “Woof?” said the dog at the mention of his name. “I find the very question offensive!” said Moist. “And so does he!” “Moist, you are just no fun anymore. ” Sacharissa closed her notebook. “You’re talking like…well, like a banker. ” “I’m glad you think so. ” Remember, just because she’s shut the notebook doesn’t mean you can relax! “No dashing around on mad stallions? Nothing to make us cheer? No wild dreams?” said Sacharissa. “Well, I’m already tidying up the foyer. ” Sacharissa’s eyes narrowed. “Tidying the foyer? Who are you, and what have you done with the real Moist von Lipwig?” “No, I’m serious. We have to clean up ourselves before we can clean up the economy,” said Moist, and felt his brain shift seductively into a higher gear. “I intend to throw out what we don’t need. For example, we have a room full of useless metal in the vault. That’ll have to go. ” Sacharissa frowned. “Are you talking about the gold?” Where had that come from? Well, don’t try to back away, or she’ll go for the throat. Tough it out! Besides, it’s good to see her looking astonished. “Yes,” he said. “You can’t be serious!” The notebook was instantly flipped open, and Moist’s tongue began to gallop. He couldn’t stop it. It would have been nice if it had talked to him first. Taking over his brain, it said: “Dead serious! I am recommending to Lord Vetinari that we sell it all to the dwarfs. We do not need it. It’s a commodity and nothing more. ” “But what’s worth more than gold?” “Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren’t you worth more than that?” Sacharissa looked momentarily flustered, to Moist’s glee. “Well, in a manner of speaking—” “The only manner of speaking worth talking about,” said Moist flatly. “The world is full of things worth more than gold. But we dig the damn stuff up and then bury it in a different hole.

Where’s the sense in that? What are we, magpies? Is it all about the gleam? Good heavens, potatoes are worth more than gold!” “Surely not!” “If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what would you prefer, a bag of potatoes or a bag of gold?” “Yes, but a desert island isn’t Ankh-Morpork!” “And that proves gold is only valuable because we agree it is, right? It’s just a dream. But a potato is always worth a potato, anywhere. Add a knob of butter and a pinch of salt and you’ve got a meal, anywhere. Bury gold in the ground and you’ll be worrying about thieves forever. Bury a potato and in due season you could be looking at a dividend of a thousand percent. ” “Can I assume for a moment that you don’t intend to put us on the potato standard?” said Sacharissa sharply. Moist smiled. “No, it won’t be that. But in a few days I shall be giving away money. It doesn’t like to stand still, you know. It likes to get out and make new friends. ” The bit of Moist’s brain that was trying to keep up with his mouth thought: I wish I could make notes about this; I’m not sure I can remember it all. But the conversations of the last day were banging together in his memory and making a kind of music. He wasn’t sure he had all the notes yet, but there were bits he could hum. He just had to listen to himself for long enough to find out what he was talking about. “By giving away you mean—” said Sacharissa. “Hand over. Make a gift of. Seriously. ” “How? Why?” “All in good time!” “You are smirking at me, Moist!” No, I’ve frozen because I’ve just heard what my mouth said, Moist thought. I don’t have a clue, I’ve just got some random thoughts. It’s… “It’s about desert islands,” he said. “And why this city isn’t one. ” “And that’s it?” Moist rubbed his forehead. “Miss Cripslock, Miss Cripslock…this morning I got up with nothing in mind but to seriously make headway with the paperwork and maybe lick the problem of that special 25p Cabbage Green stamp. You know, the one that’ll grow into a cabbage if you plant it? How can you expect me to come up with a new fiscal initiative by teatime?” “All right, but—” “It’ll take me at least until breakfast. ” He saw her write that down. Then she tucked the notebook in her handbag. “This is going to be fun, isn’t it,” she said, and Moist thought: Never trust her when she’s put her notebook away, either. She’s got a good memory. “Seriously, I think this is an opportunity for me to do something big and important for my adopted city,” said Moist, in his sincere voice. “That’s your sincere voice,” she said. “Well, I’m being sincere,” said Moist. “But since you raise the subject, Moist, what were you doing with your life before the citizens of Ankh-Morpork greeted you with open palms?” “Surviving,” said Moist. “In Überwald the old empire was breaking up. It was not unusual for a government to change twice over lunch. I worked at anything I could to make a living. By the way, I think you meant ‘arms’ back there,” he added. “And when you got here you impressed the gods so much that they led you to a treasure trove so that you could rebuild our post office. ” “I’m very humble about that,” said Moist, trying to look it. “Ye-ess. And the gods-given gold was all in used coinage from the plains cities…” “You know what, I’ve often lain awake wondering about that myself,” said Moist, “and I reached the conclusion that the gods, in their wisdom, decided that the gift should be instantly negotiable. ” I can go on like this for as long as you like, he thought, and you’re trying to play poker with no cards. You can suspect all you like, but I gave that money back! Okay, I stole it in the first place, but giving it back counts for something, doesn’t it? The slate is clean, isn’t it? Well, acceptably grubby, yes? The door opened slowly, and a young and nervous woman crept in, holding a plate of cold, boned chicken. Mr. Fusspot brightened up as she placed it in front of him. “Sorry, can we get you a coffee or something?” said Moist, as the girl headed back toward the door. Sacharissa stood up. “Thank you, but no. I’m on a deadline, Mr. Lipwig. I’m sure we’ll be talking again very soon. ” “I’m certain of it, Miss Cripslock,” said Moist. She took a step toward him and lowered her voice. “Do you know who that girl was?” “No, I hardly know anyone yet. ” “So you don’t know if you can trust her?” “Trust her?” Sacharissa sighed. “This is not like you, Moist. She’s just given a plate of food to the most valuable dog in the world. A dog that some people might like to see dead. ” “Why shouldn’t—” Moist began. They both turned to Mr. Fusspot, who was already licking the empty plate up the length of the table with an appreciative gronf-gronf noise. “Er…can you see yourself out?” said Moist, hurrying toward the sliding plate. “If you’re in any doubt, stick your fingers down his throat!” said Sacharissa from the door with what Moist considered an inappropriate amount of amusement. He grabbed the dog and hurried through the far door, after the girl. It led to a narrow and not particularly well-decorated corridor with a green door at the end, from which came the sound of voices. Moist barged through it. In the small, neat kitchen beyond, a tableau greeted him. The young woman was backed against a table, and a bearded man in a white suit was wielding a big knife. They looked shocked. “What’s going on!” Moist yelled. “Er, er…you just ran through the door and shouted?” said the girl. “Was something wrong? I always give Mr. Fusspot his appetizer about now. ” “And I’m doing his entrée,” said the man, bringing the knife down on a tray of offal. “It’s chicken necks stuffed with giblets, with his special toffee pudding for afters. And who’s asking?” “I’m the—I’m his owner,” said Moist, as haughtily as he could manage. The chef removed his white hat. “Sorry, sir, of course you are. The gold suit and everything. This is Peggy, my daughter. I’m Aimsbury, sir. ” Moist had managed to calm down a little. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just worried that someone might try to poison Mr. Fusspot…” “We were just talking about that,” said Aimsbury. “I thought that—hold on, you don’t mean me, do you?” “No, no, certainly not!” said Moist to the man still holding a knife. “Well, all right,” said Aimsbury, mollified. “You’re new, sir, you’re not to know. That Cosmo kicked Mr. Fusspot once!” “He’d poison anyone, he would,” said Peggy. “But I go down to the market every day, sir, and select the little dog’s food myself. And it’s stored downstairs in the cool room, and I have the only key. ” Moist relaxed. “You couldn’t knock out an omelet for me, could you?” he said. The chef looked panicky. “That’s eggs, right?” he said nervously. “Never really got involved with cooking eggs, sir. He has a raw one in his steak tartare on Fridays and Mrs. Lavish used to have two raw ones in her gin and orange juice every morning, and that is about it between me n’ eggs. I’ve got a pig’s head sousing if you’d fancy some of that. Got tongue, hearts, marrowbone, sheep’s head, nice bit o’ dewlap, melts, slaps, lights, liver, kidneys, beccles—” In his youth, Moist had been served a lot off that menu. It was exactly the sort of food that one should serve to kids if one wanted them to grow up skilled in the arts of bare-faced lying, sleight of hand, and camouflage. As a matter of course, Moist had hidden those strange, wobbly meats under his vegetables, on one occasion achieving a potato twelve inches high. Light dawned. “Did you cook much for Mrs. Lavish?” said Moist. “Nossir. She lived on gin, vegetable soup, her morning pick-me-up, and—” “Gin,” said Peggy firmly. “So you’re basically a dog chef?” “Canine, sir, if it’s all the same to you. You may have read my book? Cooking with Brains?” Aimsbury said this rather hopelessly, and rightly so. “Unusual path to follow,” said Moist. “Well, sir, it enables me to…it’s safer…well, the truth is, I have an allergy, sir. ” The chef sighed. “Show him, Peggy. ” The girl nodded, and pulled a grubby card out of her pocket. “Please don’t say this word, sir,” she said, and held it up.

Moist stared. “You just can’t avoid it in the catering business, sir,” said Aimsbury miserably. This wasn’t the time, really wasn’t the time. But if you weren’t interested in people, then you didn’t have the heart of a trickster. “You’re allergic to g—this stuff?” he said, correcting himself just in time. “No, sir. The word, sir. I can handle the actual alium in question, I can even eat it, but the sound of it, well…” Moist looked at the word again, and shook his head sadly. “So I have to shun restaurants, sir. ” “I can see that. How are you with the word…leek?” “Yes, sir, I know where you’re going, I’ve been there. Far leek, tar lick…no effect at all. ” “Just garlic, then—oh, sorry…” Aimsbury froze, with a distant expression on his face. “Gods, I’m so sorry, I honestly didn’t mean—” Moist began. “I know,” said Peggy wearily, “the word just forces its way out, doesn’t it? He’ll be like this for fifteen seconds, then he’ll throw the knife straight ahead of him, and then he’ll speak in fluent Quirmian for about four seconds, and then he’ll be fine. Here—” she handed Moist a bowl containing a large brown lump “—you go back in there with the sticky-toffee pudding and I’ll hide in the pantry. I’m used to it. And I can do you an omelet, too. ” She pushed Moist through the door and shut it behind him. He put down the bowl, to the immediate and fully focused interest of Mr. Fusspot. Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr. Fusspot’s mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor, making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine. After a few seconds Moist distinctly heard the twang of a knife vibrating in woodwork, followed by a scream of: “Nom d’une bouilloire! Pourquoi est-ce que je suis hardiment ri sous cape à par les dieux?” There was a knock at the double doors, followed instantly by the entry of Bent. He was carrying a large, round box. “The suite is now ready for you, Master,” he announced. “That is to say, for Mr. Fusspot. ” “The suite?” “Oh, yes. The chairman has a suite. ” “Oh, that suite. He has to live above the shop, as it were?” “Indeed. Mr. Slant has been kind enough to give me a copy of the conditions of the legacy. The chairman must sleep in the bank every night—” “But I’ve got a perfectly good apartment in the—” “Ahem. They are the Conditions, sir,” said Bent. “You can have the bed, of course,” he added generously. “Mr. Fusspot will sleep in his in tray. He was born in it, as a matter of interest. ” “I have to stay locked up here every night?” In fact, when Moist saw the suite the prospect looked much less like a penance. He had to open four doors even before he found a bed. It had a dining room, a dressing room, a bathroom, a separate flushing privy, a spare bedroom, a passage to the office, which was a kind of public room, and a little private study. The master bedroom contained a huge oak four-poster with damask hangings, and Moist fell in love with it at once. He tried it for size. It was so soft that it was like lying in a huge, warm puddle— He sat bolt upright. “Did Mrs. Lavish—” he began, panic rising. “She died sitting at her desk, Master,” said Bent soothingly, as he untied the string on the big round box. “We have replaced the chair. By the way, she is to be buried tomorrow. Small Gods, at noon, family members only, by request. ” “Small Gods? That’s a bit down-market for a Lavish, isn’t it?” “I believe a number of Mrs. Lavish’s ancestors are buried there. She did once tell me in a moment of confidence that she would be damned if she was going to be a Lavish for all eternity. ” There was a rustle of paper, and Bent added: “Your hat, sir. ” “What hat?” “For the master of the Royal Mint. ” Bent held it up. It was a black silk hat. Once it had been shiny. Now it was mostly bald. Old tramps wore better hats. It could have been designed to look like a big pile of dollars, it could have been a crown, it could have been set with small, jeweled scenes depicting embezzlement through the ages, the progression of negotiable currency from snot to little white shells and cows and all the way to gold. It could have said something about the magic of money. It could have been good. A black top hat. No style. No style at all. “Mr. Bent, can you arrange for someone to go over to the Post Office and get them to bring my stuff over here?” said Moist, looking glumly at the wreck. “Of course, Master. ” “I think ‘Mr. Lipwig’ will be fine, thank you. ” “Yes, sir. Of course. ” Moist sat down at the enormous desk and ran his hands lovingly across the worn green leather. Vetinari, damn him, had been right. The Post Office had made him cautious and defensive. He’d run out of challenges, run out of fun. Thunder grumbled, away in the distance, and the afternoon sun was being threatened by blue-black clouds. One of those heavy all-night storms was rolling in from the plains. There tended to be more crimes on rainy nights these days, according to the Times. Apparently it was because of the werewolf in the Watch: rain made smells hard to track. After a while Peggy brought him an omelet containing absolutely no mention of the word garlic. And shortly after that, Gladys arrived with his wardrobe. All of it, including the door, carried under one arm. It bounced off the walls and ceiling as she lumbered across the carpet and dropped it in the middle of the big bedroom floor. Moist went to follow her, but she held up her huge hands in horror. “No, Sir! Let Me Come Out First!” She clumped past him into the hallway. “That Was Nearly Very Bad,” she said. Moist waited to see if anything more was going to be forthcoming, and then prompted, “Why, exactly?” “A Man And A Young Woman Should Not Be In The Same Bedroom,” said the golem with solemn certitude. “Er…how old are you, Gladys?” said Moist carefully. “One Thousand And Fifty-Four Years, Mr. Lipwig. ” “Er…right. And you are made of clay. I mean, everyone’s made of clay, in a manner of speaking, but, as a golem, you are, as it were, er…very made of clay…” “Yes, Mr. Lipwig, But I Am Not Married. ” Moist groaned. “Gladys, what did the counter girls give you to read this time?” he said. “It Is Lady Deirdre Waggon’s Prudent Advice For Young Women,” said Gladys. “It Is Most Interesting. It Is How Things Are Done. ” She pulled a slim book out of the huge pocket in her dress. It had a chintzy look. Moist sighed. It was the kind of old-fashioned etiquette book that’d tell you Ten Things Not To Do With Your Parasol. “I see,” Moist said. He didn’t know how to explain. Even worse, he didn’t know what he’d be explaining. Golems were…golems. Big lumps of clay with the spark of life in them. Clothes? What for? Even the male golems in the Post Office just had a lick of blue and gold paint to make them look smart—hold on, he was getting it now! There were no male golems! Golems were golems, and had been happy to be just golems for thousands of years. And now they were in modern Ankh-Morpork, where all kinds of races and people and ideas were shaken up and it was amazing what dripped out of the bottle. Without a further word, Gladys clumped across the hallway, turned around, and stood still. The glow in her eyes settled down to a dull red. And that was it. She had decided to stay. In his in tray, Mr. Fusspot snored. Moist took out the half-note that Cosmo had given him. Desert island. Desert island. I know I think best when I’m under pressure, but what exactly did I mean? On a desert island gold is worthless. Food gets you through times of no gold much better than gold gets you through times of no food. If it comes to that, gold is worthless in a gold mine, too. The medium of exchange in a gold mine is the pickax. Hmm. Moist stared at the bill. What does it need to make it worth ten thousand dollars? The seal and signature of Cosmo, that’s what. Everyone knows he’s good for it. Good for nothing but money, the bastard. Banks use these all the time, he thought.

Any bank in the Plains would give me the cash, withholding a commission, of course, because banks skim you top and bottom. Still, it’s much easier than lugging bags of coins around. Of course I’d have to sign it too, otherwise it wouldn’t be secure. I mean, if it was blank after “pay,” anyone could use it. Desert island, desert island…on a desert island a bag of vegetables is worth more than gold, in the city gold is more valuable than the bag of vegetables. This is a sort of equation, yes? Where’s the value? He stared. It’s in the city itself. The city says: In exchange for that gold, you will have all these things. The city is the magician, the alchemist in reverse. It turns worthless gold into…everything. How much is Ankh-Morpork worth? Add it all up! The buildings, the streets, the people, the skills, the art in the galleries, the guilds, the laws, the libraries…billions? No. No money would be enough. The city was one big gold bar. What did you need to back the currency? You just needed the city. The city says a dollar is worth a dollar. It was a dream, but Moist was good at selling dreams. And if you could sell the dream to enough people, no one dared to wake up. In a little rack on the desk was an ink pad and two rubber stamps, showing the city’s coat of arms and the seal of the bank. But in Moist’s eyes, there was a haze of gold around these simple things, too. They had value. “Mr. Fusspot?” said Moist. The dog sat up in his tray, looking expectant. Moist pushed his sleeves back and flexed his fingers. “Shall we make some money, Mr. Chairman?” he said. The chairman expressed unconditional agreement by means of going “Woof!” “Pay The Bearer The Sum Of One Dollar” Moist wrote on a piece of crisp bank paper. He stamped the paper with both stamps, and gave the result a long, critical look. It needed something more. You had to give people a show. The eye was everything. It needed…a touch of gravitas, like the bank itself. Who’d bank in a wooden hut? Hmm. Ah, yes. It was all about the city, right? Underneath, he wrote, in large ornate letters: Ad Urbem Pertinet And, in smaller letters, after some thought: Promitto fore ut possessori postulanti nummum unum solvem, an apte satisfaciam. Signed Moist von Lipwig pp The Chairman. “Excuse me, Mr. Chairman,” he said, and lifted the dog up. It was the work of a moment to press a front paw on the damp pad and leave a neat little footprint beside the signature. Moist went through this a dozen or more times, tucked five of the resulting bills under the blotter, and took the new money, and the chairman, for walkies. COSMO LAVISH GLARED at his reflection in the mirror. Often he got it right in the glass three or four times in a row, and then—oh, the shame—he’d try it in public and people, if they were foolish enough to mention it, would say, “Have you got something in your eye?” He’d even had a device constructed that pulled at one eyebrow repeatedly, by means of clockwork. He’d poisoned the man who made it, there and then, as he took delivery, chatting with him in his smelly little workshop while the stuff took hold. He’d been nearly eighty and Cosmo had been very careful, so it never came to the attention of the Watch. Anyway, at that age it shouldn’t really count as murder, should it? It was more like a favor, really. And obviously he couldn’t risk the old fool blabbing happily to someone after Cosmo had become Patrician. On reflection, he thought, he should have waited until he was certain that the eyebrow-training machine was working properly. It had given him a black eye before he’d made a few hesitant adjustments. How did Vetinari do it? It was what had got him the Patricianship, Cosmo was sure. Well, a couple mysterious murders had helped, admittedly, but it was the way the man could raise an eyebrow that kept him there. Cosmo had studied Vetinari for a long time. It was easy enough, at social gatherings. He’d cut out every picture that appeared in the Times, too. What was the secret that kept the man so powerful and unscathed? How might he be understood? And then one day he’d read in some book or other: “If you want to understand a man, walk a mile in his shoes. ” And he’d had a great and glorious idea… He sighed happily, and tugged at the black glove. He’d been sent to the Assassins’ school as a matter of course. It was the natural destination for young men of a certain class and accent. He’d survived, and had made study of poisons, because he believed that was Vetinari’s specialty, but the place had bored him. It was so stylized now. They’d got so wrapped up in some ridiculous concepts of honor and elegance that they seemed to forget what it was an assassin was supposed to do… The glove came free, and there it was. Oh yes… Heretofore had done magnificently. Cosmo stared at the wondrous thing, moving his hand so that it caught the light. Light did strange things to stygium: sometimes it reflected silver, sometimes an oily yellow, sometimes it remained resolutely black. And it was warm, even here. In direct sunlight it would burst into flame. It was a metal that might have been intended for those who move in shadow… The ring of Vetinari. Vetinari’s signet ring. Such a small thing, and yet so powerful. It was entirely without ornamentation, unless you counted the tiny border to the cartouche that surrounded the sharply incised and serifed single letter: V He could only guess at all the things his secretary had to do to get it. He’d had a replica made, “reverse-devised,” whatever that was, from the wax seals it had so impressively stamped. And there had been bribes (expensive ones) and hints of hasty meetings and cautious exchanges and last-minute changes to get the replica exactly right— And here the real one was, on his finger. Very much on his finger, in fact. From Cosmo’s point of view, Vetinari also had very small fingers for a man, and getting the ring over the knuckle had been a real effort. Heretofore had fretted about getting it enlarged, foolishly not realizing that this would completely ruin it. The magic—and surely Vetinari had a magic all his own—would leak out. It wouldn’t be totally the real thing anymore. Yes, it had hurt like hell for a few days, but now he was floating above the pain, in a clear blue sky. He prided himself on being no fool. He’d have known at once if his secretary had tried to palm off a mere copy on him. The shock that went up his arm when he slid the ring—all right, forced the ring over the knuckle—was enough to tell him that he had got the real thing. Already he could feel his thoughts getting sharper and faster. He brushed a forefinger across the deeply cut V and looked up at Drumk—at Heretofore. “You seem concerned, Heretofore,” he said kindly. “The finger has gone very white, sir. Almost pale blue. Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?” “Not a bit. I feel…utterly in control. You seem very…worried lately, Heretofore. Are you well?” “Um…fine, sir,” said Heretofore. “You must understand I sent Mr. Cranberry with you for the best of reasons,” said Cosmo. “Morpeth would have told someone, sooner or later, however much you paid him. ” “But the boy in the hat shop—” “Exactly the same situation. And it was a fair fight. Was that not so, Cranberry?” Cranberry’s shiny bald head looked up from his book. “Yes, sir. He was armed. ” “Bu—” Heretofore began. “Yes?” said Cosmo calmly. “Er…nothing, sir. You are right, of course. ” In possession of a small knife and very drunk. Heretofore wondered how much that counted against a professional killer. “I am, aren’t I,” said Cosmo in a kindly voice, “and you are excellent at what you do. As is Cranberry. I shall have another little quest for you soon, I feel it. Now do go and get your supper. ” As Heretofore opened the door, Cranberry glanced up at Cosmo, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. Unfortunately for Heretofore, he had excellent peripheral vision. He’s going to find out, he’s going to find out, he’s going to find oouuuttt!!! he moaned to himself, as he scurried along the corridors.

It’s the damn ring, that’s what it is! It’s not my fault Vetinari has thin fingers! He would have smelled a rat if the bloody thing had fitted! Why didn’t he let me have it made bigger? Hah, and if I had he’d have sent Cranberry along later to murder the jeweler! I know he’ll send him after me, I know it! Cranberry frightened Heretofore. The man was soft-spoken and modestly dressed. And when Cosmo did not require his services he sat and read books all day. That upset Heretofore. If the man was an illiterate thug, things would, in some strange way, have been better, more…understandable. The man apparently had no body hair, either, and the gleam from his head could blind you in sunlight. And it had all begun with a lie. Why had Cosmo believed him? Because he was mad, but regrettably not all the time; he was a sort of hobby madman. He had this…thing about Lord Vetinari. Heretofore didn’t spot that at first, he just wondered why Cosmo had fussed about his height at the job interview. And when Heretofore had told him he’d worked at the palace, he was hired on the spot. And that was the lie, right there, although Heretofore preferred to think of it as an unfortunate conjunction of two truths. Heretofore had indeed been employed for a while at the palace, and thus far Cosmo had not found out that this was as a gardener. He had been a minor secretary at the Armorers’ Guild before that, which was why he’d felt confident in saying “I was a minor secretary and I was employed at the palace,” a phrase that he felt Lord Vetinari would have examined with more care than the delighted Cosmo had done. And now here he was, advising a very important and clever man on the basis of as much rumor as he could remember or, in desperation, make up. And he was getting away with it. In his everyday business dealings, Cosmo was cunning, ruthless, and sharp as a tack, but when it came to anything to do with Vetinari, he was as credulous as a child. Heretofore noticed that his boss occasionally called him by the name of the Patrician’s secretary, but he was being paid fifty dollars a month, food and his own bed thrown in, and for that kind of money he’d answer to “Daisy. ” Well, perhaps not Daisy, but certainly Clive. And then the nightmare had begun, and in the way of nightmares, everyday objects took on a sinister importance. Cosmo had asked for an old pair of Vetinari’s boots. That had been a poser. Heretofore had never been inside the actual palace, but he’d got into the grounds that night by scaling the fence next to the old green garden gate, met one of his old mates, who had to stay up all night to keep the hothouse boilers going, had a little chat, and the following night returned for a pair of old but serviceable black boots, size eight, and information from the boot boy that his lordship wore down the left heel slightly more than the right. Heretofore couldn’t see any difference in the boots presented, and no one was actually claiming as a fact that these were the fabled Boots Of Vetinari, but well-worn but still-useful boots floated down from the upper floors to the servants’ quarters on a tide of noblesse oblige, and if these weren’t the boots of the man himself then they had almost certainly, at the very least, sometimes been in the same room as his feet. Heretofore handed over ten dollars for them and spent an evening wearing down the left heel enough to be noticeable. Cosmo paid him fifty dollars without flinching, although he did wince when he tried them on. “If you want to understand a man, walk a mile in his shoes,” he’d said, hobbling the length of his office. What insight he’d glean if they were the man’s under-butler’s shoes, Heretofore couldn’t guess at, but after half an hour, Cosmo rang for a basin of cold water and some soothing herbs and the shoes had not made an appearance since. And then there had been the black skullcap. That one had been the one stroke of luck in this whole business. It was even genuine. It was a safe bet that Vetinari bought them from Bolters in the Maul, and Heretofore had cased the place, entered when the senior partners were at lunch, spoke to the impecunious youth who worked the steamy cleaning and stretching machines in the back room—and found that one had been sent in for cleaning. Heretofore walked out with it, uncleaned, leaving the young man extremely pecunious and with instructions to wash a new cap for return to the palace. Cosmo was beside himself, and wanted to know all the details. Next evening, it turned out that the pecunious youth spent the evening in a bar and died outside in a drunken brawl around midnight, short of money and even shorter of breath. Heretofore’s room was next to Cranberry’s. On reflection, he’d heard the man come in late that night. And now there was the signet ring. Heretofore had told Cosmo that he could get a replica made and use his contacts—his very expensive contacts—at the palace to get it swapped for the real thing. He’d been paid five thousand dollars! Five thousand dollars! And the boss was overjoyed. Overjoyed and mad. He’d got a fake ring but he swore it had the spirit of Vetinari flowing in it. Perhaps it did, because Cranberry became part of the arrangement. If you got drawn into Cosmo’s little hobby, Heretofore realized too late, you died. He reached his room, darted inside, and shut the door. Then he leaned on it. He ought to run, right now. His savings by now could buy a lot of distance. But the fear subsided a little as he collected his thoughts. They told him: Relax, relax. The Watch hadn’t come knocking yet, had they? Cranberry was a professional, and the boss was full of gratitude. So…why not one last trick? Make some real money! What could he “obtain” that the boss would pay him another five thousand for? Something simple but impressive, that would be the trick, and by the time he found out—if he ever did—Heretofore would be on the other side of the continent, with a new name and suntanned beyond recognition. Yes…the very thing… THE SUN WAS HOT, and so were the dwarfs. They were mountain dwarfs and were not at home under open skies. And what were they here for? The king wanted to know if anything valuable was taken out the hole that the golems were digging for the mad smoking woman, but they weren’t allowed to set foot on it, because that would be trespassing. So they sat in the shade and sweated, while, about once a day, the mad smoking woman who smoked all the time came and laid…things on a crude trestle table in front of them. The things had this in common: they were dull. There was nothing to mine here, everyone knew. It was barren silt and sand all the way down. There was no fresh water. Such plants as survived here stored winter rain in swollen, hollow roots, or lived off the moisture in the sea mist. The place contained nothing of interest. And what came out of the long sloping tunnel bore this out to the point of boredom. There were bones of old ships, and occasionally the bones of old sailors. There were a couple of coins, one silver, one gold, which were not dull enough and were duly confiscated. There were broken pots and pieces of statue, which were puzzled over, part of an iron cauldron, an anchor with a few links of chain. It was clear, the dwarfs considered as they sat in the shade, that nothing came here but by boat. But remember: in matters of commerce and gold, never trust anyone who could see over your helmet. And then there were the golems. They hated golems, because they moved silently, for all their weight, and looked like trolls. They arrived and departed all the time, fetching timbers from who knew where, marching down into the dark… And then one day golems came pouring out of the hole; there was a lengthy discussion, and the smoking woman marched over to the watchers. They watched her nervously, as fighters do when approached by a self-confident civilian they know they’re not allowed to kill. In broken dwarfish she told them that the tunnel had collapsed, and she was going to leave. Everything they’d dug out, she said, were gifts for the king.

And she left, taking the wretched golems with her. That was last week. Since then the tunnel had completely fallen in and the blowing sand had covered everything. THE MONEY LOOKED after itself. It sailed down the centuries, buried in paperwork, hidden behind lawyers, groomed, invested, diverted, converted, laundered, dried, ironed and polished, and kept safe from harm and taxes, and, above all, kept safe from the Lavishes themselves. They knew their descendents—they’d raised them, after all—and so, the money came with bodyguards of trustees, managers, and covenants, disgorging only a measured amount of itself to the next generation, enough to maintain the lifestyle with which their name had become synonymous and with a bit left over for them to indulge in the family tradition of fighting among themselves over, yes, the money. Now they were arriving, each family branch and often each individual with their own lawyer and bodyguards, being careful about who they deigned to notice, just in case they inadvertently smiled at someone they were currently suing. As a family, people said, the Lavishes got along like a bagful of cats. Cosmo had watched them at the funeral, and they spent all their time watching one another, very much like cats, each one waiting for someone else to attack. But even so, it would have been a decently dignified occasion if only that moron nephew the old bitch had allowed to live in the cellar hadn’t turned up in a grubby white coat and a yellow rain hat and kept on blubbing all through the ceremony. He had completely spoiled the occasion for everyone. But now the funeral was over and the Lavishes were doing what they always did after funerals, which was talk about The Money. You couldn’t sit Lavishes around a table. Cosmo had set out small tables in a pattern that represented to the best of his knowledge the current state of the alliances and minor fratricidal wars, but there was a lot of shifting and scraping and threats of legal action before people settled down. Behind, the alert ranks of their lawyers paid careful attention, earning a total of a dollar every four seconds. Apparently, the only relative that Vetinari had was an aunt, Cosmo mused. That man had all the luck. When he was Vetinari, there would have to be a culling. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, when the hissing and name-calling had died away, “I am so glad to see so many of you here today—” “Liar!” “Especially you, Pucci,” said Cosmo, smiling at his sister. Vetinari didn’t have a sister like Pucci, either. No one did, Cosmo was prepared to bet. She was a fiend in vaguely human shape. “You’ve still got something wrong with your eyebrow, you know,” said Pucci. She had a table by herself, a voice like a saw encountering a nail, with a slight additional touch of foghorn, and was always referred to as “a society beauty,” which showed just how rich the Lavishes were. Cut in half, she might make two society beauties, but not, at that point, very beautiful ones. While it was said that men she had spurned jumped off bridges in despair, the only person known to have said this was Pucci herself. “I’m sure you all know—” Cosmo began. “Thanks to your-side-of-the-family’s total incompetence you have lost us the bank!” That came from the far corner of the room, but it triggered a rising chorus of complaint. “We are all Lavishes here, Josephine,” he said sternly. “Some of us were even born a Lavish. ” That didn’t work. It ought to have done. It would have done for Vetinari, Cosmo was sure. But for Cosmo, it only upset people. The growls of objection got louder. “Some of us make a better job of it!” snapped Josephine. She was wearing a necklace of emeralds, and they reflected a greenish light on her face. Cosmo was impressed. Whenever possible, Lavishes married distant cousins, but it wasn’t uncommon for a few, every generation, to marry outside, in order to avoid the whole “three thumbs” situation. The women found handsome husbands who did what they were told, while the men found wives who, amazingly, were remarkably good at picking up the petulance and shaved-monkey touchiness that was the mark of a true Lavish. Josephine sat down with a poisonous look of satisfaction at the muttered chorus of agreement. She sprang up again, for an encore: “And what do you intend to do about this unforgivable situation? Your branch has put a mountebank in control of our bank! Again!” Pucci spun in her seat. “How dare you say that about Father!” “And how dare you say that about Mr. Fusspot!” said Cosmo. It would have worked for Vetinari, he knew it. It would have made Josephine look silly and raised Cosmo’s stock in the room. It would have worked for Vetinari, who could raise his eyebrow like a visual rim shot. “What? What? What are you talking about?” said Josephine. “Don’t be so silly, child! I’m talking about this Lipwig creature! He’s a postman, for goodness’ sake! Why haven’t you offered him money?” “I have,” said Cosmo, and added for his inner ear: I’ll remember “child,” you whey-faced old boot. When I am a master of the eyebrow we shall see what you say then! “And?” “I believe he is not interested in money. ” “Nonsense!” “What about the little doggie?” said an elderly voice. “What happens if it passes away, gods forbid?” “The bank comes back to us, Aunt Careful,” said Cosmo to a very small old lady in black lace, who was engaged in some embroidery. “No matter how the little doggie dies?” said Aunt Carefulness Lavish, paying fastidious attention to her needlework. “There is always the option of poison, I am sure. ” With an audible woosh, Aunt Careful’s lawyer rose to his feet and said: “My client wishes to make it clear that she is merely referring to the general availability of noxious substances in general and this is not intended to be and in no way should be taken as an espousal of any illegal course of action. ” He sat down again, fee earned. “Regrettably, the Watch would be all over us like cheap chain mail,” said Cosmo. “Watchmen in our bank? Shut the door on them!” “Times have moved on, Auntie. We can’t do that anymore. ” “When your great-grandfather pushed his brother over the balcony the Watch even took the body away for five shillings and a pint of ale all round!” “Yes, Auntie. Lord Vetinari is the Patrician now. ” “And he’d allow watchmen to clump around in our bank?” “Without a doubt, Auntie. ” “Then he is no gentleman,” the aunt observed sadly. “He lets vampires and werewolves into the Watch,” said Miss Tarantella Lavish. “It’s disgusting, the way they’re allowed to walk the streets like real people. ” —and something went ping! in Cosmo’s memory. He’s just like real people, said the voice of his father. “This is your problem, Cosmo Lavish!” said Josephine, unwilling to see targets switched. “It was your wretched father who—” “Shut up,” said Cosmo calmly. “Shut up. And those emeralds do not suit you, by the way. ” This was unusual. Lavishes might sue and conspire and belittle and slander, but there was such a thing as good manners, after all. In Cosmo’s head there was another ping, and his father saying, And he’s managed to hide what he is so well and at great pain. What he was is probably not even there anymore. But you’d better know, in case he starts acting funny… “My father rebuilt the business of the bank,” said Cosmo, the voice still ringing in his head as Josephine drew breath for a tirade, “and you all let him. Yes, you let him. You didn’t care what he did so long as the bank was available to you for all your little schemes, the ones we so carefully conceal and don’t talk about. He bought out all the small shareholders, and you didn’t mind so long as you got your dividends. It was just a shame that his choice in chums was flawed—” “Not as bad as his choice of that upstart music-hall girl!” said Josephine. “—although his choice in his last wife was not,” Cosmo went on. “Topsy was cunning, devious, ruthless, and merciless. The problem I have is simply that she was better at all this than you are. And now I must ask you all to leave.

I am going to get our bank back. Do see yourselves out. ” He got up, walked to the door, shut it carefully behind, and then ran like hell for his study, where he stood with his back to the door and gloated, an exercise he had just the face for. Good old Dad! Of course, that little talk had been back when he was ten, and didn’t have his own lawyer yet, and hadn’t fully embraced the Lavish tradition of prickly and guarded involvement. But Dad had been sensible. He hadn’t just been giving Cosmo advice, he’d been giving him ammunition which could be used against the others. What else was a father for? Mr. Bent was…not just Mr. Bent. He was something out of nightmares. At the time the revelation had scared young Cosmo, and later on he’d been ready to sue his father over those sleepless nights, in the very best Lavish tradition, but he’d hesitated and that was just as well. It would all have come out in court and he’d have thrown away a wonderful gift. So the Lipwig fellow thought he controlled the bank, did he? Well, you couldn’t run the bank without Mavolio Bent, and by this time tomorrow he, Cosmo Lavish, would own Mr. Bent. Hmm, yes…leave it perhaps a little longer. Another day of dealing with Lipwig’s bizarre recklessness would wind up poor Mr. Bent to the point where Cranberry’s special powers of persuasion would hardly be required. Oh, yes. Cosmo pushed his eyebrow up. He was getting the hang of it, he was sure. He’d been just like Vetinari out there, hadn’t he? Yes, he had. The look on the family’s face when he’d told Josephine to shut up! Even the recollection made his spine tingle… Was this the time? Yes, just for a minute, perhaps. He deserved it… He unlocked a drawer in his desk, reached inside, and pressed the hidden button. On the other side of his desk a secret compartment slid out. From it, Cosmo took a small black skullcap that seemed as good as new. Heretofore was a genius. Cosmo lowered the cap onto his head with great solemnity. Someone knocked on the study door. This was pointless, since they then slammed it open. “Locking yourself in your room again, bro?” said Pucci triumphantly. At least Cosmo had strangled the impulse to snatch the cap from his head as if he’d been caught doing something dirty. “It was not, in fact, locked, as you see,” he said, “and you are forbidden to come within fifteen yards of me. I have an injunction. ” “And you are not allowed to be within twenty yards of me, so you broke it first,” said Pucci, pulling up a chair. She straddled it heavily and rested her arms on the back. The wood creaked. “I wasn’t the one who moved, I think?” “Well, cosmically it’s all the same,” said Pucci. “You know, that’s a dangerous obsession you have there. ” Now Cosmo took off the cap. “I’m simply trying to get inside the man,” he said. “A very dangerous obsession. ” “You know what I mean. I want to know how his mind works. ” “And this?” Pucci said, waving a hand at the large picture that hung on the wall opposite the desk. “William Pouter’s Man with Dog. It’s a painting of Vetinari. Notice how the eyes follow you around the room. ” “The dog’s nose follows me around the room! Vetinari has a dog?” “Had. Wuffles. Died some time ago. There’s a little grave in the palace grounds. He goes there alone once a week and puts a dog biscuit on it. ” “Vetinari does that?” “Yes. ” “Vetinari the cool, heartless, calculating tyrant?” said Pucci. “Indeed!” “You’re lying to your sweet dear sister, yes?” “You can choose to believe that if you wish. ” Cosmo exulted, deep inside. He loved to see that irate-chicken expression of furious curiosity on his sister’s face. “Information like that is worth money,” she said. “Indeed. And I’m only telling you because it’s useless unless you know where he goes, at what time, and on which day. It just may be, dear sweet Pucci, that what you call my obsession is, in fact, of great practical use. I watch, study, and learn. And I believe that Moist von Lipwig and Vetinari must share some dangerous secret which could even—” “But you just weighed in and offered Lipwig a bribe!” You could say this about Pucci: she was easy to confide in, because she never bothered to listen. She used the time to think about what to say next. “A ridiculously small one. And a threat, too. And so now he thinks he knows all about me,” said Cosmo, not even trying not to look smug. “And I know nothing about him, which is even more interesting. How did he turn up out of nowhere and immediately get one of the highest jobs in—” “What the hell is that?” demanded Pucci, whose massive inquisitiveness was also hampered by the attention span of a kitten. She was pointing at the little diorama in front of the window. “That? Oh—” “Looks like an ornamental window-box. Is it Toytown? What’s that all about? Tell me right now!” Cosmo sighed. He didn’t actually dislike his sister—well, not more than the natural basic feeling of irksomeness all Lavishes felt for one another—but it was hard to like that loud, nasal, perpetually irritated voice, which treated anything Pucci didn’t immediately understand, which was practically everything, as a personal affront. “It is an attempt to achieve, by means of scale models, a view similar to that seen from the Oblong Office by Lord Vetinari,” he explained. “It helps me think. ” “That’s crazy. What kind of dog biscuit?” said Pucci. Information also traveled through Pucci’s apprehension at different speeds. It must be all that hair, thought Cosmo. “Tracklement’s Yums,” he said. “The bone-shaped ones that come in five different colors. But he never leaves a yellow one, because Wuffles didn’t like them. ” “You know they say Vetinari is a vampire?” said Pucci, going off on a tangent to a tangent. “Do you believe it?” said Cosmo. “Because he’s tall and thin and wears black? I think it takes a bit more than that!” “And is secretive and calculating?” said Cosmo. “You don’t believe it, do you?” “No, and it wouldn’t make any real difference if he was, would it? But there are other people with more…dangerous secrets. Dangerous to them, I mean. ” “Mr. Lipwig?” “He could be one, yes. ” Pucci’s eyes lit up. “You know something, don’t you?” “Not exactly, but I think I know where there is something to be known. ” “Where?” “Do you really want to know?” “Of course I do!” “Well, I have no intention of telling you,” said Cosmo, smiling. “Don’t let me detain you!” he added, as Pucci stormed out of the room. Don’t let me detain you. What a wonderful phrase Vetinari had devised. The jangling double meaning set up undercurrents of uneasiness in the most innocent of minds. The man had found ways of bloodless tyranny that put the rack to shame. What a genius! And there, but for an eyebrow, went Cosmo Lavish. He would have to make good the failings of cruel nature. The mysterious Lipwig was the key to Vetinari, and the key to Lipwig— It was time to talk to Mr. Bent. CHAPTER 5 Spending spree Inadvisability of golem back-rubs Giving away money Some observations on the nature of trust Mr. Bent has a visitor One of the family WHERE DO YOU test a bankable idea? Not in a bank, that was certain. You needed to test it where people paid far more attention to money, and juggled their finances in a world of constant risk where a split-second decision meant the difference between triumphant profit or ignominious loss. Generically it was known as the real world, but one of its proprietary names was Tenth Egg Street. The Boffo Novelty and Joke Shop, in Tenth Egg Street, J. Proust prop. , was a haven for everyone who thought that fart powder was the last word in humor, which in many respects it is. It had caught Moist’s eye, though, as a source of material for disguises and other useful things. Moist had always been careful about disguises. A mustache that could come off at a tug had no place in his life. But since he had the world’s most forgettable face, a face that was still a face in the crowd even when it was by itself, it helped, sometimes, to give people something to tell the Watch about.

Spectacles were an obvious choice, but Moist achieved very good results with his own design of nose and ear wigs. Show a man a pair of ears that small songbirds had apparently nested in, watch the polite horror in his eyes, and you could be certain that would be all he would remember. Now, of course, he was an honest man, but part of him felt it necessary that he should keep his hand in, just in case. Today he bought a pot of glue and a large jar of fine gold sprinkles, because he could see a use for them. “That will be 35p, Mr. Lipwig,” said Mr. Proust. “Any new stamps coming along?” “One or two, Jack,” said Moist. “How’s Ethel? And little Roger,” he added, after only a moment’s shuffle through the files in his head. “Very well, thank you for asking. Can I get you anything else?” Proust added hopefully, in case Moist might have a sudden recollection that life would be considerably improved by the purchase of a dozen false noses. Moist glanced at the array of masks, scary rubber hands, and joke noses, and considered his needs satisfied. “Only my change, Jack,” he said, and carefully laid one of his new creations on the counter. “Just give me half a dollar. ” Proust stared at it as if it might explode or vent some mind-altering gas. “What’s this, sir?” “A note for a dollar. A dollar bill. It’s the latest thing. ” “Do I have to sign it or anything?” “No, that’s the interesting bit. It’s a dollar. It can be anyone’s. ” “I’d like it to be mine, thank you!” “It is, now,” said Moist. “But you can use it to buy things. ” “There’s no gold in it,” said the shopkeeper, picking it up and holding it away from his body, just in case. “Well, if I paid in pennies and shillings there would be no gold in them either, right? As it is, you’re fifteen pence ahead, and that’s a good place to be, agreed? And that note is worth a dollar. If you take it along to my bank, they’ll give you a dollar for it. ” “But I’ve already got a dollar! Er…haven’t I?” Proust added. “Good man! So why not go out in the street and spend it right now? Come on, I want to see how it works. ” “Is this like the stamps, Mr. Lipwig?” said Proust, scrambling for something he could understand. “People sometimes pay me in stamps, me doing a lot of mail-order—” “Yes! Yes! Exactly! Think of it as a big stamp. Look, I’ll tell you what, this is an introductory offer. Spend that dollar and I’ll give you another bill for a dollar, so that you’ll still have a dollar. So what are you risking?” “Only if this is, like, one of the first dollar bills, right…well, my lad bought some of the first stamps you did, right, and now they’re worth a mint, so if I hang on to it, it’ll be worth money someday—” “It’s worth money now!” Moist wailed. That was the trouble with slow people. Give him a fool any day. Slow people took some time to catch up, but when they did they rolled right over you. “Yes, but, see”—and here the shopkeeper grinned what he probably thought was an artful grin, which, in fact, made him look like Mr. Fusspot halfway through a toffee—“you’re a sly one with them stamps, Mr. Lipwig, bringin’ out different ones all the time. My granny says if it’s true a man’s got enough iron in his blood to make a nail then you’ve got enough brass in your neck to make a doorknob, no offense meant, she speaks her mind does my granny—” “I’ve made the mail run on time, haven’t I?” “Oh, yes, Gran says you may be a Slippery Jim but you get things done, no doubt about it—” “Right! Let’s spend the damn dollar, then, shall we?” Is it some kind of duplex magical power I have, he wondered, that lets old ladies see right through me but like what they see? And thus Mr. Proust decided to hazard his dollar in the shop next door, on an ounce of Jolly Sailor pipe tobacco, some mints, and a copy of What Novelty? And Mr. “Natty” Poleforth, once the exercise was explained to him, accepted the note and took it across the road to Mr. Drayman the butcher, who cautiously accepted it, after having things set out fair and square for him, in payment for some sausages and also gave Moist a bone “for your little doggie. ” It was more than likely that Mr. Fusspot had never seen a real bone before. He circled it carefully, waiting for it to squeak. Tenth Egg Street was a street of small traders who sold small things in small quantities for small sums on small profits. In a street like that, you had to be small-minded. It wasn’t the place for big ideas. You had to look at the detail. These were men who saw far more farthings than dollars. Some of the other shopkeepers were already pulling down the shutters and closing up for the day. Drawn by the Ankh-Morporkian’s instinct for something interesting, the traders drifted over to see what was going on. They all knew one another. They all dealt with one another. And everyone knew Moist von Lipwig, the man in the gold suit. The notes were examined with much care and solemn discussion. “It’s just an IOU or marker, really. ” “All right, but supposing you needed the money?” “But, correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t the IOU the money?” “All right then, who owes it to you?” “Er…Jack here, because…no, hang on…it is the money, right?” Moist grinned as the discussion wobbled back and forth. Whole new theories of money were growing here like mushrooms, in the dark and based on bullshit. But these were men who counted every half-farthing and slept at night with the cash box under their bed. They’d weigh out flour and raisins and rainbow sprinkles with their eyes ferociously focused on the scale’s pointer, because they were men who lived in the margins. If he could get the idea of paper money past them then he was home and, if not dry, then at least merely Moist. “So you think these might catch on?” he said, during a lull. The consensus was, yes, they could, but should look “fancier,” in the words of Natty Poleforth—“You know, with more fancy lettering and similar. ” Moist agreed, and handed a note to every man, as a souvenir. It was worth it. “And if it all goes wahoonie-shaped,” said Mr. Proust, “you’ve still got the gold, right? Locked up down there in the cellar?” “Oh, yes, you’ve got to have the gold,” said Mr. Drayman. There was a general murmur of agreement, and Moist felt his spirits slump. “But I thought we’d all agreed that you don’t need the gold?” he said. In fact, they hadn’t, but it was worth a try. “Ah, yes, but it’s got to be there somewhere,” said Mr. Drayman. “It keeps banks honest,” said Mr. Poleforth, in the tone of plonking certainty that is the hallmark of that most knowledgeable of beings, The Man In The Pub. “But I thought you understood,” said Moist. “You don’t need the gold!” “Right, sir, right,” said Mr. Poleforth soothingly. “Just so long as it’s there. ” “Er…do you happen to know why it has to be there?” said Moist. “Keeps banks honest,” said Mr. Poleforth, on the basis that truth is achieved by repetition. And with nods all round, this was the feeling of Tenth Egg Street. So long as the gold was somewhere, it kept banks honest and everything was okay. Moist felt humbled by such faith. If the gold was somewhere, herons would no longer eat frogs, either. But, in fact, there was no power in the world that could keep a bank honest if it didn’t want to be. Still, not a bad start to his first day, even so. He could build on it. It began to rain, not hard, but the kind of fine rain where you can almost get away without an umbrella. No cabs bothered to trawl Tenth Egg Street for trade, but there was one at the curb in Losing Street, the horse sagging in the harness, the driver hunched into his greatcoat, the lamps flickering in the dusk. With the rain getting to the blobby, soaking stage, it was a sight for damp feet. He hurried over, climbed in, and a voice in the gloom said, “Good evening, Mr. Lipwig. It’s so nice to meet you at last. I’m Pucci. I’m sure we will be friends…” “NOW, YOU SEE, that was good,” said Sergeant Colon of the Watch, as the figure of Moist von Lipwig disappeared around the corner, still accelerating.

“He went right through the cab window without touching the sides and bounced off that bloke creepin’ up. Very nice roll as he landed, I thought, and he still had hold of the little dog the whole time. Done it before, I shouldn’t wonder. Nevertheless, I’m forced, on balance, to consider him a twit. ” “The first cab,” said Corporal Nobbs, shaking his head. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I would not have thought it of a man like him. ” “My point exactly,” said Colon. “When you know you’ve got enemies at large, never, ever get in the first cab. Fact of life. Even things what live under rocks know it. ” They watched the former creeper gloomily picking up the remains of his iconograph, while Pucci screamed at him from the coach. “I bet when the first cab was built, no one dared to get into it, eh, Sarge?” said Nobby happily. “I bet the first cabby used to go home every night starvin’ on account of everyone knowin’, right?” “Oh, no, Nobby, people with no enemies at large would be okay, Nobby. Now let’s go and report. ” “What does it mean ‘at large,’ anyway,” said Nobby as they ambled toward the Chitling Street watch house and the certain prospect of a cup of hot, sweet tea. “It means large enemies, Nobby. It’s as clear as the nose on your face. Especially yours. ” “Well, she’s a large girl, that Pucci Lavish. ” “And nasty enemies to have, that family,” Colon opined. “What’s the odds?” “Odds, Sarge?” said Nobby innocently. “You’re runnin’ a book, Nobby. You always run a book. ” “Can’t get any takers, Sarge. For’gone conclusion,” said Nobby. “Ah, right. Sensible. Lipwig goin’ to be found lyin’ in chalk by Sunday?” “No, Sarge. Everyone thinks he’ll win. ” MOIST WOKE UP in the big, soft bed and strangled a scream. Pucci! Aaagh! And in a state of what the delicately inclined called “dishabille. ” He’d always wondered what dishabille looked like, but he’d never expected to see so much of it in one go. Even now, some of his memory cells were still trying to die. But he wouldn’t be Moist von Lipwig if a certain amount of insouciance didn’t rise to heal the wounds. He’d got away, after all. Oh, yes. It wasn’t as though it was the first window he’d jumped through. And the sound of Pucci’s scream of rage was almost as loud as the crack the man’s iconograph made as it hit the cobbles. The ol’ honey-trap game. Hah. But it really was time he did something illegal, just to get his mind back to crooked. He wouldn’t have got into the first cab a year ago, that was for sure. Mind you, it would be a strange jury that believed he could be attracted to Pucci Lavish; he couldn’t see that standing up in court. He got up, dressed, and listened hopefully for signs of life from the kitchen. In their absence, he made himself some black coffee. Armed with this, he made his way into the office, where Mr. Fusspot dozed in his in tray and the official top hat sat, accusingly black. Ah, yes, he was going to do something about that, wasn’t he? He reached into his pocket and pulled out the little pot of glue, which was one of the convenient ones with a brush in the lid, and after some careful spreading began to pour the glittering flakes as smoothly as he could. He was still engrossed in this exercise when Gladys loomed in his vision like an eclipse of the sun, holding what turned out to be a bacon-and-egg sandwich two feet long and one-eighth-of-an-inch thick. She’d also picked up his copy of the Times. He groaned. He’d made the front page. He usually did. It was his athletic mouth. It ran away with him whenever he saw a notebook. Er…he’d made page two, as well. Oh, and the lead editorial. Bugger, even the political cartoon, too, the one that was never much of a laugh. First Urchin: “Why ain’t Ankh-Morpork like a desert island?” Second Urchin: “’Cos when yer on a desert island the sharks can’t bite yer!” It was side-splitting. His bleary eyes strayed back to the editorial. They, on the other hand, could be quite funny, since they were based on the assumption that the world would be a much better place if it was run by journalists. They were— What? What was this? “Time to consider the unthinkable…a wind of change blowing through the vaults at last…undoubted success of the new Post Office…stamps already a de facto currency…fresh ideas needed…youth at the helm…” Youth at the helm? This from William de Worde, who was almost certainly the same age as Moist but wrote editorials that suggested his bum was stuffed with tweed. It was sometimes hard to tell in all the ponderousness what de Worde actually thought about anything, but it appeared through the rolling fog of polysyllables that the Times believed Moist von Lipwig to be, on the whole and all things considered, taking the long view and one thing with another, probably the right man in the right job. He was aware of Gladys behind him when red light glinted off the brasswork on the desk. “You Are Very Tense, Mr. Lipwig,” she said. “Yeah, right,” said Moist, reading the editorial again. Ye gods, the man really did write as though he was chipping the letters in stone. “There Was An Interesting Article About Back Rubs In The Ladies’ Own Magazine,” Gladys went on. Later on, Moist felt that perhaps he should have heeded the hopeful tone in her voice. But he was thinking: Not just carved, but with big serifs, too. “They Are Very Good At Relieving Tension Caused By The Hurly-Burly Of Modern Life,” Gladys intoned. “Well, we certainly don’t want any of that,” said Moist, and everything went black. The strange thing was, he thought, when Peggy and Aimsbury had brought him round and clicked his bones back into the appropriate sockets, that he actually felt a lot better. Perhaps that was the idea. Perhaps the hideous white-hot pain was there to make you realize that there were worse things in the world than the occasional twinge. “I Am Very Sorry,” said Gladys. “I Did Not Know That Was Going To Happen. It Said In The Magazine That The Recipient Would Experience A Delightful Frisson. ” “I don’t think that means you should be able to see your own eyeball,” said Moist, rubbing his neck. Gladys’s eyes dimmed so much that he was moved to add: “I feel much better now, though. It’s so nice to look down and not see my heels. ” “Don’t you listen to him, it wasn’t that bad,” said Peggy, with sisterly fellow feeling. “Men always make a big fuss over a little pain. ” “They Are Just Big Cuddly Babies, Really,” said Gladys. That caused a thoughtful pause. “Where did that come from?” said Moist. “The Information Was Imparted To Me By Glenda At The Stamp Counter. ” “Well, from now on I don’t want you to—” The big doors swung open. They let in a hubbub from the floors below, and riding the noise, like some kind of aural surfer, was Mr. Bent, saturnine and far too shiny for this time of the morning. “Good morning, Master,” he said icily. “The street outside is full of people. And might I take this opportunity to congratulate you on disproving a theory currently much in vogue at Unseen University?” “Huh?” said Moist. “There are, some risible people like to suggest, an infinite number of universes, in order to allow everything that may happen a place to happen in. This is, of course, nonsense, which they entertain only because they believe words are the same as reality. Now, however, I can disprove the theory, since in such an infinity of worlds there would have to be one where I would applaud your recent actions and, let me assure you, sir, infinity is not that big!” Mr. Bent drew himself up. “People are hammering on the doors! They want to close their accounts! I told you banking was about trust and confidence!” “Oh dear,” said Moist. “They are asking for gold!” “I thought that’s what you prom—” “It is only a metaphorical promise! I told you, it is based on the understanding that no one will actually demand it!” “How many people want to withdraw their money?” said Moist. “Nearly twenty!” “Then they are making a lot of noise, aren’t they?” Mr. Bent looked uncomfortable. “Well, there are some others,” he said.

“A few misguided people are seeking to open accounts, but—” “How many?” “About two or three hundred, but—” “Opening accounts, you say?” said Moist. Mr. Bent was squirming. “Only for trifling sums, a few dollars here and there,” he said dismissively. “It would appear that they think you have ‘something up your sleeve. ’” The inverted commas shuddered, like a well-bred girl picking up a dead vole. Some of Moist recoiled. But part of him began to feel the wind on his face. “Well, let’s not disappoint them, shall we?” he said, picking up the gold top hat, which was still a bit sticky. Bent glared at it. “The other banks are furious, you know,” he said, high-stepping hurriedly after Moist as the master of the Royal Mint headed for the stairs. “Is that good or bad?” said Moist over his shoulder. “Listen, what’s the rule about bank-lending? I heard it once. It’s about interest. ” “Do you mean ‘borrow at one-half, lend at two, go home at three’?” said Bent. “Right! I’ve been thinking about that. We could shave those numbers, couldn’t we?” “This is Ankh-Morpork! A bank has to be a fortress! That is expensive!” “But we could alter them a bit, couldn’t we? And we don’t pay interest on balances of less than a hundred dollars, correct?” “Yes, that is so. ” “Well, from now on anyone can open an account with five dollars and we’ll start paying interest a lot earlier. That’ll smooth out the lumps in the mattresses, won’t it?” “Master, I protest! Banking is not a game!” “Dear Mr. Bent, it is a game. And it’s an old game, called ‘What can we get away with?’” A cheer went up. They had reached an open landing that overlooked the hall of the bank like a pulpit overlooks the sinners, and a field of faces stared up at Moist in silence for a moment. Then someone called out: “Are you going to make us all rich, Mr. Lipwig?” Oh damn, thought Moist, why are they all here? “Well, I’m going to do my best to get my hands on your money!” he promised. This got a cheer. Moist wasn’t surprised. Tell someone you were going to rob them and all that happened was that you got a reputation as a truthful man. The waiting ears sucked at his tongue, and his common sense went and hid. It heard his mouth add: “And so I can get more of it, I think—that is to say, the chairman thinks—that we should be looking at one percent interest on all accounts that have five dollars in them for a whole year. ” There was a choking sound from the chief cashier, but no great stir from the crowd, most of whom were of the Sock Under The Mattress persuasion. In fact, the news did not appear to please. Then someone raised his hand and said: “That’s a lot to pay just to have you stick our money in your cellar, isn’t it?” “No, it’s what I’ll pay you to let me stick your money in my cellar for a year,” said Moist. “You will?” “Certainly. Trust me. ” The inquirer’s face twisted into the familiar mask of a slow thinker trying to speed up. “So where’s the catch?” he managed. Everywhere, thought Moist. For one thing, I won’t be storing it in my cellar, I’ll be storing it in someone else’s pocket. But you really don’t need to know that right now. “No catch,” he said. “If you put a hundred dollars on deposit, then after a year it’ll be worth one hundred and one dollars. ” “That’s all very well for you to say, but where would the likes of me get a hundred dollars?” “Right here, if you invest just one dollar and wait for—how long, Mr. Bent?” The chief cashier snorted. “Four hundred and sixty-one years!” “Okay, it’s a bit of a wait, but your great-great-great-etc. -grandchildren will be proud of you,” said Moist, above the laughter. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do; if you open an account here today for, oh, five dollars, we’ll give you a free dollar on Monday. A free dollar to take away, ladies and gentlemen, and where are you going to get a better deal than—” “A real dollar, pray, or one of these fakes?” There was a commotion near the door, and Pucci Lavish swept in. Or, at least, tried to sweep. But a good sweep needs planning, and probably a rehearsal. You shouldn’t just go for it and hope. All you get is a lot of shoving. The two heavies, there to clear a path through the press of people, got defeated by sheer numbers, which meant that the rather slimmer young men leading her exquisitely bred blond hounds got stuck behind them. Pucci had to shoulder her way through. It could have been so good, Moist felt. It had all the right ingredients, the black-clad bruisers so menacing, the dogs so sleek and blond. But Pucci herself had been blessed with beady, suspicious little eyes and a generous upper lip which combined to the long neck to put the honest observer in mind of a duck who’d just been offended by a passing trout. Someone should have told her that black was not her color, that the expensive fur could have looked better on its original owners, that if you were going to wear high heels then this week’s fashion tip was “Don’t Wear Sunglasses At The Same Time,” because when you walked out of the bright sunlight into the relative gloom of, say, a bank, you would lose all sense of direction and impale the foot of one of your own bodyguards. Someone should have told her, in fact, that true style comes from innate cunning and mendacity. You can’t buy it. “Miss Pucci Lavish, ladies and gentlemen!” said Moist, starting to clap as Pucci whipped her sunglasses off and advanced on the counter with murder in her eye. “One of the directors who will join us all in making money. ” There was some clapping from the crowd, most of whom had never seen Pucci before but wanted the free show. “I say! Listen to me! Everyone listen to me,” she commanded. She waved what seemed to Moist to look very much like his experimental dollar bills. “This is just worthless paper! This is what he will be giving you!” “No, it’s the same as an open check or a banker’s draft,” said Moist. “Really? We shall see! I say! Good people of Ankh-Morpork! Do any of you think this piece of paper could be worth a dollar? Would anyone give me a dollar for it?” Pucci waved the paper dismissively. “Dunno. What is it?” said someone, and there was a buzz from the crowd. “An experimental bank note,” said Moist, over the growing hubbub. “Just to try out the idea. ” “How many of them are there, then?” said the inquiring man. “About twelve,” said Moist. The man turned to Pucci. “I’ll give you five dollars for it, how about that?” “Five? It says it’s worth one!” said Pucci, aghast. “Yeah, right. Five dollars, miss. ” “Why? Are you insane?” “I’m as sane as the next man, thank you, young lady!” “Seven dollars here!” said the next man, raising a hand. “This is madness!” wailed Pucci. “Mad?” said the next man. He pointed a finger at Moist. “If I’d bought a pocketful of the black penny stamps when that feller brought them out last year, I’d be a rich man!” “Anyone remember the Triangular Blue?” said another bidder. “Fifty pence it cost. I put one on a letter to my aunt; by the time it got there it was worth fifty dollars! And the ol’ baggage wouldn’t give it back!” “It’s worth a hundred and sixty now,” said someone behind him. “Auctioned at Dave’s Stamp and Pin Emporium last week. Ten dollars is my bid, miss!” “Fifteen here!” Moist had a good view from the stairs. A small consortium had formed at the back of the hall, working on the basis that it was better to have small shares than none at all. Stamp collecting! It had started on day one, and then ballooned like some huge…thing, running on strange, mad rules. Was there any other field where flaws made things worth more? Would you buy a suit just because one arm was shorter than the other? Or because a bit of spare cloth was still attached? Of course, when Moist had spotted this, he’d put in flaws on purpose, as a matter of public entertainment, but he certainly hadn’t planned for Lord Vetinari’s head to appear upside down just once on every sheet of Blues. One of the printers had been about to destroy them when Moist brought him down with a flying tackle. The whole business was unreal, and unreal was Moist’s world.

Back when he’d been a naughty boy he’d sold dreams, and the big seller in that world was the one where you got very rich by a stroke of luck. He’d sold glass as diamonds because greed clouded men’s eyes. Sensible, upright people, who worked hard every day, nevertheless believed, against all experience, in money for nothing. But the stamp collectors…they believed in small perfections. It was possible to get one small part of the world right. And even if you couldn’t get it right, you at least knew what was missing. It might be, f’rinstance, the flawed 50p Triangular Blue, but there were still six of them out there, and who knew what piece of luck might attend the dedicated searcher? Rather a lot of luck would be needed, Moist had to admit, because four of them were safely tucked away for a rainy day in a little lead box under the floorboards in Moist’s office. Even so, two were out there somewhere, perhaps destroyed, lost, eaten by snails, or—and here hope lay thick as winter snow—were in some unregarded bundle of letters at the back of a drawer somewhere. —and Miss Pucci simply didn’t know how to work a crowd. She stomped and demanded attention and bullied and insulted and it didn’t help that she’d called them “good people,” because no one likes an outright liar. And now she was losing her temper, because the bidding had reached thirty-four dollars. And now— —she’d torn it up! “That’s what I think of this silly money!” she announced, throwing the pieces in the air. Then she stood there, panting and looking triumphant, as if she’d done something clever. A kick in the teeth to everyone there. It made you want to cry, it really did. Oh, well. He pulled one of the new notes out of his pocket and held it up. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he announced, “I have here one of the increasingly rare first-generation One Dollar notes”—he had to pause for the laughter—“signed by myself and the chairman. Bids over forty dollars, please! All proceeds to the little kiddies!” He ran it up to fifty, bouncing a couple of bids off the wall. Pucci stood ignored and steaming with rage for a while and then flounced out. It was a good flounce, too. She had no idea how to handle people and she tried to make self-esteem do the work of self-respect, but the girl could flounce better than a fat turkey on a trampoline. The lucky winner was already surrounded by his unlucky fellow bidders by the time he reached the bank’s doors. The rest of the crowd surged toward the counters, not sure what was going on but determined to have a piece of it. Moist cupped his hand and shouted, “And this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bent and myself will be available to discuss bank loans!” This caused a further stir. “Smoke and mirrors, Mr. Lipwig,” said Bent, turning away from the balustrade. “Nothing but smoke and mirrors…” “But done without smoke and in a total absence of a mirror, Mr. Bent!” said Moist cheerfully. “And the ‘kiddies’?” said Bent. “Find some. There’s bound to be an orphanage that needs fifty dollars. It’ll have to be an anonymous donation, of course. ” Bent looked surprised. “Really, Mr. Lipwig? I’ll make no bones about saying that you seem to me to be the sort of man who makes a great Razz Arm Ma Tazz about giving money to charity. ” He made razzmatazz sound like some esoteric perversion. “Well, I’m not. Do good by stealth, that is my watchword. ” It’ll get found out soon enough, he added to himself, and then I’m not only a jolly good chap but a decently modest one, too. I wonder…am I really a bastard or am I just really good at thinking like one? Nothing nudged at his mind. Tiny hairs on the back of his neck were twitching. Something was wrong, out of place…dangerous. He turned and looked down again at the hall. People were milling around, forming into lines, talking in groups— In a world of movement, the eye is drawn to stillness. In the middle of the banking hall, unheeded by the throng, a man was standing as if frozen in time. He was all in black, with one of those flat, wide hats often worn by the more somber Omnian sects. He just…stood. And watched. Just another gawker along to see the show, Moist told himself, and knew at once that he was lying. The man was causing a weight in his world. I have lodged affidavits… Him? About what? Moist had no past. Oh, a dozen aliases had managed a pretty busy and eventful past between them, but they had evaporated along with Albert Spangler, hanged by the neck until not-quite-dead and awoken by Lord Vetinari, who’d offered Moist von Lipwig a life all shiny and new— Ye gods, he was getting jumpy, just because some old guy was looking at him with a funny little smile! No one knew him! He was Mr. Forgettable! If he walked around the town without the gold suit on, he was just another face. “Are you all right, Mr. Lipwig?” Moist turned and looked into the face of the chief cashier. “What? Oh…no. I mean yes. Er…have you ever seen that man before?” “What man would that be?” Moist turned back to point out the man in black, but he was gone. “Looked like a preacher,” he mumbled. “He was…well, he was looking at me. ” “Well, sir, you do rather invite it. Perhaps you’d agree that the golden hat was a mistake?” “I like the hat! There’s no other hat like it!” Bent nodded. “Fortunately, this is true, sir. Oh, dear. Paper money. A practice used only by the heathen Agateans…” “Heathen? They’ve got far more gods than us! And over there gold is worth less than iron!” Moist relented. Bent’s face, usually so controlled and aloof, had crumpled like a piece of paper. “Look, I’ve been reading. The banks issue coins to four times the amount of the gold they hold. That’s a nonsense we could do without. It’s a dream world. This city is rich enough to be its own gold bar!” “They’re trusting you for no good reason,” said Bent. “They trust you because you make them laugh. I do not make people laugh, and this is not my world. I don’t know how to smile like you do and talk like you do. Don’t you understand? There must be something which has a worth that goes beyond fashion and politics, a worth that endures. Are you putting Vetinari in charge of my bank? What guarantees the savings that those people are thrusting over our counter?” “Not what, who. It’s me. I am personally going to see that this bank does not fail. ” “You?” Yes. ” “Oh yes, the man in the gold suit,” said Bent sourly. “And if all else fails, will you pray?” “It worked last time,” said Moist calmly. Bent’s eye twitched. For the first time since Moist had met him, he seemed…lost. “I don’t know what you want me to do!” It was almost a wail. Moist patted him on the shoulder. “Run the bank, like you always have. I think we should set up some loans, with all this cash coming in. Are you a good judge of character?” “I thought I was,” said Bent. “Now? I have no idea. Sir Joshua, I am sorry to say, was not. Mrs. Lavish was very, very good, in my opinion…” “Better than you could possibly know,” said Moist. “Good. I shall take the chairman for his walkies, and then…we’ll spread some money around. How about that?” Mr. Bent shuddered. THE TIMES DID an early afternoon edition with a big picture on the front page, of the queue of customers winding out of the bank. Most of them wanted to get in on the act, whatever the act turned out to be, and the rest were queuing on the basis that there might be something interesting at the other end. There was a boy selling the paper, and people were buying it to read the story entitled “Huge Queue Swamps Bank,” which seemed a bit odd to Moist. They were in the queue, weren’t they? Was it only real if they read about it? “There are already some…people wishing to inquire about loans, sir,” said Bent, behind him. “I suggest you let me deal with them. ” “No, we both will, Mr. Bent,” said Moist, turning away from the window. “Show them into the downstairs office, please. ” “I really think you should leave this to me, sir. Some of them are rather new to the idea of banking,” Bent persisted.

“In fact, I don’t think some of them have ever been in a bank before, except perhaps during the hours of darkness. ” “I would like you to be present, of course, but I will make the final decision,” said Moist, as loftily as he could manage. “Aided by the chairman, naturally. ” “Mr. Fusspot?” “Oh yes. ” “He is an expert judge, is he?” “Oh yes!” Moist picked up the dog and headed for the office. He could feel the chief cashier glaring at his back. But Bent had been right. Some of the people waiting hopefully to see him about a loan were thinking in terms of a couple of dollars until Friday. They were easy enough to deal with. And then there were others… “Mr. Dibbler, isn’t it?” said Moist. He knew it was, but you had to speak like that when you sat behind a desk. “That’s right, sir, man and boy,” said Mr. Dibbler, who had a permanently eager, rodent-like cast to his countenance. “I could be someone else if you like. ” “And you sell pork pies, sausages, rat-on-a-stick…” “Er, I pervay them, sir,” Dibbler corrected him, “on account of being a perveyor. ” Moist looked at him over the paperwork. Claude Maximillian Overton Transpire Dibbler, a name bigger than the man himself. Everyone knew C. M. O. T. Dibbler. He sold pies and sausages off a tray, usually to people who were the worse for drink, who then became the worse for pies. Moist had eaten the odd pork pie and occasional sausage in a bun, however, and that very fact interested him. There was something about the stuff that drove you back for more. There had to be some secret ingredient, or maybe the brain just didn’t believe what the taste buds told it, and wanted to feel once again that flood of hot, greasy, not entirely organic, slightly crunchy substances surfing across the tongue. So, you bought another one. And, it had to be said, there were times when a Dibbler sausage in a bun was just what you wanted. Sad, yet true. Everyone had moments like that. Life brought you so low that for a vital few seconds that charivari of strange greases and worrying textures was your only friend in all the world. “Do you have an account with us, Mr. Dibbler?” “Yessir, thankyousir,” said Dibbler, who had refused an invitation to put down his tray and sat with it held defensively in front of him. The bank seemed to make the streetwise trader nervous. Of course, it was meant to. That was the reason for all the pillars and marble. It was there to make you feel out of place. “Mr. Dibbler has opened an account with five dollars,” said Bent. “And I have brought along a sausage for your little doggie,” said Dibbler. “Why do you need a loan, Mr. Dibbler?” said Moist, watching Mr. Fusspot sniff the sausage carefully. “I want to expand the business, sir,” said Dibbler. “You’ve been trading for more than thirty years,” said Moist. “Yessir, thankyousir. ” “And your products are, I think I can say, unique…” “Yessir, thankyousir. ” “So I imagine that now you need our help to open a chain of franchised cafés trading on the Dibbler name, offering a variety of meals and drinks bearing your distinctive likeness?” said Moist. Mr. Fusspot jumped down from the desk with the sausage held gently in his mouth, dropped it in the corner of the office, and tried industriously to kick the carpet over it. Dibbler stared at Moist, and then said, “Yessir, if you insist, but actually I was thinking about a barrow. ” “A barrow?” said Bent. “Yessir. I know where I can get a nice little secondhand one with an oven and everything. Painted up nice, too. Wally the Gimp is quitting the jacket-potato business ’cos of stress and he’ll let me have it for fifteen dollars, cash down. A not-to-be-missed opportunity, sir. ” He looked nervously at Mr. Bent and added, “I could pay you back at a dollar a week. ” “For twenty weeks,” said Bent. “Seventeen,” said Moist. “But the dog just tried to—” Bent began. Moist waved away the objection. “So we have a deal, Mr. Dibbler?” “Yessir, thankyousir,” said Dibbler. “That’s a good idea you’ve got there, about the chain and everything, though, and I thank you. But I find that in this business it pays to be mobile. ” Mr. Bent counted out fifteen dollars with bad grace and began to speak as soon as the door closed behind the trader. “Even the dog wouldn’t—” “But humans will, Mr. Bent,” said Moist. “And therein lies genius. I think he makes most of his money on the mustard, but there’s a man who can sell sizzle, Mr. Bent. And that is a seller’s market. ” The last prospective borrower was heralded first by a couple of muscular men who took up positions on either side of the door, and then by a smell that overruled even the persistent odor of a Dibbler sausage. It wasn’t a particularly bad smell; it put you in mind of old potatoes or abandoned tunnels—it was what you got when you started out with severely foul stink and then scrubbed hard but ineffectually, and it surrounded King like an emperor’s cloak. Moist was astonished. King of the Golden River, they called him, because the foundation of his fortune was the daily collection of the urine his men made from every inn and pub in the city. The customers paid him to take it away, and the alchemists, tanners, and dyers paid him to bring it to them. But that was only the start. Harry King’s men took away everything. You saw their carts everywhere, especially around dawn. Every rag-and-bone man and rubbish picker, every dunnikin diver, every gongfermor, every scrap-metal merchant…you worked for Harry King, they said, because a broken leg was bad for business, and Harry King was all about business. They said that if a dog in the street looked even a bit strained, a King’s man would be there in a flash to hold a shovel under its arse, because prime dog muck fetched 9p a bucket from the high-class tanners. They paid Harry. The city paid Harry. Everyone paid Harry. And what he couldn’t sell back to them in more fragrant form went to feed his giant compost heaps downriver, which on frosty days sent up such great plumes of steam that kids called them the cloud factories. Apart from his hired help, Harry was accompanied by a skinny young man clutching a briefcase. “Nice place you got here,” said Harry, sitting down in the chair opposite Moist. “Very sound. The wife’s been on at me to get curtains like that. I’m Harry King, Mr. Lipwig. I’ve just put fifty thousand dollars in your bank. ” “Thank you very much, Mr. King. We shall do our best to look after it. ” “You do that. And now I’d like to borrow one hundred thousand, thank you,” said Harry, pulling out a fat cigar. “Have you got any security, Mr. King?” said Bent. Harry King didn’t even look at him. He lit the cigar, puffed it into life, and waved it in the general direction of Bent. “Who’s this, Mr. Lipwig?” “Mr. Bent is our chief cashier,” said Moist, not daring to look at Bent’s face. “A clerk, then,” said Harry King dismissively, “an’ that was a clerk’s question. ” He leaned forward. “My name is Harry King. That’s your security, right there, an’ it should be good for a hundred grand in these parts. Harry King. Everyone knows me. I pay what’s owing an’ I take what’s owed, my word, don’t I just. My handshake is my fortune. Harry King. ” He slammed his huge hands down on the table. Except for the pinkie of his left hand, which was missing, there was a heavy gold ring on each of them, and each ring was incised with a letter. If you saw them coming at you, as for instance in an alley, because you’d been skimming something off the take, the last name you would see would be H*A*R*R*Y*K*I*N*G. It was a fact worth keeping in the forefront of your brain, in the interests of keeping the forefront of your brain. Moist looked up into the man’s eyes. “We shall need a lot more than that,” growled Bent, from somewhere above Moist. Harry King didn’t bother to look up. He said, “I only talks to the organ grinder. ” “Mr. Bent, could you step outside for a few minutes,” said Moist brightly, “and perhaps Mr. King’s…associates will do the same?” Harry King nodded almost imperceptibly. “Mr. Lipwig, I really—” “Please, Mr. Bent.

” The chief cashier snorted, but followed the thugs out of the office. The young man with the briefcase made as if to leave as well, but Harry waved him back into his seat. “You want to watch that Bent,” he said to Moist. “There’s something funny about him. ” “Odd, maybe, but he wouldn’t like to be called funny. So, why does Harry King need money, Mr. King? Everyone knows you’re rich. Has the bottom dropped out of the dog-muck business? Or vice versa?” “I’m cons-sol-id-ating,” said King, grinning. “This Undertaking business…there’s going to be a few opportunities for a man in the right place. There’s land to buy, palms to grease…you know how it is. But them other banks, they won’t lend to King of the Golden River, for all it’s my lads what keeps their cesspits fragrant as a violet. Them stuck-up ponces’d be up to their ankles in their own piss if it weren’t for me, but they holds their noses when I walks by, oh yeah. ” He stopped, as if a thought had occurred to him, and went on. “Well most people do, o’course, it’s not like a man can take a bath every five bloody minutes, but that bunch of bankers still gives me the cold shoulder even when the wife has scrubbed me raw. How dare they! I’m a better risk than most of their smarmy customers, you can bet on that. I employs a thousand people in this city, mister, one way or another. That’s a thousand families lookin’ to me for their dinner. I might be about muck, but I don’t muck about. ” He’s not a crook, Moist reminded himself. He pulled himself out of the gutter and beat his way to the top in a world where a length of lead pipe was the standard negotiating tool. That world wouldn’t trust paper. In that world, reputation was all. “A hundred thousand is a lot of money,” he said aloud. “You’ll give it to me, though,” said King, grinning. “I knows you will, ’cos you’re a chancer, same as me. I can smell it on you. I smell a lad who’s done a thing or two in his time, eh?” “We all have to eat, Mr. King. ” “’Course we do. ’Course we do. An’ now we can sit back like a coupla judges an’ be pillows of the community, eh? So we’ll shake hands on it like the gentlemen we ain’t. This here,” he went on, laying a huge hand on the shoulder of the young man, “is Wallace, my clerk what does the sums for me. He’s new, on account of the last one I had I caught fiddlin’ me. That was a laugh, as you can imagine!” Wallace didn’t smile. “I probably can,” said Moist. Harry King guarded his various premises with creatures that could only be called dogs because wolves aren’t that insane. And they were kept hungry. There were rumors, and Harry King was probably happy about that. It paid to advertise. You didn’t double-cross Harry King. But it worked both ways. “Wallace can talk numbers with your monkey,” said Harry, standing up. “You’ll want to squeeze me, right enough. Business is business, and don’t I know it. What do you say?” “Well I’d say we have an agreement, Mr. King,” Moist said. Then he spat on his hand, and held it out. It was worth it to see the look on the man’s face. “I didn’t know bankers did that,” said Harry. “They don’t often shake hands with Harry King, then,” said Moist. That was probably overdoing it, but King winked, spat on his own hand, and grasped Moist’s. Moist had been prepared, but even so, the man’s grip ground his finger bones together. “You’re more full of bullshit than a frightened herd on fresh pasture, Mr. Lipwig. ” “Thank you, sir. I take that as a compliment. ” “And just to keep your monkey happy, I’ll deposit the deeds of the paper mill, the big yard, and a few other properties,” said Harry. “Give ’em to the man, Wallace. ” “You should have said that in the first place, Mr. King,” said Moist, as some impressive scrolls were handed over. “Yeah, but I didn’t. Wanted to make sure of you. When can I have my money?” “Soon. When I’ve printed it. ” Harry King wrinkled his nose. “Oh, yeah, the paper stuff. Me, I like money that clinks, but Wallace here says paper’s the coming thing. ” He winked. “And it’s not like I can complain, since ol’ Spools buys his paper off ’f me these days. Can’t turn me nose up at me own manufacture now, can I? Good day to you, sir!” Mr. Bent strode back into the office twenty minutes later, his face like a tax demand, to find Moist staring vaguely at a sheet of paper on the worn green leather of the desk. “Sir, I must protest—” “Did you nail him down to a good rate?” said Moist. “I pride myself that I did, but the way you—” “We will do well out of Harry King, Mr. Bent, and he will do well out of us. ” “But you’re turning my bank into some sort of—” “Not counting our friend Harry, we took in more than four thousand dollars today,” said Moist briskly. “Most of them were from what you’d call poor people, but there’s far more of them than rich people. We can set that money to work. And we won’t lend to scoundrels this time, don’t you worry about that. I’m a scoundrel, and I can spot them a mile off. Please pass on our compliments to the counter staff. And now, Mr. Bent, Mr. Fusspot and I are going to see a man about making money. ” TEEMER AND SPOOLS had gone up in the world because of the big stamp contract. They’d always done the best printing work in any case, but now they had the men and muscle to bid for all the big contracts. And you could trust them. Moist always felt rather guilty when he went into the place; Teemer and Spools seemed to represent everything that he only pretended to be. There were plenty of lights on when he went in. And Mr. Spools was in his office, writing in a ledger. He looked up and, when he saw Moist, smiled the smile you save for your very best customer. “Mr. Lipwig! What can I do for you? Do take a seat! We don’t see so much of you these days!” Moist sat and chatted, because Mr. Spools liked to chat. Things were difficult. Things were always difficult. There were a lot more presses around these days. T&S were staying ahead of the game by staying on top of it. Regrettably, said Mr. Spools, with a straight face, their “friendly” rivals, the wizards at Unseen University Press, had come a cropper with their talking books— “Talking books? That sounds a good idea,” said Moist. “Quite possibly,” said Spools, with a sniff. “But these weren’t meant to talk, and certainly not to complain about the quality of their glue and the hamfistedness of the typesetter. And of course now the university can’t pulp them. ” “Why not?” “Think of the screaming! No, I pride myself that we are still riding the wave. Er…was there something special you wanted?” “What can you do with this?” said Moist, putting one of the new dollars on the table. Spools picked it up and read it carefully. Then, in a faraway voice, he said: “I did hear something. Does Vetinari know you’re planning this?” “Mr. Spools, I’ll bet he knows my shoe size and what I had for breakfast. ” The printer put down the bill as if it were ticking. “I can see what you are doing. Such a small thing, and yet so dangerous. ” “Can you print them?” said Moist. “Oh, not that one. I made up a batch just to test the idea. I meant high-quality bank notes, if I can find an artist to draw them. ” “Oh, yes. We are a byword for quality. We’re building a new press to keep pace with demand. But what about security?” “What, in here? No one has ever bothered you so far, have they?” “No, they haven’t. But up until now we haven’t had lots of money lying around, if you see what I mean. ” Spools held the note up and let it go. It wafted gently from side to side until it landed on the desk. “So light, too,” he went on. “A few thousand dollars would be no problem to carry. ” “But kind of hard to melt down. Look, build the new press in the Mint. There’s a lot of space. End of problem. ” “Well, yes, that would make sense. But a press is a big thing to move, you know. It’ll take days to shift it. Are you in a hurry? Of course you are. ” “Hire some golems. Four golems will lift anything. Print me dollars by the day after tomorrow and the first thousand you print are a bonus. ” “Why are you always in such a hurry, Mr.

Lipwig?” “Because people don’t like change. But make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another. ” “Well, we could hire some golems, I suppose,” said the printer. “But I fear there are other difficulties less easy to overcome. Do you realize that if you start printing money then you will get forgeries? It’s not worth the trouble, maybe, for a 20p stamp, but if you want, say, a ten-dollar note…?” He raised his eyebrows. “Probably, yes. Problems?” “Big ones, my friend. Oh, we can help. Decent linen paper with a pattern of raised threads, watermarks, a good spirit ink, change the plates often to keep it sharp, little tricks with the design…and make it complex, too. That’s important. Yes, we could do it for you. They will be expensive. I strongly suggest you find an engraver as good as this…” Mr. Spools unlocked one of the lower drawers of his desk and tossed a sheet of 50p green “Tower of Art” stamps onto the blotter. Then he handed Moist a large magnifying glass. “That’s top-quality paper, of course,” the printer said as Moist stared. “You’re getting very good. I can see every detail,” Moist breathed, poring over the sheet. “No,” said Spools, with some satisfaction. “In fact, you cannot. You might, though, with this. ” He unlocked a cupboard and handed Moist a heavy brass microscope. “He’s put in more detail than we did,” he said, as Moist focused. “It’s at the very limit of what metal and paper can be persuaded to do. It is, I declare, a work of genius. He would be your salvation. ” “Amazing,” said Moist. “Well, we’ve got to have him! Who does he work for now?” “No one, Mr. Lipwig. He is in prison, awaiting the noose. ” “Owlswick Jenkins?” “You testified against him, Mr. Lipwig,” said Spools mildly. “Well…yes, but only to confirm that they were our stamps he was copying, and how much we might be losing! I didn’t expect he’d be hanged!” “His lordship is always touchy when it’s a case of treason against the city, as he describes it. I think Jenkins was badly served by his lawyer. After all, his work made our stamps look like the real forgeries. You know, I got the impression the poor chap didn’t really realize what he was doing was wrong. ” Moist recalled the watery, frightened eyes and the expression of helpless puzzlement. “Yes,” he said. “You may be right. ” “Could you perhaps use your influence with Vetinari to—” “No. It wouldn’t work. ” “Ah? Are you sure?” “Yes,” said Moist flatly. “Well, you see, there’s only so much we can do. We can even number the bills automatically now. But the artwork must be of the finest kind. Oh dear. I’m sorry. I wish I could help. We owe you a great debt, Mr. Lipwig. So much official work is coming in now that we’d need the space in the Mint. My word, we’re practically the government’s printer!” “Really?” said Moist. “That’s very…interesting. ” IT RAINED UNGRACEFULLY. The gutters gargled and tried to spit. Occasionally the wind caught the cascading overflow from the rooftops and slapped a sheet of water across the face of anyone who looked up. But this was not a night to look up. This was a night to scurry, bent double, for home. Raindrops hit the windows of Mrs. Cake’s boardinghouse, specifically the one in the rear room occupied by Mavolio Bent, at the rate of twenty-seven a second, plus or minus fifteen percent. Mr. Bent liked counting. You could trust numbers, except perhaps for pi, but he was working on that in his spare time and it was bound to give in sooner or later. He sat on his bed, watching the numbers dance in his head. They’d always danced for him, even in the bad times. And the bad times had been so very bad. Now, perhaps, there were more ahead. Someone knocked at his door. He said, “Come in, Mrs. Cake. ” The landlady pushed open the door. “You always know it’s me, don’t you, Mr. Bent,” said Mrs. Cake, who was more than a trifle nervous about her best lodger. He paid his rent on time—exactly on time—and he kept his room scrupulously clean and, of course, he was a professional gentleman. All right, he had a haunted look about him and there was that odd business with him carefully adjusting the clock before he went to work every day, but she was prepared to put up with that. There was no shortage of lodgers in this crowded city, but clean ones who paid regularly and never complained about the food were thin enough on the ground to be worth cherishing, and if they put a strange padlock on their wardrobe, well, least said soonest mended. “Yes, Mrs. Cake,” said Bent. “I always know it’s you because there is a distinctive one-point-four seconds between the knocks. ” “Really? Fancy!” said Mrs. Cake, who rather liked the sound of distinctive. “I always say you’re the man for the adding up. Er…there is going to be three gentlemen downstairs asking after you…” “When?” “In about two minutes,” said Mrs. Cake. Bent stood up in one unfolding moment, like a jack-in-the-box. “Men? What will they be wearing?” “Well, er, just, you know, clothes?” said Mrs. Cake uncertainly. “Black clothes. One of them will give me his card, but I won’t be able to read it because I’ll have my wrong spectacles on. Of course, I could go and put the right ones on, obviously, but I get such a headache if I don’t let a premonition go right. Er…and now you’re going to say, ‘Please let me know when they arrive, Mrs. Cake. ’” She looked at him expectantly. “Sorry, but I had a premonition that I’d come up to tell you I had a premonition, so I thought I’d better. It’s a bit silly, but none of us can change how we’re made, I always say. ” “Please let me know when they arrive, Mrs. Cake,” said Bent. Mrs. Cake gave him a grateful look before hurrying away. Mr. Bent sat down again. Life with Mrs. Cake’s premonitions could get a little intricate at times, especially now they were getting recursive, but it was part of the Elm Street ethos that you were charitable toward the foibles of others in the hope of a similar attitude to your own. He liked Mrs. Cake, but she was wrong. You could change how you were made. If you couldn’t, there was no hope. After a couple of minutes he heard the ring of the bell, the muted conversation, and went through the motions of surprise when she knocked on his door. Bent inspected the visiting card. “Mr. Cosmo? Oh. How strange. You had better send them up. ” He paused, and looked around. Subdivision was rife in the city now. The room was exactly twice the size of the bed, and it was a narrow bed. Three people in here would have to know one another well. Four would know one another well whether they wanted to or not. There was a small chair, but Bent kept it on top of the wardrobe, out of the way. “Perhaps just Mr. Cosmo,” he suggested. The man was proudly escorted in a minute later. “Well, this is a wonderful little hideaway, Mr. Bent,” Cosmo began. “So handy for, um—” “Nearby places,” said Bent, lifting the chair off the wardrobe. “There you are, sir. I don’t often have visitors. ” “I’ll come straight to the point, Mr. Bent,” said Cosmo, sitting down. “The directors do not like the, ha, direction things are going. I’m sure you don’t, either. ” “I could wish for them to be otherwise, sir, yes. ” “He should have held a director’s meeting!” “Yes, sir, but bank rules say he needn’t do so for a week, I’m afraid. ” “He will ruin the bank!” “We are, in fact, getting many new customers, sir. ” “You can’t possibly like the man? Not you, Mr. Bent?” “He is easy to like, sir. But you know me, sir. I do not trust those who laugh too easily. The heart of a fool is in the house of mirth. He should not be in charge of your bank. ” “I like to think about it as our bank, Mr. Bent,” said Cosmo generously, “because, in a very real way, it is ours. ” “You are too kind, sir,” said Bent, staring down at the floorboards visible through the hole in the cheap oilcloth which was itself laid bare, in a very real way, by the bald patch in the carpet which, in a very real way, was his. “You joined us quite young, I believe,” Cosmo went on.

“My father himself gave you a job as trainee clerk, didn’t he?” “That is correct, sir. ” “He was very…understanding, my father,” said Cosmo. “And rightly so. No sense in dredging up the past. ” He paused for a little while to let this sink in. Bent was intelligent, after all. No need to use a hammer when a feather would float down with as much effect. “Perhaps you could find some way that will allow him to be removed from office without fuss or bloodshed? There must be something,” he prompted. “No one just steps out of nowhere. But people know even less about his past than they do about, for the sake of argument, yours. ” Another little reminder. Bent’s eye twitched. “But Mr. Fusspot will still be chairman,” he mumbled, while the rain rattled on the glass. “Oh yes. But I’m sure he will then be looked after by someone who is, shall we say, better capable of translating his little barks along more traditional lines?” “I see. ” “And now I must be going,” said Cosmo, standing up. “I’m sure you have a lot of things to—” he looked around the barren room which showed no sign of real human occupation, no pictures, no books, no debris of living, and concluded: “—do?” “I will go to sleep shortly,” said Mr. Bent. “Tell me, Mr. Bent, how much do we pay you?” said Cosmo, glancing at the wardrobe. “Forty-one dollars per month, sir,” said Bent. “Ah, but of course you get wonderful job security. ” “So I had hitherto believed, sir. ” “I just wonder why you choose to live here?” “I like the dullness, sir. It expects nothing of me. ” “Well, time to go,” said Cosmo, slightly faster than he really should. “I’m sure you can be of help, Mr. Bent. You have always been a great help. It would be such a shame if you could not be of help at this time. ” Bent stared at the floor. He was trembling. “I speak for all of us when I say that we think of you as one of the family,” Cosmo went on. He rethought this sentence with reference to the peculiar charms of the Lavishes and added: “But in a good way. ” CHAPTER 6 Jailbreak The prospect of a kidney sandwich The barber-surgeon’s knock Suicide by paint, inadvisability of Angels at one remove Igor goes shopping The use of understudies at a hanging, reflections on Places suitable for putting a head Moist awaits the sunshine Tricks with your brain “We’re going to need some bigger notes” Fun with root vegetables The lure of clipboards The impossible cabinet ON THE ROOF of the Tanty, the city’s oldest jail, Moist was more than moist. He’d reached the point where he was so wet that he should be approaching dryness from the other end. With care, he lifted the last of the oil lamps from the little semaphore tower on the flat roof, and tossed its contents into the howling night. They had been only half-full, in any case. It was amazing that anyone had even bothered to light them on a night like this. He felt his way back to the edge of the roof and located his grapnel, moving it gently around the stern crenellation and then letting out more rope to lower it down to the invisible ground. Now he had the rope around the big stone bulk he slid down holding on to both lengths and pulled the rope down after him. He stashed both grapnel and rope among the debris in an alley; it would be stolen within an hour or so. Right, then. Now for it… The Watch armor he’d lifted from the bank’s locker room fitted like a glove. He’d have preferred it to fit like a helmet and breastplate. But, in truth, it probably didn’t look any better on its owner, currently swanking along the corridors in the bank’s own shiny but impractical armor. It was common knowledge that the Watch’s approach to uniforms was one-size-doesn’t-exactly-fit-any body, and that Commander Vimes disapproved of armor that didn’t have that kicked-by-trolls look. He liked armor to state clearly that it had been doing its job. He took some time to get his breath back, and then walked around to the big black door and rang the bell. The mechanism rattled and clanked. They wouldn’t rush, not on a night like this. He was as naked and exposed as a baby lobster. He hoped he’d covered all the angles, but angles were, what did they call it, he’d gone to a lecture at the university…ah, yes. Angles were fractal. Each one was full of smaller angles. You couldn’t cover them all. The watchman at the bank might be called back to work and find his locker empty, someone might have seen Moist take it, Jenkins might have been moved…The hell with it. When time was pressing you just had to spin the wheel and be ready to run. Or, in this case, lift the huge door knocker in both hands and bring it down sharply, twice, on the nail. He waited until, with difficulty, a small hatch in the big door was pulled aside. “What?” said a petulant voice in a shadowy face. “Prisoner pickup. Name of Jenkins. ” “What? It’s the middle of the bleedin’ night!” “Got a signed Form 37,” said Moist stolidly. The little hatch slammed shut. He waited in the rain again. This time it was three minutes before it opened. “What?” said a new voice, marinated in suspicion. Ah, good. It was Bellyster. Moist was glad of that. What he was going to do tonight was going to make one of the wardens a very uncomfortable screw, and some of them were decent enough, especially on death row. But Bellyster was a real old-school screw, a craftsman of small evils, the kind of bully that would take every opportunity to make a prisoner’s life misery. It wasn’t just that he’d gob in your bowl of greasy skilly, but he wouldn’t even have the common decency to do it where you couldn’t see him. He picked on the weak and frightened, too. And there was one good thing. He hated the Watch, and the feeling was mutual. A man could use that. “Come for a pris’ner,” Moist complained. “An’ I been standing in the rain for five minutes!” “And you shall continue to do so, my son, oh, yes indeed, until I’m ready. Show me the docket!” “Says here Jenkins, Owlswick,” said Moist. “Let me see it, then!” “They said I has to hand it over when you give me the pris’ner,” said Moist, a model of stolid insistence. “Oh, we have a lawyer here, do we? All right, Abe, let my learned friend in. ” The little hatch slid back and, after some more clanking, a wicket door opened. Moist stepped through. “Have I seen you before?” said Bellyster, his head on one side. “Only started last week,” said Moist. Behind him, the gate was locked again. The slamming of the bolts echoed in his head. “Why’s there only one of you?” Bellyster demanded. “Don’t know, sir. You’d have to ask my mum and dad. ” “Don’t you be funny with me! There should be two on escort duty!” Moist gave a wet and weary shrug of pure disinterest. “Should there? Don’t ask me. They just told me he’s a little piece of piss who’ll be no trouble. You can check if you like. I heard the palace wants to see him right away. ” The palace. That changed the gleam in the warden’s nasty little eyes. A sensible man didn’t get in the way of the palace. And sending out some dim newbie to do a thankless task on a wild night like this made sense; it was exactly what Bellyster would have done. He held out his hand and demanded: “Docket!” Moist handed over the flimsy paper. The man read it, lips perceptibly moving, clearly willing it to be wrong in some way. There’d be no problem there, however much the man glared; Moist had pocketed a handful of the forms while Mr. Spools was making him a cup of coffee. “He’s goin’ to hang in the morning,” Bellyster said, holding the sheet up to the lantern. “What d’they want him for now?” “Dunno,” said Moist. “Get a move on, will you? I’m on my break in ten minutes. ” The warden leaned forward. “Just for that, friend, I will go and check. Just one escort? Can’t be too careful, can I? Enjoy the rain. ” Oh…kay, thought Moist. All going according to plan.

He’ll be ten minutes having a nice cup of tea, just to teach me a lesson, five minutes to find out the clacks isn’t working, about one second to decide that he’d be blowed if he was going to sort out the fault on a night like this, another second to think: the paperwork was okay, he’d checked for the watermark, and that was the main thing…call it twenty minutes, give or take. Of course, he could be wrong. Anything could happen. Bellyster could be rounding up a couple of his mates right now, or maybe he’d get someone to run out the back way and find a real copper. The future was uncertain. Exposure could be a few seconds away. It didn’t get any better than this. Bellyster left it for twenty-two minutes. Footsteps approached, slowly, and Jenkins appeared, tottering under the weight of the irons, with Bellyster prodding him occasionally with his stick. There was no way the little man could have gone any faster, but he was going to get prodded anyway. “I don’t think I’m going to need the shackles,” said Moist quickly. “You ain’t getting ’em,” said the warden. “The reason bein’, you buggers never bring ’em back!” “Okay,” said Moist. “C’mon, it’s freezing out here. ” Bellyster grunted. He was not a happy man. He bent down, unlocked the shackles, and stood up with his hand once again on the man’s shoulder. His other hand thrust out, holding a clipboard. “Sign!” he commanded. Moist did. And then came the magic bit. It was why the paperwork was so important in the greasy world of turnkeys, thief-takers, and bang-beggars, because what really mattered at any one moment was habeas corpus: whose hand is on the collar? Who is responsible for this corpus? Moist had been through this before as the body in question, and knew the drill. The prisoner moved on a trail of paper. If he was found without a head, then the last person to have signed for a prisoner whose hat was not resting on his neck might well have to answer some stern questions. Bellyster pushed the prisoner forward and spake the time-honored words. “To you, sir!” he barked. “Habby arse corparse!” Moist thrust the clipboard back at him and laid his other hand on Owlswick’s other shoulder. “From you, sir!” he replied. “I habby his arse all right!” Bellyster grunted, and removed his hand. The deed was done, the law was observed, honor was satisfied, and Owlswick Jenkins— —looked up sadly at Moist, kicked him hard in the groin, and went off down the street like a hare. As Moist bent double, all he was aware of outside his little world of pain was the sound of Bellyster laughing himself silly and shouting, “Your bird, milord! You habbyed him all right! Ho yus!” MOIST HAD MANAGED to walk normally by the time he got back to the little room he rented from “I Don’t Know” Jack. He struggled into the golden suit, dried off the amor, bundled it into the bag, stepped out into the alley, and hurried back to the bank. It was harder to get it back in than it had been to get it out. The guards changed over at the same time as the staff left, and in the general milling about, Moist, wearing the tatty gray suit he wore when he wanted to stop being Moist von Lipwig and turn into the world’s most unmemorable man, had strolled out unquestioned. It was all in the mind: the night guards started guarding when everyone had gone home, right? So people going home were no problem, or, if they were, they were not mine. The guard who finally turned up to see who was struggling to unlock the front door gave him a bit of trouble until a second guard, who was capable of modest intelligence, pointed out that if the chairman wanted to get into the bank at midnight then that was fine. He was the damn boss, wasn’t he? Don’t you read the papers? See gold suit? And he had a key! So what if he had a big fat bag? He was coming in with it, right? If he was leaving with it, might be a different matter, ho ho, just my little joke, sir, sorry about that sir… It was amazing what you could do if you had the nerve to try, thought Moist, as he bid the men good-night. F’rinstance, he’d been so theatrically working the key in the lock because it was a Post Office key. He didn’t have one for the bank yet. Even putting the armor back in the locker was not a problem. The guards still walked set routes and the buildings were big and not very well lit. The locker room was empty and unregarded for hours at a time. A lamp was still alight in his new suite. Mr. Fusspot was snoring on his back in the middle of the in tray. A night-light was burning by the bedroom door. In fact there were two, and they were the red, smoldering eyes of Gladys. “Would You Like Me To Make You A Sandwich, Mr. Lipwig?” “No thank you, Gladys. ” “It Would Be No Trouble. There Are Kidneys In The Ice Room. ” “Thank you, but no, Gladys. I’m really not hungry,” said Moist, carefully shutting the door. Moist lay on the bed. Up here, the building was absolutely silent. He’d grown used to his bed in the Post Office, where there was always noise drifting up from the yard. But it was not the silence that kept him awake. He stared up at the ceiling and thought: Stupid, stupid, stupid! In a few hours there would be a shift change at the Tanty. People wouldn’t get too worried about the missing Owlswick until the hangman turned up, looking busy, and then there would be a nervous time when they decided who was going to go to the palace to see if there was any chance of being allowed to hang their prisoner this morning. The man would be miles away by now, and not even a vampire or a werewolf could smell him on a wet and windy night like this. They couldn’t pin anything on Moist, but in the cold, wet light of two a. m. , he could imagine bloody Commander Vimes worrying at this, picking away at it in that thick-headed way of his. He blinked. Where would the little man run to? He wasn’t part of a gang, according to the Watch. He’d just made his own stamps. What kind of a man goes to the trouble of forging a ha’penny stamp? What kind of a man… Moist sat up. Could it be that easy? Well, it might be. Owlswick was crazy enough in a mild, bewildered sort of way. He had the look of one who’d long ago given up trying to understand the world beyond his easel, a man for whom cause and effect had no obvious linkage. Where would a man like that hide? Moist lit the lamp and walked over to the battered wreckage of his wardrobe. Once again he selected the tatty gray suit. It had sentimental value; he had been hanged in it. And it was an unmemorable suit for an unmemorable man, with the additional advantage, unlike black, of not showing up in the dark. Thinking ahead, he went into the kitchen, too, and stole a couple of dust rags from a cupboard. The corridor was reasonably well lit by the lamps every few yards. But lamps create shadows, and in one of them, beside a huge Ping Dynasty vase from Hunghung, Moist was just a patch of gray on gray. A guard walked past, treacherously silent on the thick carpet. When he’d gone, Moist hurried down the flight of marble steps and tucked himself behind a potted palm that someone had thought necessary to put there. The floors of the bank all opened onto the main hall which, like the one in the Post Office, went from ground floor to roof. Sometimes, depending on the layout, a guard on a floor above could see the floor below. Sometimes, the guards walked over uncarpeted marble. Sometimes, on the upper floors, they crossed patches of fine tiling, which rang like a bell. Moist stood and listened, trying to pick up the rhythm of the patrols. There were more than he’d expected. Come on lads, you’re working security, what about the traditional all-night poker game! Don’t you know how to behave? It was like a wonderful puzzle. It was better than night-climbing, better even than Extreme Sneezing! And the really good thing about it was this: if he was caught, why, he was just testing the security! Well done, lads, you found me… But he mustn’t be caught. A guard came upstairs, walking slowly and deliberately.

He leaned against the balustrade and, to Moist’s annoyance, lit the stub of a cigarette. Moist watched from between the fronds while the man leaned comfortably on the marble, looking down at the floor below. He was sure that guards weren’t supposed to do this. And smoking, too! After a few reflective drags, the guard dropped the butt, trod on it, and continued up the stairs. Two thoughts struggled for dominance in Moist’s mind. Screaming slightly louder was: He had a crossbow! Do they shoot first to avoid having to ask questions later? But also there, vibrating with indignation, was a voice saying: He stubbed out that damn cigarette right there on the marble! Those tall brass wossnames with the little bowls of white sand are there for a reason, you know! When the man had disappeared above him, Moist ran down the rest of the flight, slid across the polished marble on his dust-rag-covered boots, found the door that led down to the basement, opened it quickly, and remembered just in time to close it quietly behind him. He shut his eyes and waited for cries or sounds of pursuit. He opened his eyes. There was the usual brilliant light at the far end of the undercroft, but there was no rushing of water. Only the occasional drip demonstrated the depth of the otherwise all-pervading silence. Moist walked carefully past the Glooper, which tinkled faintly, and into the unexplored shadows beneath the wonderful fornication. If we build it, wilt thou comest? he thought. But the hoped-for god never came. It was sad but, in some celestial way, a bit stupid. Well, wasn’t it? Moist had heard that there were maybe millions of little gods floating around in the world, living under rocks, blown about like tumbleweeds, clinging to the topmost branches of trees…They awaited the big moment, the lucky break that might end up with a temple and a priesthood and worshipers to call your own. But they hadn’t come here, and it was easy to see why. Gods wanted belief, not rational thinking. Building the temple first was like giving a pair of wonderful shoes to a man with no legs. Building a temple didn’t mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture. Something akin to a workshop had been built on the end wall of the undercroft, around a huge and ancient fireplace. An Igor was working over an intense, blue-white flame, carefully bending a piece of glass pipe. Behind him, green liquid surged and fizzed in giant bottles: Igors seemed to have a natural affinity with lightning. You could always recognize an Igor. They went out of their way to be recognized. It wasn’t just the musty dusty old suits, or even the occasional extra digit or mismatched eyes. It was that you could probably stand a ball on the top of their head without it falling off. The Igor looked up. “Good morning, thur. And you are…?” “Moist von Lipwig,” said Moist. “And you would be Igor. ” “Got it in one, thur. I have heard many good thingth about you. ” “Down here?” “I alwayth keep an ear to the ground, thur. ” Moist resisted the impulse to look down. Igors and metaphors didn’t go well together. “Well, Igor…the thing is…I want to bring someone into the building without troubling the guards, and I wonder if there was another door down here?” What he did not say, but what passed between them on the ether, was: You’re an Igor, right? And when the mob are sharpening their sickles and trying to break down the door, the Igor is never there. Igors were masters of the unobtrusive exit. “There ith a thmall door we ueth, thur. It can’t be opened from the outthide tho itth never guarded. ” Moist looked longingly at the rainwear on its stand. “Fine. Fine. I’m just popping out, then. ” “You’re the bothth, thur. ” “And I shall be popping back shortly with a man. Er…a gentleman who is not anxious to meet civic authority. ” “Quite, thur. Give them a pitchfork and they think they own the bloody plathe, thur. ” “But he’s not a murderer or anything. ” “I’m an Igor, thur. We don’t athk quethtionth. ” “Really? Why not?” “I don’t know, thur. I didn’t athk. ” Igor took Moist to a small door that opened into a grimy, trash-filled stairwell, half-flooded by the unremitting rain. Moist paused on the threshold, the water already soaking into the cheap suit. “Just one thing, Igor…” “Yeth, thur?” “When I walked past the Glooper just now, there was water in it. ” “Oh, yeth, thur. Ith that a problem?” “It was moving, Igor. Should that be happening at this time of night?” “That? Oh, jutht thyphonic variableth, thur. It happenth all the time. ” “Oh, the old syphonics, eh? Ah, well, that’s a relief—” “Jutht give the barber-thurgeon’th knock when you return, thur. ” “What is the—” The door closed. Igor went back to his workbench and fired up the gas again. Some of the little glass tubes lying beside him on a piece of green felt looked…odd, and reflected the light in disconcerting ways. The point about Igors…the thing about Igors… Well, most people looked no further than the musty suit, lank hair, cosmetic clan scars, and stitching, and the lisp. And this was probably because, apart from the lisp, this was all there was to see. And people forgot, therefore, that most of the people who employed Igors were not conventionally sane. Ask them to build a storm attractor and a set of lightning-storage jars and they would laugh at you. They needed, oh, how they needed, someone in possession of a fully working brain, and every Igor was guaranteed to have at least one of those. Igors were, in fact, smart, which was why they were always elsewhere when the fiery torches hit the windmill. And they were perfectionists. Ask them to build you a device and you wouldn’t get what you asked for. You’d get what you wanted. In its web of reflections, the Glooper glooped. Water rose in a thin glass tube and dripped into a little glass bucket, which tipped into a tiny see-saw and caused a tiny valve to open. OWLSWICK JENKINS’S recent abode, according to the Times, was Short Alley. There wasn’t a house number, because Short Alley was only big enough for one front door. The door in question was shut, but hanging by one hinge. A scrap of black-and-yellow rope indicated, for those who hadn’t spotted the clue of the door, that the place had come to the recent attention of the Watch. The door fell off the hinge when Moist pushed at it, and landed in the stream of water that was gushing down the alley. It wasn’t much of a search, because Owlswick hadn’t bothered to hide. He was in a room on the first floor, surrounded by mirrors and candles, a dreamy look on his face, peacefully painting. He dropped the brush when he saw Moist, grabbed a tube that lay on a bench, and held it in front of his mouth, ready to swallow. “Don’t make me use this! Don’t make me use this!” he warbled, his whole body trembling. “Is it some kind of toothpaste?” said Moist. He sniffed the very lived-in air of the studio and added: “That could help, you know. ” “This is Uba Yellow, the most poisonous paint in the world! Stand back or I will die horribly!” said the forger. “Er…in fact, the most poisonous paint is probably Agatean White, but I’ve run out of that, it is most vexing. ” It occurred to Owlswick that he had lost the tone slightly, and he quickly raised his voice again. “But this is pretty poisonous, all the same!” A gifted amateur picks up a lot, and Moist had always found poisons interesting. “An arsenical compound, eh?” said Moist. Everyone knew about Agatean White. He hadn’t heard of Uba Yellow, but arsenic came in many inviting shades. Just don’t lick your brush. “It’s a horrible way to die,” he said. “You more or less melt over several days. ” “I’m not going back! I’m not going back!” squeaked Owlswick. “They used to use it to make skin whiter,” said Moist, moving a little closer. “Get back! I’ll use it! I swear I’ll use it!” “That’s where we get the phrase ‘drop-dead gorgeous,’” said Moist, closing in. He snatched at Owlswick, who rammed the tube in his mouth. Moist tugged it out, pushing the forger’s clammy little hands out of the way, and examined it.

“Just as I thought,” he said, pocketing the tube. “You forgot to take the cap off. It’s the kind of mistake amateurs always make!” Owlswick hesitated, and then said: “You mean there’s people who commit suicide professionally?” “Look, Mr. Jenkins, I’m here to—” Moist began. “I’m not going back to that jail! I’m not going back!” said the little man, backing away. “That’s fine by me. I want to offer you a—” “They watch me, you know,” Owlswick volunteered. “All the time. ” Ah. This was slightly better than suicide by paint, but only just. “Er…you mean in jail?” said Moist, just to make sure. “They watch me everywhere! There’s one of Them right behind you!” Moist stopped himself from turning, because that way madness lay. Mind you, quite a lot of it was standing right here in front of him. “I’m sorry to hear that, Owlswick,” said Moist. “That’s why—” Moist hesitated, and thought:—not? It had worked on him. “That’s why I’m going to tell you about angels,” he said. PEOPLE SAID THERE were more thunderstorms now that Igors were living in the city. There was no more thunder now, but the rain fell as if it had got all night. Some of it swirled over the top of Moist’s boots as he stood in front of the bank’s unobtrusive side door and tried to remember the barber-surgeon’s knock. Oh, yes. It was the old one that went rat tat a tat-tat TAT TAT! Or, to put it another way: Shave and a haircut—no legs! The door opened instantly. “I would like to apologithe about the lack of creak, thur, but the hingeth jutht don’t theem to—” “Just give me a hand with this lot, will you?” said Moist, bent under the weight of two heavy boxes. “This is Mr. Jenkins. Can you make up a bed for him down here? And is there any chance you could change what he looks like?” “More than you could poththibly imagine, thur,” said Igor happily. “I was thinking of, well, a shave and a haircut. You can do that, can’t you?” Igor gave Moist a pained look. “It is true that technically thurgeonth can perform tonthorial operations—” “No no, don’t touch his throat, please. ” “That meanth yeth, I can give him a haircut, thur,” Igor sighed. “I have had my tonsils out when I was ten,” said Owlswick. “Would you like thome more?” said Igor, looking for some bright edge to the situation. “This is wonderful light!” Owlswick exclaimed, ignoring the offer. “It’s like day!” “Jolly good,” said Moist. “Now get some sleep, Owlswick. Remember what I told you. In the morning, you are going to design the first proper one-dollar bank note, understand?” Owlswick nodded, but his mind was already elsewhere. “You’re with me on this, are you?” said Moist loudly. “A note so good that no one else could do it? I showed you my attempt, yes? I know you can do better, of course. ” He looked nervously at the little man. He wasn’t insane, Moist was sure, but it was clear that mostly, for him, the world happened elsewhere. Owlswick paused in the act of unpacking his box. “Um…I can’t make things up,” he said. “What do you mean?” said Moist. “I don’t know how to make things up,” said Owlswick, staring at a paintbrush as if expecting it to whistle. “But you’re a forger! Your stamps look better than ours!” “Er…yes. But I don’t have your…I don’t know how to get started…I mean, I need something to work from…I mean, once it’s there, I can…” It must be about four o’clock, thought Moist. Four o’clock! I hate it when there are two four o’clocks in the same day… He snatched a piece of paper from Owlswick’s box, and pulled out a pencil. “Look,” he said, “you start with…” What? “Richness,” he told himself, aloud, “richness and solidarity, like the front of the bank. Lots of ornate scrolling, which is hard to copy. A…panorama, a cityscape…yes! Ankh-Morpork, it’s all about the city! Vetinari’s head, because they’ll expect that, and a Great Big One, so they get the message. Oh, the coat of arms, we must have that. And down here—” the pencil scribbled fast “—a space for the chairman’s signature, pardon me, I mean paw print. On the back…well, we are talking fine detail, Owlswick. Some god would give us a bit of gravitas. One of the jollier ones. What’s the name of that god with the three-pronged fork? One like him, anyway. Fine lines, Owlswick, that’s what we want. Oh, and a boat. I like boats. Tell ’em it’s worth a dollar again, too. Um…oh yes, mystic stuff doesn’t hurt, people’ll believe in any damn thing if it sounds old and mysterious. Doth not a penny to the widow outshine the unconquered sun?” “What does that mean?” “I haven’t the foggiest idea,” said Moist, “I just made it up. ” He sketched away for a while and then pushed the paper across to the awestruck Owlswick. “Something like that,” he said. “Have a go. Think you can make something of it?” “I’ll try,” Owlswick promised. “Good. I’ll see you tomo—later on. Igor here will look after you. ” Owlswick was already staring at nothing. Moist pulled Igor aside. “Just a shave and a haircut, okay?” “As you with, thur. Am I right in thinking that the gentleman doeth not want any entanglementth with the Watch?” “Correct. ” “No problem there, thur. Could I thuggetht a change of name?” “Good idea. Any suggestions?” “I like the name Clamp, thur. And for a firtht name, Exorbit thpringth to mind,” Igor sprayed. “Really. Where did it spring from? No, don’t answer that. Exorbit Clamp…” Moist hesitated, but at this time of the night, why argue? Especially when it was this time of the morning. “Exorbit Clamp it is, then. Make certain he forgets even the name of Jenkins,” Moist added, with what, he later realized, was in the circumstances a definite lack of foresight. Moist slipped back up to bed without ever having to duck out of sight. No guard is at his best in the small hours. The place was locked up tight, wasn’t it? Who would break in? Down in the well-fornicated vault, the artist formerly known as Owlswick stared at Moist’s sketches and felt his brain begin to fizz. It was true that he was not, in any proper sense, a madman. He was, by certain standards, very sane. Faced with a world too busy, complex, and incomprehensible to deal with, he’d reduced it to a small bubble just big enough to hold him and his palette. It was nice and quiet in there. All the noises were far away, and They couldn’t spy on him. “Mr. Igor?” he said. Igor looked up from a crate in which he had been rummaging. He held what looked like a metal colander in his hands. “How may I be of thurvith, thur?” “Can you get me some old books with pictures of gods and boats and maybe some views of the city too?” “Indeed, thur. There ith an antiquarian booktheller in Lobbin Clout. ” Igor put the metal device aside, pulled a battered leather bag from under the table, and, after a moment’s thought, put a hammer in it. Even in the world of the newly fledged Mr. Clamp, it was still so late at night that it was too early in the morning. “Er…I’m sure it can wait until daylight,” he volunteered. “Oh, I alwayth thhop at night, thur,” said Igor, “when I’m after…bargainth. ” MOIST WOKE FULLY dressed and far too early, with Mr. Fusspot standing on his chest and squeaking his rubber bone very loudly. As a result, Moist was being dribbled on in no small way. Behind Mr. Fusspot was Gladys. Behind her were two men in black suits. “His lordship has agreed to see you, Mr. Lipwig,” said one of them quite cheerfully. Moist tried to wipe the slobber off his lapel, and only succeeded in shining the suit. “Do I want to see him?” One of the men smiled. “Ooooh yes!” “A HANGING ALWAYS MAKES me hungry,” said Lord Vetinari, working carefully on a hard-boiled egg. “Don’t you find this so?” “Um…I’ve only been hanged once,” said Moist. “I didn’t feel like eating much. ” “I think it is the chilly early-morning air,” said Vetinari, apparently not hearing this. “It puts an edge on the appetite. ” He looked directly at Moist for the first time, and appeared concerned. “Oh dear, you’re not eating, Mr. Lipwig? You must eat. You look a little peaky.

I trust your job is not getting on top of you?” Somewhere en route to the palace, Moist thought, he must have stepped into another world. It had to be something like that. It was the only explanation. “Er…who was hanged?” he said. “Owlswick Jenkins, the forger,” said Vetinari, devoting himself again to the surgical removal of the white from the yolk. “Drumknott, perhaps Mr. Lipwig would like some fruit? Or some of that bowel-lacerating grain-and-nut concoction you favor so much?” “Indeed, sir,” said the secretary. Vetinari leaned forward as if inviting Moist to join a conspiracy and added, “I believe the cook does kippers for the guards. Very fortifying. You really do look quite pale. Don’t you think he looks pale, Drumknott?” “Verging on the wan, sir. ” It was like having acid dropped slowly into your ear. Moist thought frantically, but the best he could come up with was: “Was it a well-attended hanging?” “Not very. I don’t think it was properly advertised,” said Vetinari, “and, of course, his crime was not associated with buckets of gore. That always makes the crowd cheer as you know. But Owlswick Jenkins was there, oh yes. He never cut a throat but he bled the city, drop by drop. ” Vetinari had removed and eaten the whole of the white of the egg, leaving the yolk glowing and unsullied. What would I have done if I was Vetinari and found my prison was about to become a laughingstock? There’s nothing like laughter for undermining authority, Moist thought. More important, what would he have done if he was him, which of course he is… You’d hang someone else, that’s what you’d do. You’d find some wretch of the right general shape who was waiting in the slammer for the hemp fandango and cut him a deal. Oh, he’d hang right enough, but under the name of Owlswick Jenkins. News would get out that the stand-in had been pardoned but died accidentally or something, and his dear ol’ mum or his wife and kids would get an anonymous bag of wonga and escape a little bit of shame. And then the crowd would get their hanging. Now, with any luck, Bellyster had a job washing spittoons, justice or something vaguely similar would be seen to be done, and the message would be sent out that crimes against the city should be contemplated exclusively by those with cast-iron necks, and even then, only maybe. Moist realized he was touching his own neck. Sometimes he woke up in the night, even now, just a moment after the void opened under his feet— Vetinari was looking at him. It wasn’t exactly a smile on his face, but Moist got the nape-twitching feeling that, when he tried to think like Vetinari, his lordship slid in on those thoughts like some big black spider on a bunch of bananas and scuttled around where he shouldn’t. And the certainty hit him. Owlswick wouldn’t have died anyway. Not with a talent like that. He would have dropped through the trapdoor to a new life, just as Moist had. He’d have woken up to be given the angel offer, which for Owlswick would have been a nice light room somewhere, three meals a day, his potty emptied on demand, and all the ink he wanted. From an Owlswick point of view, he’d be getting heaven. And Vetinari…would get the world’s best forger, working for the city. Oh, damn. I’m right in his way. I’m in Vetinari’s way. The orange-gold ball of the rejected yolk glowed on Vetinari’s plate. “Your wonderful plans for paper money are progressing?” said his lordship. “I’m hearing such a lot about them. ” “What? Oh…yes. Er…I’d like to put your head on a dollar bill, please. ” “But of course. A good place to put a head, considering all the places a head might be put. ” Like a spike, yeah. He needs me, Moist thought, as the totally-not-a-threat sank in. But how much? “Look, I—” “Possibly your fertile mind can assist me with a little puzzle, Mr. Lipwig. ” Vetinari dabbed at his lips and pushed back his chair. “Do follow me. Drumknott, please bring the ring. And the tongs, of course, just in case. ” He led the way out onto the balcony, trailed by Moist, and leaned on the balustrade with his back to the foggy city. “Still a lot of cloud about, but I think the sun should break through at any time, don’t you think?” he said. Moist glanced up at the sky. There was a patch of pale gold among the billows, like the yolk of an egg. What was the man doing? “Pretty soon, yes,” he ventured. The secretary handed Vetinari a small box. “That’s the box for your signet ring,” said Moist. “Well done, Mr. Lipwig, observant as ever! Do take it. ” Guardedly, Moist picked up the ring. It was black and had an odd, organic feel to it. The V seemed to stare at him. “Do you notice anything unusual about it?” said Vetinari, watching him carefully. “Feels warm,” said Moist. “Yes it does, doesn’t it,” said Vetinari. “That is because it is made of stygium. It’s called a metal, but I strongly believe that it is an alloy, and a magically constructed one at that. The dwarfs sometimes find it in the Loko Region, and it is extremely expensive. One day I shall write a monograph on its fascinating history, but for now, all I will say is that it is usually only of interest to those who, by inclination or lifestyle, move in darkness—and also, of course, to those who find a life without danger hardly worth living. It can kill, you see. In direct sunshine it heats within a few seconds to a temperature that will melt iron. No one knows why. ” Moist glanced up at the hazy sky. The boiled-egg glow of the sun drifted into another bank of fog. The ring cooled. “Occasionally there is a fad among young assassins for stygium rings. Classically, they wear an ornate black glove over the ring during the day. It’s all about risk, Mr. Lipwig. It’s about living with Death in your pocket. I swear, there are people who will pull a tiger’s tail for mischief. Of course, people who are interested in coolth rather than danger just wear the glove. Be that as it may, less than two weeks ago the only man in the city who carries a stock of stygium and knows how to work it was murdered, late at night. The murderer dropped a peppermint bomb afterward. Who do you think did it?” I’m not going to look up, thought Moist. This is just a game. He wants me to sweat. “What was taken?” he said. “The Watch does not know, because, you see, what was taken was, de facto, not there. ” “All right, what was left behind?” said Moist, and thought: He’s not looking at the sky, either… “Some gems and a few ounces of stygium in the safe,” said Vetinari. “You didn’t ask how the man was killed. ” “How was—” “Crossbow shot to the head, while he was seated. Is this exciting, Mr. Lipwig?” “Hit man, then,” said Moist desperately. “It was planned, because he’d brought the bomb. Maybe the dead man didn’t pay a debt. Perhaps he was a fence and tried to pull a scam. There’s not enough information!” “There never is,” said Vetinari. “My cap comes back from the cleaners subtly changed, and a young man who works there dies in a brawl. A former gardener here comes in at the dead of night to buy a rather worn pair of Drumknott’s old boots. Why? Perhaps we shall never know. Why was a picture of myself stolen from the Royal Art Gallery last month? Who benefits?” “Uh, why was this stygium left in the safe?” “Good question. The key was in the man’s pocket. So what is our motive?” “Not enough information! Revenge? Silence? Maybe he’s made something he shouldn’t? Can you make a dagger out of this stuff?” “Ah, I think you are getting warm, Mr. Lipwig. Not about a weapon, because accretions of stygium much bigger than a ring tend to explode without warning. But he was a rather greedy man, that is true. ” “An argument over something?” said Moist. Yes, I am getting warm, thank you! And what are the tongs for? To pick it up after it’s dropped through my hand? The light was growing; he could see faint shadows on the wall, he felt the sweat trickle down his spine— “An interesting thought. Do give me that ring back,” said Vetinari, proffering the box. Hah! So it was just a show to scare him, after all, Moist thought, flicking the wretched ring into the box.

I’ve never even heard of stygium before today! He must have made it up— He sensed the heat before it, and saw the ring blaze white-hot as it fell into the box. The lid snapped shut, leaving a purple hole in Moist’s vision. “Remarkable, isn’t it,” said Vetinari. “Incidentally, I think you were needlessly silly to hold it all that time. I’m not a monster, you know. ” No, monsters don’t play tricks with your brain, thought Moist. At least, while it’s still inside your head… “Look, about Owlswick, I didn’t mean—” he began, but Vetinari held up a hand. “I don’t know what you are talking about, Mr. Lipwig. In fact, I invited you here in your capacity as de facto deputy chairman of the Royal Bank. I want you to loan me—that is to say, the city—half a million dollars at two percent. You are, of course, at liberty to refuse. ” So many thoughts scrambled for the emergency exit in Moist’s brain that only one remained: We’re going to need some bigger notes… MOIST RAN BACK to the bank, and straight to the little door under the stairs. He liked it down in the undercroft. It was cool and peaceful, apart from the gurgling of the Glooper and the screams. That last bit was wrong, wasn’t it? The pink poisons of involuntary insomnia slopped around in his head as he broke into a run. The former Owlswick was sitting in a chair, apparently clean-shaven except for a pointy little beard. Some kind of metal helmet had been attached to his head, and from it wires ran down into some glowing, clicking device that only an Igor would want to understand. The air smelled of thunderstorms. “What are you doing to this poor man?” Moist yelled. “Changing hith mind, thur,” said Igor, pulling a huge knife switch. The helmet buzzed. Clamp blinked. “It tickles,” he said. “And, for some reason, it tastes of strawberries. ” “You’re putting lightning right into his head!” said Moist. “That’s barbaric!” “No, thur. Barbarianth don’t have the capabilitieth,” said Igor smoothly. “All I’m doing, thur, ith taking out all the bad memo-rieth and thtoring them—” here he pulled a cloth aside to reveal a big jar full of green liquid, containing something rounded and studded with still more wires “—into thith!” “You’re putting his brain into a…parsnip?” “It ith a turnip,” said Igor. “It’s amazing what they can do, isn’t it,” said a voice by Moist’s elbow. He looked down. Mr. Clamp, now helmetless, beamed up at him. He looked shiny and alert, like a better class of shoe salesman. Igor had even managed a suit transplant. “Are you all right?” said Moist. “Fine!” “What did…it feel like?” “Hard to explain,” said Clamp. “But it sounded like the smell of raspberries tastes. ” “Really? Oh. I suppose that’s all right, then. And you really feel okay, in yourself?” said Moist, probing for the dreadful drawback. It had to be there. But Owls—Exorbit looked happy and full of confidence and vim, a man ready to take what life threw at him and knock it out of the court. Igor was winding up his wiring with what, under all those scars, was a very smug look on what was probably his face. Moist felt a pang of guilt. He was an Überwald boy, he’d come down the Vilinus Pass like everyone else, trying to seek his fortune—correction, everybody else’s fortune—and he had no right to pick up the fashionable lowland prejudice against the clan of Igors. After all, didn’t they simply put into practice what so many priests professed to believe: that the body was just a rather heavy cheap suit clothing the invisible, everlasting soul, and therefore, swapping around bits and pieces like spare parts was surely no worse than running a shonky shop for used clothing? It was a constant source of hurt amazement to Igors that people couldn’t see that this was both sensible and provident, at least up until the time when the axe slipped and you needed someone to lend a hand in a hurry. At a time like that, even an Igor looked good. Mostly they looked…serviceable. Igors, with their obliviousness to pain, wonderful healing powers, and marvelous ability to carry out surgery on themselves with the aid of a hand mirror, could presumably not look like a stumpy butler who’d been left in the rain for a month. Igorinas always looked stunning, but there was always something—a beautifully curved scar under one eye, a ring of decorative stitching around a wrist—that was for the Look. That was always disconcerting, but an Igor always had his heart in the right place. Or a heart, at least. “Well, er…well done, Igor,” Moist managed. “Ready to make a start on the ol’ dollar bill, then, Mr. , er, Clamp?” Mr. Clamp’s smile was full of sunbeams. “Done it!” he announced. “Did it this morning!” “Surely not!” “Indeed I have! Come and see!” The little man walked over to a table and lifted a sheet of paper. The bank note gleamed, in purple and gold. It gave off money in rays. It seemed to float above the paper like a small magic carpet. It said wealth and mystery and tradition— “We’re going to make so much money!” said Moist. We’d better, he added to himself. We’ll need to print at least six hundred thousand of these, unless I can come up with some bigger denominations. But there it was, so beautiful you wanted to cry, and make lots more like it, and put them in your wallet. “How did you do it so quickly?” “Well, a lot of it is just geometry,” said Mr. Clamp. “Mr. Igor here was kind enough to make me a little device which was a great help there. It’s not finished, of course, and I haven’t even started on the other side yet. I think I’ll make a start on that now, in fact, while I’m still fresh. ” “You think you can do better?” said Moist, awed in the presence of genius. “I feel so…full of energy!” said Clamp. “That would be the elecktrical fluid, I expect,” said Moist. “No, I mean I can see so clearly what needs to be done! Before, it was all like some horrible weight I had to lift, but now everything is clear and light!” “Well, I’m glad to hear it,” said Moist, not entirely certain that he was. “Do excuse me, I have a bank to run. ” He hurried through the arches and entered the main hall via the unassuming door in time to very nearly collide with Bent. “Ah, Mr. Lipwig, I wondered where you were—” “Is this going to be important, Mr. Bent?” The chief cashier looked offended, as if he’d ever trouble Moist about anything that was not important. “There are lots of men outside the Mint,” he said. “With trolls and carts. They say you want them to install a—” Bent shuddered “—a printing engine!” “That’s right,” said Moist. “They’re from Teemer and Spools. We must print the money here. It’ll look more official and we can control what goes out of the doors. ” “Mr. Lipwig. You are turning the bank into a…a circus!” “Well, I’m the man with the top hat, Mr. Bent, so I suppose I’m the ringmaster!” He said it with a laugh, to lighten the mood a little, but Bent’s face was a sudden thundercloud. “Really, Mr. Lipwig? And whoever told you the ringmaster runs the circus? You are very much mistaken, sir! Why are you cutting off the other shareholders?” “Because they don’t know what a bank is about. Come with me to the Mint, will you?” He strode through the main hall, having to dodge and weave between the queues. “And you know what a bank is about, do you, sir?” said Bent, following behind in his jerky flamingo step. “I’m learning. Why do we have one queue in front of each clerk?” Moist demanded. “It means that if one customer takes up a lot of time, the whole queue has to wait. Then they’ll start hopping sideways from one queue to another and the next thing you know someone has a nasty head wound. Have one big queue and tell people to go to the next clerk free. People don’t mind a long queue if they can see that it’s moving—Sorry, sir!” This was to a customer he’d collided with, who steadied him self, grinned at Moist, and spoke in a voice from a past that should have stayed buried. “Why, if it isn’t my old friend Albert. You’re doin’ well for yourself, ain’t you?” the stranger went on, spluttering the words through ill-fitting teeth.

“You in your shuit o’ lightsh!” MOIST’S PAST LIFE flashed before his eyes. He didn’t even need to go to the bother of dying, although he felt as though he was going to. It was Cribbins! It could only be Cribbins! Moist’s memory sandbagged him, one bag after another. The teeth! Those damn false teeth! They were that man’s pride and joy. He’d prized them out of the mouth of an old man he’d robbed, while the poor devil lay dying of fear! He’d joked that they had a mind of their own! And they spluttered and popped and slurped and fitted so badly that they once turned around in his mouth and bit him in the throat! He used to take them out and talk to them! And, aargh, they were so old, and the stained teeth had been carved from walrus ivory and the spring was so strong that sometimes it’d force the top of his head back so that you could see right up his nose!! It all came back like a bad oyster. He was just Cribbins. No one knew his first name. They’d teamed up oh, ten years ago, and they’d run the old legacy con in Überwald one winter. He was much older than Moist and still had the serious personal problem that made him smell of bananas. And he was a nasty piece of work. Professionals had their pride. There had to be some people you wouldn’t rob, some things you didn’t steal. And you had to have style. If you didn’t have style, you’d never fly. Cribbins didn’t have style. He wasn’t violent, unless there was absolutely no chance of retaliation, but there was some generalized, wretched, wheedling malice about the man that had got on Moist’s soul. “Is there a problem, Mr. Lipwig?” said Bent, glaring at Cribbins. “What? Oh…no…” said Moist. It’s a shakedown, he thought. That bloody picture in the paper. But he can’t prove a thing, not a thing. “You are mistaken, sir,” said Moist. He looked around. The queues were moving, and no one was paying them any attention. Cribbins put his head on one side and gave Moist an amused look. “Mishtaken, shir? Could be. I could be mishtaken. Life on the road, making new chums every day, you know—well, you wouldn’t, would you, on account of not being Albert Shpangler. Funny, though, ’cos you have his smile, sir, hard to change a man’s smile, and your smile ish, like, in front of your face, like you is shlooking out from behind it slurp. Just like young Albert’s smile. Bright lad he wash, very quick, very quick, I taught him everything he knew. ” —And that took about ten minutes, Moist thought, and a year to forget some of it. You’re the sort that gives criminals a bad name— “’Course, sir, you’re wonderin’, can the leopard change his shorts? Can that ol’ rascal I knew all them years ago have forsook the wide and wobbly for the straight an’ narrow?” He glanced at Moist, and amended: “Whoopsh! No, ’course you ain’t, on account of you never seein’ me before. But I was scrobbled in Pseudopolis, you see, thrown into the clink for malicious lingering, and that’s where I found Om. ” “Why? What had he done?” It was stupid, but Moist couldn’t resist it. “Do not jest, sir, do not jest,” said Cribbins solemnly. “I am a changed man, a changed man. It is my task to pass on the good news, shir. ” Here, with the speed of a snake’s tongue, Cribbins produced a battered tin from inside his greasy jacket. “My crimes weigh me down like chains of hot iron, shir, like chains, but I am a man anxious to unburden himshelf by means of good works and confession, the last bein’ mosht important. I have to get a lot off my chest before I can sleep easy, shir. ” He rattled the box. “For the kiddies, shir?” This would probably work better if I hadn’t seen you do this before, Moist thought. The penitent thief must be one of the oldest cons in the book. He said: “Well, I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Cribbins. I’m sorry I’m not the old friend you are looking for. Let me give you a couple of dollars…for the kiddies. ” The coin clanked on the bottom of the tin. “Thank you kindly, Mishter Shpangler,” said Cribbins. Moist flashed a little smile. “In fact I’m not Mr. Spangler, Mr. —” I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed! “—I beg your pardon, l mean Reverend,” he managed, and the average person would not have noticed the tiny pause and quite-adroit save. But Cribbins wasn’t average. “Thank you, Mr. Lipwig,” he said, and Moist heard the drawn out mister and the explosively sardonic “Lipwig. ” They meant “Gotcha!” Cribbins winked at Moist and strolled off through the banking hall, shaking his tin, his teeth accompanying him with a medley of horrible dental noises. “Woe and thrice woe szss! is the man who stealssh by words, for his tongue shall cleave to the roof of his mouth pock! spare a few coppersh for the poor orphans sweessh! Brothers and shisters! to those svhip! that hath shall be giventh, generally spheaking…” “I shall call the guards,” said Mr. Bent firmly. “We don’t allow beggars in the bank. ” Moist grabbed his arm. “No,” he said urgently, “not with all these people in here. Manhandling a man of the cloth and all that. It won’t look good. I think he’ll be going soon. ” Now he’ll let me stew, thought Moist, as Cribbins headed nonchalantly toward the door. That’s his way. He’ll spin it out. Then he’ll hit me for money, again and again. Okay, but what could Cribbins prove? But did there need to be proof? If he started talking about Albert Spangler, it could get bad. Would Vetinari throw him to the wolves? He might. He probably would. You could bet your hat that he wouldn’t play the resurrection game without lots of contingency plans. Well, he had some time, at least. Cribbins wouldn’t go for a quick kill. He liked to watch people wriggle. “Are you all right?” said Bent. Moist came back to reality. “What? Oh, fine,” he said. “You should not encourage that sort of person in here, you know. ” Moist shook himself. “You are right about that, Mr. Bent. Let’s get to the Mint, shall we?” “Yes, sir. But I warn you, Mr. Lipwig, these men will not be won over by fancy words!” “INSPECTORS…” said Mr. Shady, ten minutes later, turning the word over in his mouth like a candy. “I need people who value the high traditions of the Mint,” said Moist, and did not add: Like making coins very, very slowly and taking your work home with you. “Inspectors,” said Mr. Shady again. Behind him, the Men of the Sheds held their caps in their hands and watched Moist owlishly, except when Mr. Shady was speaking; then they stared at the back of the man’s neck. They were all in Mr. Shady’s official shed, which was built high up on the wall, like a swallow’s nest. It creaked whenever anyone moved. “And of course, some of you will still be needed to deal with the outworkers,” Moist went on, “but in the main it will be your job to see that Mr. Spools’s men arrive on time, comport themselves as they should, and observe proper security. ” “Security,” said Mr. Shady, as if tasting the word. Moist saw a flicker of evil light in the eyes of the Men. It said: These buggers will be taking over our Mint but they’ll have to go past us to get out of the door. Hoho! “And of course you can keep the sheds,” said Moist. “I also have plans for commemorative coins and other items, so your skills will not be wasted. Fair enough?” Mr. Shady looked at his fellows and then back to Moist. “We’d like to talk about this,” he said. Moist nodded at him, and at Bent, and led the way down the creaking, swaying staircase to the floor of the Mint, where the parts of the new press were already being stacked up. Bent gave a little shudder when he saw it. “They won’t accept, you know,” he said with unconcealed hope in his voice. “They’ve been doing things the same way here for hundreds of years! And they are craftsmen!” “So were the people who used to make knives out of flint,” said Moist. In truth, he’d been amazed at himself. It must have been the encounter with Cribbins. It had made his brain race. “Look, I don’t like to see skills unused,” he said, “but I’ll give them better wages and a decent job and use of the Sheds.

They wouldn’t get an offer like that in a hundred years—” Someone was coming down the swaying stairs. Moist recognized him as Young Alf, who, amazingly, had managed to be employed in the Mint while still too young to shave though definitely old enough to have spots. “Er, the men say, will there be badges?” said the boy. “Actually, I was thinking of uniforms,” said Moist. “Silver breastplate with the city’s coat of arms on it and lightweight silver chain mail, to look impressive when we have visitors. ” The boy pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and consulted it. “What about clipboards?” he said. “Certainly,” said Moist. “And whistles, too. ” “And, er, it’s def ’nite about the Sheds, right?” “I’m a man of my word,” said Moist. “You are a man of words, Mr. Lipwig,” said Bent as the boy scuttled back up the rocking steps, “but I fear they will lead us into ruin. The bank needs solidarity, reliability…everything that gold represents!” Moist spun around. It had not been a good day. It had not been a good night, either. “Mr. Bent, if you do not like what I am doing, feel free to leave. You’ll have a good reference and all the wages due to you!” Bent looked as though he’d been slapped. “Leave the bank? Leave the bank? How could I do that? How dare you!” A door slammed above them. They looked up. The Men of the Sheds were coming down the stairs in solemn procession. “Now we shall see,” hissed Bent. “These are men of solid worth. They’ll have nothing to do with your gaudy offer, Mr…. Ringmaster!” The Men reached the bottom of the steps. Without a word they all looked at Mr. Shady, except for Mr. Shady, who looked at Moist. “The sheds stay, right?” he said. “You’re giving in?” said Mr. Bent, aghast. “After hundreds of years?” “Well,” said Mr. Shady, “me and the boys had a bit of a talk and, well, at a time like this, a man’s got to think of his shed. And the outworkers will be all right, right?” “Mr. Shady, I’d go to the barricades for the elim,” said Moist. “And we talked to some of the lads from the Post Office last night and they said we could trust Mr. Lipwig’s word ’cos he’s as straight as a corkscrew. ” “A corkscrew?” said Bent, shocked. “Yeah, we asked about that, too,” said Shady. “And they said he acts curly but that’s okay ’cos he damn well gets the corks out!” Mr. Bent’s expression went blank. “Oh,” he said. “This is clearly some kind of judgment-clouding joke, which I do not understand. If you will excuse me, I have a great deal of work to attend to. ” His feet rising and falling, as though he was walking on an invisible staircase, Mr. Bent departed in jerky haste. “Very well, gentlemen, thank you for your helpful attitude,” said Moist, watching the retreating figure, “and for my part I will get those uniforms ordered this afternoon. ” “You’re a fast mover, Master,” said Mr. Shady. “Stand still and your mistakes catch up with you!” said Moist. They laughed, because he’d said it, but the face of Cribbins rose up in his mind and, quite unconsciously, he put his hand in his pocket and touched the blackjack. He’d have to learn how to use it now, because a weapon you held and didn’t know how to use belonged to your enemy. He’d bought it—why? Because it was like the lock picks, a token to prove, if only to himself, that he hadn’t given in, not all the way, that a part of him was still free. It was like the other ready-made identities, the escape plans, the caches of money and clothes. They told him that any day he could leave all this, melt into the crowd, say good-bye to the paperwork and the timetable and the endless, endless wanting. They told him that he could give it up anytime he liked. Any hour, any minute, any second. And because he could, he didn’t…every hour, every minute, every second. There had to be a reason why. “Mr. Lipwig! Mr. Lipwig!” A young clerk dodged and weaved through the busyness of the Mint, and stopped in front of Moist, panting. “Mr. Lipwig, there’s a lady in the hall to see you and we’ve thanked her for not smoking three times and she’s still doing it!” The image of the wretched Cribbins vanished, and was replaced with a much better one. Ah, yes. That reason. MISS ADORA BELLE Dearheart, known to Moist as Spike, was standing in the middle of the banking hall. Moist just headed for the smoke. “Hello, you,” she said, and that was that. “Can you take me away from all this?” She gestured with her nonsmoking hand. Staff had meaningfully surrounded her with tall brass ashtrays, full of white sand. Moist shifted a couple of them, and let her out. “How was—” he began, but she interrupted. “We can talk on the way. ” “Where are we going?” Moist asked hopefully. “Unseen University,” said Adora Belle, heading for the door. She had a large woven bag on her shoulder. It was apparently stuffed with straw. “Not lunch then?” said Moist. “Lunch can wait. This is important. ” “Oh. ” IT WAS LUNCHTIME at Unseen University, where every meal is important. It was hard to find a time when some meal or other was not in progress there. The library was unusually empty, and Adora Belle walked up to the nearest wizard who did not seem gainfully employed and demanded: “I want to see the Cabinet of Curiosity right away!” “I don’t think we have anything like that,” said the wizard. “Who’s it by?” “Please don’t lie. My name is Adora Belle Dearheart, so as you can imagine I’ve got a pretty short temper. My father brought me with him when you people asked him to come and look at the Cabinet, about twenty years ago. You wanted to find out how the doors worked. Someone must remember. It was in a big room. A very big room. And it had lots and lots of drawers. And the funny thing about them was—” The wizard raised his hands quickly, as if to ward off further words. “Can you wait just one minute?” he suggested. They waited for five. Occasionally, a pointy-hatted head peered around a bookshelf to look at them, and ducked away if it thought it’d been spotted. Adora Belle lit a fresh cigarette. Moist pointed to a sign which said IF YOU ARE SMOKING, THANK YOU FOR BEING BEATEN ABOUT THE HEAD. “That’s just for show,” said Adora Belle, expelling a stream of blue smoke. “All wizards smoke like chimneys. ” “Not in here, I notice,” said Moist, “and possibly this is because of all the highly inflammable books? It might be a good idea to—” He felt the swish of the air and got a whiff of rain forest as something heavy swung overhead and disappeared upward into the gloom, now trailing a stream of blue smoke. “Hey, someone took my—” Adora Belle began, but Moist pushed her out of the way as the thing swung back again and a banana knocked his hat off. “They are a bit more definite about things here,” he said, picking up his hat. “If it’s any comfort, the Librarian probably intended to hit me. He can be quite gallant. ” “Ah, you’re Mr. Lipwig, I recognize the suit!” said an elderly wizard, who clearly hoped he was appearing as if by magic but, in fact, had appeared as if by stepping out from behind a bookcase. “I know I am the Chair of Indefinite Studies here, for my sins. And you, ahaha, by a process of elimination, will be Miss Dearheart, who remembers the Cabinet of Curiosity?” The Chair of Indefinite Studies stepped closer and looked conspiratorial. He lowered his voice. “I wonder if I can persuade you to forget about it?” “Not a chance,” said Adora Belle. “We like to think of it as one of our better-kept secrets, you see…” “Good. I’ll help you keep it,” said Adora Belle. “Nothing I could say could change your mind?” “I don’t know,” said Adora Belle. “Abracadabra, maybe? Got your spell book?” Moist was impressed at that. She could be s…spiky. “Oh…that type of lady,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies wearily. “Modern. Oh well, I suppose you’d better come with me, then. ” “What’s this all about please?” hissed Moist, as they followed the wizard. “I need something translated,” said Adora Belle, “in a hurry. ” “Aren’t you glad to see me?” “Oh yes. Lots. But I need something translated in a hurry. ” “And this cabinet thing can help?” “Perhaps.

” “Perhaps? ‘Perhaps’ could wait until after lunch, couldn’t it? If it was ‘definitely,’ now, I could have seen the point—” “Oh dear, I’m afraid I’m lost again, and through no fault of my own, I might add,” grumbled the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “I’m afraid, they keep changing the parameters and they do leak so, I don’t know, what with one thing and another you can’t call your door your own these days…” “What were your sins?” said Moist, giving up on Adora Belle. “Pardon? Oh dear, what is that stain on the ceiling? Probably best not to know…” “What were the sins you committed in order to become the Chair of Indefinite Studies?” Moist persisted. “Oh, I just tend to say that for something to say,” said the wizard, opening a door and slamming it again quickly. “But right now I’m inclined to think I must have committed a few, and they must have been whoppers. It’s just unbearable at the moment, of course. They’re saying that everything in the whole wretched universe is technically indefinable, but what am I supposed to do about it? And of course this damn Cabinet is playing havoc with the place again; I thought we’d seen the last of it fifteen years ago…Oh, yes, mind the squid, we’re a bit puzzled about that, actually…ah, here’s the right door,” the Chair sniffed, “and it’s twenty-five feet away from where it ought to be. What did I tell you…” The door opened and then it was just a matter of knowing where to start. Moist opted for letting his jaw drop, which was clean and simple. The room was bigger than it ought to be. No room ought to be more than a mile across, especially when outside in the corridor, which looked quite ordinary if you ignored the giant squid, it appeared to have perfectly normal rooms on either side of it. It shouldn’t have a ceiling so high that you couldn’t see it, either. It simply should not fit. “It’s quite easy to do this, actually,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as they stared. “At least, so they tell me,” he added wistfully. “Apparently, if you shrink time you can expand space. ” “How do they do that?” Moist asked, staring at the…structure that was the Cabinet of Curiosity. “I’m proud to say I haven’t got the faintest idea,” said the Chair. “Frankly, I’m afraid I got rather lost round about the time we stopped using dribbly candles. I know it’s technically my department but I find it best just to let them get on with it. They do insist on trying to explain things, which of course does not help…” Moist, if he’d had any mental picture at all, was expecting a cabinet. After all, that’s what it was called, yes? But what filled most of the impossible room was a tree, in the general shape of a venerable spreading oak. It was a tree in winter; there were no leaves. And then, when the mind had found a familiar, friendly simile, it had to come to terms with the fact that the tree was made of filing cabinets. They appeared to be wooden ones, but this didn’t help much. High up in what had to be called the branches, wizards on broomsticks were engaged in who-knew-what. They looked like insects. “It is a bit of a shock when you see it for the first time, isn’t it,” said a friendly voice. Moist looked around at a young wizard, at least by the standards of wizards, who had round spectacles, a clipboard, and the shiny sort of expression that says: I probably know more than you can possibly imagine, but I am still reasonably happy to talk even to people like you. “You’re Ponder Stibbons, right?” said Moist. “The only one who does any work in the university?” Other wizards turned their heads at this, and Ponder went red. “That’s quite untrue! I just pull my weight, like any other member of the faculty,” he said, but a slight tone to his voice suggested that perhaps the other faculty members had far too much weight and not enough pull. “I am in charge of the Cabinet Project, for my sins. ” “Why? What did you do?” said Moist, at sea in a world of sin. “Something worse?” “Er…volunteered to take it over,” said Ponder. “And I have to say we have learned more in the last six months than in the past twenty-five years. The Cabinet is a truly amazing artifact. ” “Where did you find it?” “In the attic, tucked behind a collection of stuffed frogs. We think people gave up trying to make it work years ago. Of course, that was back in the dribbly-candle era,” said Ponder, earning a snort from the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Modern techno-mancy is somewhat more useful. ” “All right, then,” said Moist, “what does it do?” “We don’t know. ” “How does it work?” “We don’t know. ” “Where did it come from?” “We don’t know. ” “Well, that seems to be all,” said Moist sarcastically. “Oh no, one last one: what is it? And let me tell you, I’m agog. ” “That may be the wrong sort of question to ask,” said Ponder, shaking his head. “Technically it appears to be a classic Bag of Holding but with n mouths, where n is the number of items in an eleven-dimensional universe, which are not currently alive, not pink, and can fit in a cubical drawer 14. 14 inches on a side, divided by P. ” “What’s P?” “That may be the wrong sort of question. ” “When I was a little girl, it was just a magic box,” Adora Belle broke in, in a dreamy voice. “It was in a much smaller room and when it unfolded a few times there was a box with a golem’s foot in it. ” “Ah, yes, in the third iteration,” said Ponder. “They couldn’t get much further than that in those days. Now, of course, we’ve got controlled recursion and aim-driven folding that effectively reduces collateral boxing to 0. 13 percent, a twelvefold improvement in the last year alone!” “That’s great!” said Moist, feeling that it was the least he could do. “Does Miss Dearheart want to see the item again?” said Ponder, lowering his voice. Adora Belle still had a faraway look in her eyes. “I think so,” said Moist. “She’s very big on golems. ” “We were about to fold up for today in any case,” said Ponder. “It won’t hurt to pick up the Foot on the way. ” He took a large megaphone from a bench and held it to his lips. “THE CABINET CLOSES IN THREE MINUTES, GENTLEMEN. ALL RESEARCHERS INSIDE THE SAFETY AREA NOW, PLEASE. BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!” “Be there or be square?” said Moist, as Ponder lowered the megaphone. “Oh, a couple of years ago someone ignored the warning and, um, when the Cabinet folded up, he temporarily became a curiosity. ” “You mean he ended up inside a fourteen-inch cube?” said Moist, horrified. “Mostly. Look, we really would be very happy if you didn’t tell anyone about the Cabinet, thank you. We know how to use it, we think, but it might not be the way it was intended to be used. We don’t know what it’s for, as you put it, or who built it or even if they are completely the wrong questions to ask. Nothing in it is bigger than about fourteen inches square, but we don’t know why this is, or who it is who decides they are curious, or why, and we certainly don’t know why it contains nothing pink. It’s all very embarrassing. I’m sure you can keep a secret, Mr. Lipwig?” “You’d be amazed. ” “Oh? Why?” “That’s the wrong kind of question. ” “You do know something quite important about the Cabinet,” said Adora Belle, apparently waking up. “You know it wasn’t built for or by a girl between the ages of four and, oh, eleven years old. ” “How do we know that?” “No pink. Trust me. No girl in that age group would leave out pink. ” “Are you sure? That’s wonderful!” said Ponder, making a note on his clipboard. “That’s certainly worth knowing. Let’s get the Foot, then, shall we?” The broomstick-riding wizards had touched down now. Ponder cleared his throat and picked up the megaphone. “ALL DOWN? WONDERFUL. HEX—BE SO GOOD AS TO FOLD, PLEASE!” There was silence for a while, and then a distant clattering noise began to grow, up near the ceiling. It sounded like gods shuffling wooden playing cards that happened to be a mile high. “Hex is our thinking engine,” said Ponder. “We’d hardly be able to explore the box at all without him. ” The clattering was becoming louder and faster.

“You might find your ears aching,” said Ponder, raising his voice. “Hex tries to control the speed, but it takes finite time for the ventilators to get air back into the room. THE VOLUME OF THE CABINET CHANGES VERY FAST, YOU SEE!” This was shouted against the thunder of collapsing drawers. They slammed in on themselves far too fast for the human eye to follow as the edifice shrunk and folded and slid and rattled down into house size, shed size, and, finally, in the middle of the huge space, unless it was some kind of time, stood a small polished cabinet, about a foot and a half on a side, standing on four beautifully carved legs. The Cabinet’s doors clicked shut. “Slowly unfold to specimen 1,109,” said Ponder, in the ringing silence. The doors opened. A deep drawer slid out. It went on sliding. “Just follow me,” said Ponder, strolling toward the Cabinet. “It’s fairly safe. ” “Er, a drawer about a hundred yards long has just slid out of a box about fourteen inches square,” said Moist, in case he was the only one to notice. “Yes. That’s what happens,” said Ponder, as the drawer slid back about halfway. Its side, Moist saw, was a line of drawers. So drawers opened…out of drawers. Of course, Moist thought, in eleven-dimensional space that was the wrong thing to think. “It’s a sliding puzzle,” said Adora Belle, “but with lots more directions to slide. ” “That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way,” said Ponder. Adora Belle’s eyes narrowed. She had not had a cigarette in ten minutes. The long drawer extruded another drawer at right angles. All along the sides of it were, yes, yet more drawers. One of these extended slowly. Moist took a risk and tapped on what appeared to be perfectly ordinary wood. It made a perfectly ordinary noise. “Should I worry that I just saw a drawer slide through another drawer?” he said. “No,” said Ponder. “The Cabinet is trying to make four-dimensional sense of something that is happening in eleven or, possibly, ten. ” “Trying? Do you mean it’s alive?” “Aha! The right type of question!” “I bet you don’t know the answer, though. ” “You are correct. But you must admit it’s an interesting question not to know the answer to. And, yes, here we have the Foot. Hold and collapse please, Hex. ” The drawers collapsed back into themselves in a series of crashes, much shorter and less dramatic than before, leaving the Cabinet looking demure and antique and slightly bow-legged. It had little claws as feet, a cabinet-maker’s affectation that always annoyed Moist in a low-grade way. Did they think the things moved around in the night? Or maybe the Cabinet really did. And the Cabinet’s doors were open. Nestling inside, and only just fitting, was a golem’s foot, or at least most of one. Once, golems were delicate and beautiful. Once, the very best sculptors probably made them to rival the most beautiful of statues, but long since then the fumble-fingered many who could barely make a snake out of clay found that bashing the stuff into the shape of a big, hulking gingerbread man worked just as well. This foot was one of the early kind. It was made of a clay like white china, with patterns of tiny raised markings in yellow, black, and red. A little brass plate in front of it was engraved, in Überwaldean: FOOT OF UMNIAN GOLEM, MIDDLE PERIOD. “Well, whoever made the Cabinet comes from—” “Anyone looking at the labels sees it in their native tongue,” said Ponder wearily. “The markings apparently indicate that it did indeed come from the city of Um, according to the late Professor Flead. ” “Um?” said Moist. “Um what? They weren’t sure what to call the place?” “Just Um,” said Ponder. “Very ancient. About sixty thousand years, I believe. Back in the Clay Age. ” “The first golem-makers,” said Adora Belle. She unslung the bag and started to rummage in the straw. Moist tapped the foot. It seemed eggshell-thin. “It’s some sort of ceramic,” said Ponder. “No one knows how they made it. The Umnians even baked boats out of the stuff. ” “Did they work?” “Up to a point,” said Ponder. “Anyway, the city was totally destroyed in the first war with the ice giants. There’s nothing there now. We think that the foot was put in the Cabinet a long time ago. ” “Or will be dug up some time in the future, perhaps?” said Moist. “That could very well be the case,” said Ponder gravely. “In which case, won’t that be a bit of a problem? I mean, can it be in the ground and in the cabinet at the same time?” “That, Mr. Lipwig, is—” “The wrong type of question?” “Yes. The box exists in ten or possibly eleven dimensions. Practically anything may be possible. ” “Why only eleven dimensions?” “We don’t know,” said Ponder. “It might be simply that more would be silly. ” “Can you take the foot out, please?” said Adora Belle, who was now brushing wisps of straw off a long package. Ponder nodded, lifted out the relic with great care, and placed it gently on the bench behind them. “What would have happened if you had drop—” Moist began. “Wrong type of question, Mr. Lipwig!” Adora Belle put the bundle down beside the Foot and unwrapped it with care. It contained a part of a golem’s arm, two feet long. “I knew it! The markings are the same!” she said. “And there’s a lot more on my piece. Can you translate it?” “Me? No,” said Ponder. “The arts are not my field,” he added, in a way that suggested his was a pretty superior field with much better flowers in it. “You need Professor Flead. ” “You mean the one who’s dead?” said Moist. “He’s dead at the moment, but I’m sure that in the interests of discretion my colleague Dr. Hicks can arrange for the professor to talk to you after lunch. ” “When he’ll be less dead?” said Moist. “When Dr. Hicks has had lunch,” said Ponder patiently. “Professor Flead will be pleased to receive visitors, er, especially Miss Dearheart. He is the world expert on Umnian. Every word has hundreds of meanings, I understand. ” “Can I take the Foot?” said Adora Belle. “No,” said Ponder. “It’s ours. ” “That was the wrong type of answer,” said Adora Belle, picking up the Foot. “On behalf of the Golem Trust, I am acquiring this golem. If you can prove ownership, we will pay you a fair price for it. ” “Would that it were that simple,” said Ponder, politely taking it from her, “but, you see, if a Curiosity is taken away from the Cabinet Room for more than fourteen hours and fourteen seconds, the Cabinet stops working. Last time it took us three months to restart it. But you can drop in at any time to, er, check that we’re not mistreating it. ” Moist laid a hand on Adora Belle’s arm to forestall an Incident. “She’s very passionate about golems,” he said. “The Trust digs them up all the time. ” “That’s very commendable,” said Stibbons. “I’ll talk to Dr. Hicks. He’s the head of the Department of Postmortem Communications. ” “Postmortem Com…” Moist began. “Isn’t that the same as necroman—” “I said the Department of Postmortem Communications,” said Ponder very firmly. “I suggest you come back at three o’clock. ” “DID ANYTHING ABOUT that conversation strike you as normal?” said Moist, as they stepped out into the sunlight. “Actually, I thought it went very well,” said Adora Belle. “This wasn’t how I imagined your homecoming,” said Moist. “Why the rush? Is there some problem?” “Look, we found four golems at the dig,” said Adora Belle. “That’s…good, yes?” said Moist. “Yes! And you know how deep they were?” “I couldn’t guess. ” “Guess!” “I don’t know!” said Moist, bewildered at suddenly having to play “What’s My Depth?” “Two hundred feet down? That’s more than—” “Half a mile underground. ” “Impossible! That’s deeper than coal!” “Keep it down, will you? Look, is there somewhere we can go and talk?” “How about—the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork? There’s a private dining room. ” “And they’ll let us eat there, will they?” “Oh yes. The chairman is a great friend of mine,” said Moist. “He is, is he?” “He certainly is,” said Moist.

“Why, only this morning he licked my face!” Adora Belle stopped and turned to stare at him. “Really?” she said. “Then it’s just as well I got back when I did. ” CHAPTER 7 The joy of collops Mr. Bent goes out to lunch The Dark Fine Arts Amateur thespians, avoidance of embarrassment by The Pen of Doom! Professor Flead gets cozy Lust comes in many varieties A hero of banking! Cribbins’s cup runneth over THE SUN SHONE through the window of the bank’s dining room onto a scene of perfect pleasure. “You should sell tickets,” said Adora Belle dreamily, with her chin in her hands. “People who are depressed would come here and go away cured. ” “It’s certainly hard to watch it happening and be sad,” said Moist. “It’s the enthusiastic way he tries to turn his mouth inside out,” said Adora Belle. There was a gulp from Mr. Fusspot as the last of the sticky toffee pudding went down. He then turned the bowl over hopefully, in case there was any more. There never had been, but Mr. Fusspot was not a dog to bow down to the laws of causality. “So…” said Adora Belle, “a mad old lady—all right, a very astute mad old lady—died and gave you her dog, which sort of wears this bank on its collar, and you’ve told everyone that gold is worth less than potatoes, and you broke a dastardly criminal out of your actual death row, he’s in the cellar designing ‘bank notes’ for you, you’ve upset the nastiest family in the city, people are queuing to join the bank because you make them laugh…what have I missed?” “I think my secretary is, uh, getting sweet on me. Well, I say secretary, she’s sort of assumed that she is. ” Some fiancées would have burst into tears or shouted. Adora Belle burst out laughing. “And she’s a golem,” said Moist. The laughter stopped. “That’s not possible. They don’t work that way. Anyway, why should a golem think he’s female? It’s never happened before. ” “I bet there haven’t been many emancipated golems before. Besides, why should he think he’s male? And she bats her eyelashes at me…well, that’s what she thinks she’s doing, I think. The counter girls are behind this. Look I’m serious. Trouble is, so is she. ” “I’ll have a word with him…or, as you say, her. ” “Good. The other thing is, there’s this man—” Aimsbury poked his head around the door. He was in love. “Would you like some more minced collops, miss?” he said, waggling his eyebrows as if to indicate that the joys of minced collops were a secret known only to a few. “You’ve still got more?” said Adora Belle, looking down at her plate. Not even Mr. Fusspot could have cleaned it better, and she’d already cleaned it twice. “Do you know what they are?” said Moist, who’d settled again for an omelet made by Peggy. “Do you?” “No!” “Nor do I. But my granny used to make them and they are one of my happiest childhood memories, thank you very much. Don’t spoil it. ” Adora Belle beamed at the delighted chef. “Yes please, Aimsbury, just a little more then. And could I just say that the flavor could really be brought out by just a touch of gar—” “YOU ARE NOT eating, Mr. Bent,” said Cosmo. “Perhaps a little of this pheasant?” The chief cashier looked around nervously, uneasy in this grand house full of art and servants. “I…I want to make it clear that my loyalty to the bank is—” “—beyond question, Mr. Bent. Of course. ” Cosmo pushed a silver tray toward him. “Do eat something. Now you have come all this way. ” “But you are hardly eating at all, Mr. Cosmo. Just bread and water!” “I find it helps me think. Now, what was it you wanted to—” “They all like him, Mr. Cosmo! He just talks to people and they like him! And he is really set on dismissing gold. Think of it, sir! Where would we find true worth? He says it’s all about the city but that puts us at the mercy of politicians! It’s trickery again!” “A little brandy would do you good, I think,” said Cosmo. “And what you say is solid-gold truth, but where is our way forward?” Bent hesitated. He did not like the Lavish family. They crawled over the bank like ivy, but at least they didn’t try to change things and at least they believed in gold. And they weren’t silly. Mavolio Bent had a definition of “silly” that most people would have considered a touch on the broad side. Laughter was silly. Theatricals, poetry, and music were silly. Clothes that weren’t gray, black, or at least of undyed cloth were silly. Pictures of things that weren’t real were silly (pictures of things that were real were unnecessary). The ground state of being was silliness, which had to be overcome with every mortal fiber. Missionaries from the stricter religions would have found in Mavolio Bent an ideal convert, except that religion was extremely silly. Numbers were not silly. Numbers held everything together. And gold was not silly. The Lavishes believed in counting and in gold. Mr. Lipwig treated numbers as if they were something to play with, and he said gold was just lead on holiday! That was more than silly, it was inappropriate behavior, a scourge that he had torn from his breast after years of struggle. The man had to go. Bent had worked his way up the echelons of the bank over many years, fighting every natural disadvantage, and it hadn’t been to see this…person make a mockery of it all! No! “A man came to the bank again today,” he said. “He was very odd. And he seemed to know Mr. Lipwig, but he called him Albert Spangler. Talked as if he knew him from long ago and I think Mr. Lipwig was upset at that. Name of Cribbins, or so Mr. Lipwig called him. Very old clothes, very dusty. He made out he was a holy man, but I don’t think so. ” “And that was what was odd, was it?” “No, Mr. Cosmo—” “Just call me Cosmo, Malcolm. We surely needn’t stand on ceremony. ” “Er…yes,” said Mavolio Bent. “Well, no, it wasn’t that. It was his teeth. They were those dine-chewers, and they moved and rattled when he spoke, causing him to slurp. ” “Ah, the old type with the springs,” said Cosmo. “Very good. And Lipwig was annoyed?” “Oh, yes. And the strange thing was, he said he didn’t know the man but he called him by name. ” Cosmo smiled. “Yes, that is strange. And the man left?” “Well, yes, si—Mr. —Cosmo,” said Bent. “And then I came here. ” “You have done very well, Matthew! Should the man come in again, could you please follow him and try to find out where he is staying?” “If I can, si—Mr. —Cosmo. ” “Good man!” Cosmo helped Bent out of his chair, shook his hand, waltzed him to the door, opened the door, and ushered him out all in one smooth, balletic movement. “Hurry back, Mr. Bent, the bank needs you!” he said, closing the door. “He’s a strange creature, don’t you think, Drumknott?” I wish he’d stop doing that, Heretofore thought. Does he think he’s Vetinari? What do they call those fishes that swim alongside sharks, making themselves useful so they don’t get eaten? That’s me, that’s what I’m doing, just hanging on, because it’s much safer than letting go. “How would Vetinari find a badly dressed man, new to the city, with ill-fitting teeth, Drumknott?” said Cosmo. Fifty dollars a month and all found, thought Heretofore, snapping out of a brief marine nightmare. Never forget it. And in another few days you’re free. “He makes much use of the Beggars’ Guild, sir,” he said. “Ah, of course. See to it. ” “There will be expenses, sir. ” “Yes, Drumknott, I’m conscious of the fact. There are always expenses. And the other matter?” “Soon, sir, soon. This is not a job for Cranberry, sir. I’m having to bribe at the highest level. ” Heretofore coughed. “Silence is expensive, sir…” MOIST ESCORTED ADORA Belle back to the university in silence. But the important thing was that nothing had been broken and no one was killed. Then, as if reaching a conclusion after much careful thought, Adora Belle said: “I worked in a bank for a while, you know, and hardly anyone got stabbed. ” “I’m sorry, I forgot to warn you. And I did push you out of the way in time. ” “I must admit that the way you threw me to the floor quite turned my head.

” “Look, I’m sorry, okay? And so is Aimsbury! And now will you tell me what all this is about? You found four golems, right? Have you brought them back?” “No, the tunnel collapsed before we got down that far. I told you, they were half a mile down, under millions of tons of sand and mud. For what it’s worth, we think there was a natural ice dam up in the mountains, which burst and flooded half the continent. The stories about Um say it was destroyed in a flood, so that fits. The golems were washed away with the rubble, which ended up against some chalk cliffs by the sea. ” “How did you find out they were down there? It’s…well, it’s nowhere!” “The usual way. One of our golems heard one singing. Imagine that. It’s been underground for sixty thousand years…” In the night under the world, in the pressure of the depth, in the crushing of the dark…a golem sang. There were no words. The song was older than words; it was older than tongues. It was the call of the common clay, and it carried for miles. It traveled along fault lines, made crystals sing in harmony in dark, unmeasured caverns, followed rivers that never saw the sun… …and out of the ground and up the legs of a golem from the Golem Trust, who was pulling a wagon loaded with coal along the region’s one road. When he arrived in Ankh-Morpork, he told the Trust. That was what the Trust did: it found golems. Cities, kingdoms, countries came and went, but the golems that priests had baked from clay and filled with holy fire tended to go on forever. When they had no more orders, no more water to fetch or wood to hew, perhaps because the land was now on the ocean floor or the city was inconveniently under fifty feet of volcanic ash, they did nothing but wait for the next order. They were, after all, property. They obeyed whatever instructions were written on the little scroll in their head. Sooner or later, rock erodes. Sooner or later a new city would arise. One day there would be orders. Golems had no concept of freedom. They knew they were artifacts; some even still bore, on their clay, the finger marks of the long-dead priests. Golems were made to be owned. There had always been a few in Ankh-Morpork, running errands, doing chores, pumping water deep underground, unseen and silent and not getting in anyone’s way. Then, one day, someone freed a golem by inserting in its head the receipt for the money he’d paid for it. And then he told it that it owned itself. A golem could not be freed by orders, or a war, or a whim. But it could be freed by freehold. When you have been a possession, then you really understand what freedom means, in all its magnificent terror. Dorfl, the first freed golem, had a plan. He worked hard, around the clock he had no time for, and bought another golem. The two golems worked hard and bought a third golem…and now there was the Golem Trust, which bought golems, found golems entombed underground or in the depths of the sea, and helped golems buy themselves. In the booming city golems were worth their weight in gold. They would accept small wages but they earned them for twenty-four hours a day. It was still a bargain—stronger than trolls, more reliable than oxen, and more indefatigable and intelligent than a dozen of each, a golem could power every machine in a workshop. This didn’t make them popular. There was always a reason to dislike a golem. They didn’t drink, eat, gamble, swear, or smile. They worked. If a fire broke out, they hurried to it en masse and put it out and then walked back to what they had been doing. No one knew why a creature that had been baked into life had the urge to do this, but all it won them was a kind of awkward resentment. You couldn’t be grateful to an unmoving face with glowing eyes. “How many are down there?” said Moist. “I told you. Four. ” Moist felt relieved. “Well, that’s good. Well done. Can we have a proper celebratory meal tonight? Of something the animal wasn’t so attached to? And then, who knows—” “There may be a snag,” said Adora Belle slowly. “No, really?” “Oh, please. ” Adora Belle sighed. “Look, the Umnians were the first golem-builders, do you understand? Golem legend says that the Umnians invented golems. It’s easy to believe, too. Some priest baking a votive offering says the right words, and the clay sits up. It was their only invention. They didn’t need any more. Golems built their city, golems tilled their fields. They invented the wheel, but as a children’s toy. They didn’t need wheels, you see. You don’t need weapons, either, when you’ve got golems instead of city walls. You don’t even need shovels—” “You’re not going to tell me they built fifty-foot-high killer golems, are you?” “Only a man would think of that. ” “It’s our job,” said Moist. “If you don’t think of fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will. ” “Well, there’s no evidence of them,” said Adora Belle briskly. “The Umnians never even worked iron. They did work bronze, though…and gold. ” There was something about the way gold was left hanging there that Moist didn’t like. “Gold,” he said. “Umnian is a very complex language,” said Adora Belle quickly. “None of the Trust golems know much about it, so we can’t be certain—” “Gold,” said Moist, his voice leaden. “So, when the digging team found caves down there, we came up with a plan. The tunnel was getting unstable anyway, so they closed it off, we said it had collapsed, and by now the team will have brought the golems out under the sea and be bringing them underwater all the way into the city,” said Adora Belle. Moist pointed at the golem’s arm in its bag. “That one isn’t gold,” he said hopefully. “We found a lot of golem remains about halfway down,” said Adora Belle with a sigh. “The others are deeper…er, perhaps because they are heavier. ” “Gold’s twice the weight of lead,” said Moist gloomily. “The buried golem is singing in Umnian, which is the most complex language ever,” said Adora Belle. “I can’t be certain of our translation, so I thought, let’s start by getting them into Ankh-Morpork, where they will be safe. ” Moist took a deep breath. “Do you know how much trouble you can get into by breaking a contract with a dwarf?” “Oh, come on! I’m not starting a war!” “No, you’re starting a legal action! And with the dwarfs that’s even worse! You told me the contract said you couldn’t take precious metals out of the land!” “Yes, but these are golems. They’re alive. ” “Look, you’ve taken—” “—may have taken—” “—all right, may have taken, good grief, tons of gold out of dwarf land—” “Golem Trust land—” “—All right, but there was a covenant! Which you broke when you took—” “—didn’t take. It walked off by itself,” said Adora Belle calmly. “For heavens’ sake, only a woman could think like this! You think because you believe there’s a perfectly good justification for your actions the legal issues don’t matter! And here am I, this close to persuading people here that a dollar doesn’t have to be round and shiny and I’m finding that at any minute four big shiny beaming golems are going to stroll into town, waving and glittering at everybody!” “There’s no need to get hysterical,” said Adora Belle. “Yes, there is! What there isn’t a need for is staying calm!” “Yes, but that’s when you come alive, right? That’s when your brain works best. You always find a way, right?” And there was nothing you could do about a woman like that. She just turned herself into a hammer and you ran right into her. Fortunately. They’d reached the entrance to the university. Above them loomed the forbidding statue of Alberto Malich, the founder. It had a chamber pot on its head. This had inconvenienced the pigeon which, by family tradition, spent most of its time perched on Alberto’s head and now wore on its own head a miniature version of the same pottery receptacle. Must be Rag Week again, thought Moist. Students, eh? Love ’em or hate ’em, you’re not allowed to hit ’em with a shovel. “Look, golems or not, let’s have dinner tonight, just you and me, up in the suite. Aimsbury would love it.

He doesn’t often get a chance to cook for humans and it’d make him feel better. He’ll do anything you want, I’m sure. ” Adora Belle gave him a lopsided look. “I thought you’d suggest that, so I ordered sheep’s head. He was overjoyed. ” “Sheep’s head,” said Moist gloomily, “you know I hate food that stares back. I won’t even look a sardine in the face. ” “He promised to blindfold it. ” “Oh, good. ” “My granny made a wonderful sheep’s head mold,” said Adora Belle. “That’s where you use pig’s trotters to thicken the broth so that when it gets cold you—” “You know, sometimes there’s such a thing as too much information?” said Moist. “This evening, then. Now let’s go and see your dead wizard. You should enjoy it. There’s bound to be skulls. ” THERE WERE SKULLS. There were black drapes. There were complex symbols drawn on the floor. There were spirals of incense from black thuribles. And in the middle of all this the Head of Postmortem Communications, in a fearsome mask, was fiddling with a candle. He stopped when he heard them come in, and straightened up hurriedly. “Oh, you’re early,” he said, his voice somewhat muffled by the fangs. “Sorry. It’s the candles. They should be cheap tallow for the proper black smoke, but wouldn’t you know it, they’ve given me beeswax. I told them just dribbling is no good to me, acrid smoke is what we want. Or what they want, anyway. Sorry, John Hicks, head of department. Ponder has told me all about you. ” He took off the mask and extended a hand. The man looked as though he’d tried, like any self-respecting necromancer, to grow a proper goatee beard, but owing to some basic lack of malevolence it had turned out a bit sheepish. After a few seconds Hicks realized why they were staring, and pulled off the fake rubber hand with the black fingernails. “I thought necromancy was banned,” said Moist. “Oh, we don’t do necromancy here,” said Hicks. “What made you think that?” Moist looked around at the furnishings, shrugged, and said, “Well, I suppose it first crossed my mind when I saw the way the paint was flaking off the door and you can still just see a crude skull and the letters NECR…” “Ancient history, ancient history,” said Hicks, quickly. “We are the Department of Postmortem Communications, a force for good, you understand? Necromancy, on the other hand, is a very bad form of magic done by evil wizards. ” “And since you are not evil wizards, what you are doing can’t be called necromancy?” “Exactly!” “And, er, what defines an evil wizard?” said Adora Belle. “Well, doing necromancy would definitely be there right on top of the list. ” “Could you just remind us what you are going to do?” “We’re going to talk to the late Professor Flead,” said Hicks. “Who is dead, yes?” “Very much so. Extremely dead. ” “Isn’t that just a tiny bit like necromancy?” “Ah, but, you see, for necromancy you require skulls and bones and a general necropolitan feel,” said Dr. Hicks. He looked at their expressions. “Ah, I see where you’re going here,” he said, with a little laugh that cracked a bit around the edges. “Don’t be deceived by appearances. I don’t need all this. Professor Flead does. He’s a bit of a traditionalist, and wouldn’t get out of his urn for anything less than the full Rite of Souls complete with the Dread Mask of Summoning. ” He twanged a fang. “And that’s the Dread Mask of Summoning, is it?” said Moist. The wizard hesitated for a moment before saying: “Of course. ” “Only it looks just like the Dread Sorcerer mask they sell in Boffo’s shop in Tenth Egg Street,” said Moist. “Excellent value at five dollars, I thought. ” “I, er, think you must be mistaken,” said Hicks. “I don’t think so,” said Moist, “you left the label on. ” “Where? Where?” The I’m-not-a-necromancer-at-all snatched up the mask and turned it over in his hands, looking for— He saw Moist’s grin and rolled his eyes. “All right, yes,” he muttered. “We lost the real one. Everything gets lost around here, you just wouldn’t believe it. They’re not clearing up the spells properly. Was there a huge squid in the corridor?” “Not this afternoon,” said Adora Belle. “Yes, what’s the reason for the squid?” “Oooh, let me tell you about the squid!” said Hicks. “Yes?” “You don’t want to know about the squid!” “We don’t?” “Believe me! Are you sure it wasn’t there?” “It’s the sort of thing you notice,” said Adora Belle. “With any luck that one’s worn off, then,” said Hicks, relaxing. “It really is getting impossible. Last week everything in my filing cabinet filed itself under W. No one seems to know why. ” “And you were going to tell us about the skulls,” said Adora Belle. “All fake,” said Hicks. “Excuse me?” The voice was dry and crackly and came from the shadows in the far corner. “Apart from Charlie, of course,” Hicks added hurriedly. “He’s been here for ever. ” “I’m the backbone of the department,” said the voice, a shade proudly. “Look, shall we get started?” said Hicks, rummaging in a black velvet sack. “There are some hooded black robes on the hook behind the door. They’re just for show, of course, but nec—Postmortem Communications is all about theater, really. Most of the people we…communicate with are wizards, and frankly, they don’t like change. ” “We’re not going to do anything—ghoulish, are we?” said Adora Belle, looking at a robe doubtfully. “Apart from talk to someone who’s been dead for three hundred years,” said Moist. He was not naturally at ease in the presence of skulls. Humans have been genetically programmed not to be, ever since monkey times, because (a) whatever turned that skull into a skull might still be around and you should head for a tree now, and (b) skulls look like they’re having a laugh at one’s expense. “Don’t worry about that,” said Hicks, taking a small ornamental jar out of the black bag and polishing it on his sleeve. “Professor Flead willed his soul to the university. He’s a bit crabby, I have to say, but he can be cooperative if we put on a decent show. ” He stood back. “Let’s see…grisly candles, Circle of Namareth, Glass of Silent Time, the Mask, of course, the Curtains of, er, Curtains, and,” here he put a small box down beside the bottle, “the vital ingredients. ” “Sorry? You mean all those expensive-sounding other things aren’t vital?” said Moist. “They’re more like…scenery,” said Hicks, adjusting the hood. “I mean, we could all sit around reading the script out loud, but without the costumes and scenery who’d want to turn up? Are you interested in the theater at all?” he added, in a hopeful voice. “I go when I can,” said Moist guardedly, because he recognized the hope in the man’s voice. “You didn’t by any chance see ’Tis Pity She’s an Instructor in Unarmed Combat at the Little Theater recently? It was put on by the Dolly Sisters Players?” “Uh, no, I’m afraid not. ” “I played Sir Andrew Fartswell,” said Dr. Hicks, in case Moist was due a sudden attack of recollection. “Oh, that was you was it?” said Moist, who’d met actors before. “Everyone at work was talking about it!” I’m okay so long as he doesn’t ask which night they talked about, he thought. There’s always one night in every play when something hilariously dreadful happens. But he was lucky; an experienced actor knows when not to push his luck. Instead, Hicks said, “Do you know ancient languages?” “I can do Basic Droning,” said Moist. “I can speak formal Golem. Is this ancient enough for you?” said Adora Belle, and made Moist’s spine tingle. The private language of the golems was usually hell on the human tongue, but it sounded unbearably sexy when Adora Belle uttered it. It was like silver in the air. “What was that?” said Hicks. “The common language of golems for the last twenty thousand years,” said Adora Belle. “Really? Most, er, moving…er…We’ll begin…” IN THE COUNTING house no one dared to look up as the desk of the chief cashier rumbled around on its turntable like some ancient tumbrel. Papers flew under Mavolio Bent’s hands while his brain drowned in poisons and his feet treadled continually to release the dark energies choking his soul.

He didn’t calculate, not as other men saw it. Calculation was for people who couldn’t see the answer turning gently in their head. To see was to know. It always had been. The mound of accumulated paperwork dwindled as the fury of his thinking wracked him. There were new accounts being opened all the time. And why? Was it because of trust? Probity? An urge toward thrift? Was it because of anything that could be called worth? No! It was because of Lipwig! People whom Mr. Bent had never seen before and hoped never to see again were pouring into the bank, their money in boxes, their money in piggy banks, and quite often their money in socks. Sometimes they were actually wearing the socks! And they were doing this because of words! The bank’s coffers were filling up because the wretched Mr. Lipwig made people laugh and made people hope. People liked him. No one had ever liked Mr. Bent, as far as he was aware. Oh, there had been a mother’s love and a father’s arms, the one chilly, the other too late, but where had they got him? In the end he’d been left alone. So he’d run away and found the gray caravan and entered a new life based on numbers and on worth and solid respect, and he had worked his way up and yes, he was a man of worth and yes, he had respect. Yes, respect. Even Mr. Cosmo respected him. And now here was Lipwig, and who was he? No one seemed to know, except for the suspicious man with the unstable teeth. One day there was no Lipwig, next day he was the postmaster general! And now he was in the bank, a man whose worth was in his mouth and who showed no respect for anyone! And he made people laugh—and the bank filled up with money! And did the Lavishes lavish anything on you? said a familiar little voice in his head. It was a hated little part of himself that he had beaten and starved and punched back into its wardrobe for years. It wasn’t the voice of his conscience. He was the voice of his conscience. It was the voice of the…the mask. “No!” snapped Bent. Some of the nearest clerks looked up at the unaccustomed noise and then hurriedly lowered their heads for fear of catching his eye. Bent stared fixedly at the sheet in front of him, watching the numbers roll past. Rely on the numbers! They didn’t let you down… Cosmo doesn’t respect you, you fool, you fool. You have run their bank for them and cleaned up after them! You made, they spent…and they laugh at you. You know they do. Silly Mr. Bent with his funny walk, silly, silly, silly… “Get away from me, get away,” he whispered. The people like him because he likes them. No one likes Mr. Bent. “But I have worth. I have value!” Mr. Bent pulled another worksheet toward himself and sought solace in its columns. But he was pursued… Where was your worth and value when you made the numbers dance, Mr. Bent? The innocent numbers? You made them dance and somersault and cartwheel when you cracked your whip, and they danced into the wrong places, didn’t they, because Sir Joshua demanded his price! Where did the gold dance off to, Mr. Bent? Smoke and mirrors! “No!” In the counting house all the pens ceased moving for a few seconds, before scribbling again with frantic activity. Eyes watering with shame and rage, Mr. Bent tried to unscrew the top from his patent fountain pen. In the muted silence of the banking hall, the sound of the green pen being deployed had the same effect as the sound of the axman sharpening his blade. Every clerk bent low to his desk. Mr. Bent Had Found A Mistake. All anyone could do was keep their eyes on the paper in front of them and hope against hope that it was not theirs. Someone, and please gods it would not be them, would have to go and stand in front of the high desk. They knew that Mr. Bent did not like mistakes: Mr. Bent believed that mistakes were the result of a deformity of the soul. At the sound of the Pen of Doom, one of the senior clerks hurried to Mr. Bent’s side. Those workers who risked being turned to water by the ferocity of Mr. Bent’s stare essayed a quick glance and saw her being shown the offending document. There was a distant tut-tut sound. Her tread as she came down the steps and crossed the floor echoed in deadly, praying silence. She did not know, as she scurried, button-boots flashing, to the desk of one of the youngest and newest clerks, that she was about to meet a young man who was destined to go down in history as one of the great heroes of banking. THE DARK ORGAN music filled the Department of Postmortem Communications. Moist assumed it was all part of the ambience, although the mood would have been more precisely obtained if the tune it was playing did not appear to be “Cantata and Fugue for Someone Who Has Trouble with the Pedals. ” As the last note died, after a long illness, Dr. Hicks spun around on the stool and raised the mask. “Sorry about that, I have two left feet sometimes. Could you both just chant a bit while I do the mystic waving, please? Don’t worry about words. Anything seems to work if it sounds sepulchral enough. ” As he walked around the circle, chanting variants on oo! and raah!, Moist wondered how many bankers raised the dead during the course of an afternoon. Probably not a high number. He shouldn’t be doing this, surely. He should be out there making money. Owls—Clamp must have finished the design by now. He could be holding his first note in his hands by tomorrow! And then there was damn Cribbins, who could be talking to anyone. True, the man had a rap sheet as long as a roller towel, but the city worked by alliances and if he met up with the Lavishes then Moist’s life would unravel all the way back to the gallows— “In my day we at least hired a decent mask,” growled an elderly voice. “I say, is that a woman over there?” A figure had appeared in the circle, without any bother or fuss, apart from the grumbling. It was in every respect the picture of a wizard—robed, pointy-hatted, bearded, and elderly, with the addition of a silvery monochrome effect overall and some slight transparency. “Ah, Professor Flead,” said Hicks, “it’s kind of you to join us…” “You know you brought me here and it’s not as if I had anything else to do,” said Flead. He turned back to Adora Belle and his voice became pure syrup. “What is your name, my dear?” “Adora Belle Dearheart. ” The warning tone of voice was lost on Flead. “How delightful,” he said, giving her a gummy smile. Regrettably, this made little strings of saliva vibrate in his mouth like the web of a very old spider. “And would you believe me if I told you that you bear a striking resemblance to my beloved concubine Fenti, who died more than three hundred years ago? The likeness is astounding!” “I’d say that was a pickup line,” said Adora Belle. “Oh dear, such cynicism,” sighed the late Flead, turning to the Head of Postmortem Communications. “Apart from this young lady’s wonderful chanting, it was frankly a mess, Hicks,” he said sharply. He tried to pat Adora Belle’s hand, but his fingers passed right through. “I’m sorry, professor, we just don’t get the funding these days,” said Hicks. “I know, I know. It was ever thus, Doctor. Even in my day, if you needed a corpse you had to go out and find your own! And if you couldn’t find one, you jolly well had to make one! It’s all so nice now, so damn correct. So a fresh egg technically does the trick, but whatever happened to style? They tell me they’ve made an engine that can think now, but of course the Fine Arts are always last in the queue! And so I’m brought to this: one barely competent Postmortem Communicator and two people from Central Groaning!” “Necromancy is a fine art?” said Moist. “None finer, young man. Get things just a tiny bit wrong and the spirits of the vengeful dead may enter your head via your ears and blow your brains out down your nose. ” The eyes of Moist and Adora Belle focused on Dr. Hicks like those of an archer on his target. He waved his hands frantically and mouthed “Not very often!” “What is a pretty young woman like you doing here, hmm?” said Flead, trying to grab Adora Belle’s hand again.

“I’m trying to translate a phrase from Umnian,” she said, giving him a wooden smile and absentmindedly wiping her hand on her dress. “Are women allowed to do that sort of thing these days? What fun! One of my greatest regrets, you know, is that when I was in possession of a body I didn’t let it spend enough time in the company of young ladies…” Moist looked around to see if there was any kind of emergency lever. There had to be something, if only in the event of nasal brain explosion. He sidled up to Hicks. “It’s going to go really bad in a moment!” he hissed. “It’s all right, I can banish him to the Undead Zone in a moment,” Hicks whispered. “That won’t be far enough if she loses her temper! I once saw her put a stiletto heel right through a man’s foot while she was smoking a cigarette. She hasn’t had a cigarette for more than fifteen minutes, so there’s no telling what she’ll do!” But Adora Belle had pulled the golem’s arm out of her bag, and the late Professor Flead’s eyes twinkled with something more compelling than romance. Lust comes in many varieties. He picked up the arm. That was the second surprising thing. And then Moist realized that the arm was still there, by Flead’s feet, and what he was lifting was a pearly, tenuous ghost. “Ah, part of an Umnian golem,” he said. “Bad condition. Immensely rare. Probably dug up on the site of Um, yes?” “Possibly,” said Adora Belle. “Hmm. Possibly, eh?” said Flead, turning the spectral arm around. “Look at the wafer-thinness! Light as a feather but strong as steel while the fires burned within! There has been nothing like them since!” “I might know where such fires still burn,” said Adora Belle. “After sixty thousand years? I think not, madam!” “I think otherwise. ” She could say things in that tone of voice and turn heads. She projected absolute certainty. Moist had worked hard for years to get a voice like that. “Are you saying an Umnian golem has survived?” “Yes. Four of them, I think,” said Adora Belle. “Can they sing?” “At least one can. ” “I’d give anything to see one before I die,” said Flead. “Er…” Moist began. “Figure of speech, figure of speech,” said Flead, waving a hand irritably. “I think that could be arranged,” said Adora Belle. “In the meantime, we’ve transcribed their song into Boddely’s Phonetic Runes. ” She dipped into her bag and produced a small scroll. Flead reached out, and once again an iridescent ghost of the scroll was now in his hands. “It appears to be gibberish,” he said, glancing at it, “although I have to say that Umnian always does at first glance. I shall need some time to work it out. Umnian is entirely a contextual language. Have you seen these golems?” “No, our tunnel collapsed. We can’t even talk to the golems who were digging anymore. Song doesn’t travel well under salt water. But we think they are…unusual golems. ” “Golden, probably,” said Flead, the words leaving a thoughtful silence in their wake. Then Adora Belle said: “Oh. ” Moist shut his eyes; on the inside of the lids, the gold reserves of Ankh-Morpork walked up and down, gleaming. “Anyone who researches Um finds the golden golem legend,” said Flead. “Sixty thousand years ago some witch doctor sitting by a fire made a clay figure and worked out how to make it live and that was the only invention they ever needed, do you understand? Even had horse golems, did you know that? No one has ever been able to create one since. Yet the Umnians never worked iron! They never invented the spade or the wheel! Golems herded their animals and spun their cloth! The Umnians did make their own jewelry, though, which largely consisted of scenes of human sacrifice, badly executed in every sense of the word. They were incredibly inventive in that area. A theocracy, of course,” he added, with a shrug. “I don’t know what it is about stepped pyramids that brings out the worst in a god…Anyway, yes, they did work gold. They dressed their priests in it. Quite possibly they made a few golems out of it. Or, equally, the ‘golden golems’ was a metaphor referring to the value of golems to the Umnians. When people wish to express the concept of worth, gold is always the word of choice—” “Isn’t it just,” murmured Moist. “—or it is simply a legend without foundation. Exploration of the site has never found anything except a few fragments of broken golems,” said Flead, sitting back and making himself comfortable on empty air. He winked at Adora Belle. “Perhaps you looked elsewhere? One story tells us that upon the death of all the humans, the golems walked into the sea…?” The question mark hung in the air like the hook it was. “What an interesting story,” said Adora Belle, poker-faced. Flead smiled. “I will find the sense of this message. Of course you will come and see me again tomorrow? Moist didn’t like the sound of that, whatever it was. It didn’t help that Adora Belle was smiling. Flead added: “Have you, sir?” said Adora Belle, laughing. “No, but I have an excellent memory!” Moist frowned. He liked it better when she was giving the old devil the cold shoulder. “Can we go now?” he said. PROBATIONARY TRAINEE Junior Clerk Hammersmith Coot watched Miss Drapes looming ever closer, with slightly less apprehension than his older colleagues did, and they knew this was because the poor kid had not been there long enough to know the meaning of what was about to happen. The senior clerk put the paper on his desk with some force. The total had been ringed around in green ink which was still wet. “Mr. Bent,” she said, with a tincture of satisfaction, “says you must do this again. Properly. ” And because Hammersmith was a well-brought-up young man and because this was only his first week in the bank, he said, “Yes, Miss Drapes,” took the paper neatly, and set to work. There were many different stories told about what happened next. In years to come, clerks measured their banking experience in how close they were when the Thing Happened. There were disagreements on what was actually said. Certainly there was no violence, no matter what some of the stories implied. But it was a day that brought the world, or at least that part of it that included the counting house, to its knees. Everyone agreed that Hammersmith spent some time working on the percentages. They say he produced a notebook—a personal notebook, which was an offense in itself—and did some work in it. Then, after, some say fifteen minutes, some say nearly half an hour, he walked back to the desk of Miss Drapes, and declared, “I’m sorry, Miss Drapes, but I can’t find where the mistake is. I have checked my workings and believe my total is correct. ” His voice was not loud, but the room went silent. In fact, it was more than silent. The sheer straining of hundreds of ears meant spiders spinning cobwebs near the ceiling wobbled in the aural suction. He was sent back to his desk to “do it again and don’t waste people’s time,” and after a further ten minutes, some say fifteen, Miss Drapes went to his desk and looked over his shoulder. Most people agree that after half a minute or so she picked up the paper, pulled a pencil from the tight bun on the back of her head, ordered the young man out of his seat, sat down, and spent some time staring at the numbers. She got up. She went to the desk of another senior clerk. Together they pored over the piece of paper. A third clerk was summoned. He copied out the offending columns, worked on them for a while, and looked up, his face gray. No one needed to say it aloud. By now all work had stopped but Mr. Bent, up on the high stool, was still engrossed in the numbers before him and, significantly, he was muttering under his breath. People sensed it in the air. Mr. Bent had Made a Mistake. The most senior clerks conferred hastily in a corner. There was no higher authority that they could appeal to. Mr. Bent was the higher authority, second only to the inexorable Lord of Mathematics. In the end it was left to the luckless Miss Drapes, who so recently had been the agent of Mr. Bent’s displeasure, to write on the document: “I am sorry, Mr.

Bent, I believe the young man is right. ” She slipped this at the bottom of a number of working sheets that she was delivering to the in tray, dropped it in as the tray rumbled past, and then the sound of her little boots echoed as she rushed, weeping, the length of the hall to the ladies’ restroom, where she had hysterics. The remaining members of the staff looked around warily, like ancient monsters who can see a second sun getting bigger in the sky but have absolutely no idea what they should do about it. Mr. Bent was a fast man with an in tray and by the look of it there were about two minutes or less before he was confronted with the message. Suddenly and all at once, they fled for the exits. “AND HOW WAS that for you?” said Moist, stepping out into the sunlight. “Do I detect a note of peevishness?” said Adora Belle. “Well, my plans for today did not include dropping in to chat with a three-hundred-year-old letch. ” “I think you mean lych, and anyway he was a ghost, not a corpse. ” “He was letching!” “All in his mind,” said Adora Belle. “Your mind, too. ” “Normally you go crazy if people try to patronize you!” “True. But most people aren’t able to translate a language so old that even golems can hardly understand a tenth of it. Get a talent like that and it could be you getting the girls when you are three centuries dead. ” “You were just flirting to get what you wanted?” Adora Belle stopped dead in the middle of the square to confront him. “And? You flirt with people all the time. You flirt with the whole world! That’s what makes you interesting, because you’re more like a musician than a thief. You want to play the world, especially the fiddly bits. And now I’m going home for a bath. I got off the coach this morning, remember?” “This morning,” said Moist, “I found that one of my staff had swapped the mind of another of my staff with that of a turnip. ” “Was that good?” said Adora Belle. “I’m not sure. In fact I’d better go and check. Look, we’ve both had a busy day. I’ll send a cab at half past seven, all right?” CRIBBINS WAS ENJOYING himself. He’d never been much for reading, up until now. Oh, he could read, and write too, in a nice cursive script that people thought was quite distinguished. And he’d always liked the Times for its clear, readable font, and had, with the aid of some scissors and a pot of paste, often accepted its assistance in producing those missives that attract attention not by fine writing but by having the messages created in cut-out words and letters and even whole phrases, if you were lucky. Reading for pleasure had passed him by, however. But he was reading now, oh yes, and it was extremely pleasurable, goodness yes! It was amazing what you could find if you knew what you were looking for! And now, all his Hogswatches were about to come at once— “A cup of tea, Reverend?” said a voice by his side. It was the plump lady in charge of the Times’ back issues department, who had taken to him as soon as he doffed his hat to her. She had the slightly wistful, slightly hungry look that so many women of a certain age wore when they’d decided to trust in gods because of the absolute impossibility of continuing to trust in men. “Why, thank you, shister,” he said, beaming. “And is it not written: ‘The eleemosynary cup is more worthy than the thrown hen’?” Then he noticed the discreet little silver ladle pinned to her bosom, and that her earrings were two tiny spatulas. The holy symbols of Anoia, yes. He’d just been reading about Anoia in the religious pages. All the rage these days, thanks to the help of young Spangler. Started out way down the ladder as the Goddess Of Things That Get Stuck In Drawers, but the talk in the religious pages was that she was being tipped for Goddess Of Lost Causes, a very profitable area, very profitable indeed for a man with a flexible approach but, and he sighed inwardly, it was not such a good idea to do business when the god in question was active, in case Anoia got angry and found a new use for a spatula. Besides, he’d soon be able to put all that behind him. What a clever lad young Spangler had turned out to be! Smarmy little devil! This wasn’t going to be over quick, oh no. This was going to be a pension for life. And it’d be a long, long life, or else— “Is there anything more I can get you, Reverend?” said the woman anxiously. “My cup runneth over, shister,” said Cribbins. The woman’s anxious expression intensified. “Oh, I’m sorry, I hope it hasn’t gone on the—” Cribbins carefully put his hand over the cup. “I meant that I am more than shatisfied,” he said, and he was. It was a bloody miracle, that’s what it was. If Om was going to hand them out like this, he might even start believing in Him. And it got better the more you thought about it, Cribbins told himself, as the woman hurried away. How’d the kid done it? There must have been cronies. The hangman, for one, a couple of jailers… Reflectively, he removed his false teeth with a twang, swilled them gently in the tea, patted them dry with his handkerchief and wrestled them back into his mouth a few seconds before footsteps told him the woman was returning. She was positively vibrating with genteel courage. “Excuse me, Reverend, but can I ask a favor?” she said, going pink. “Og orsk…ugger! usht arg ogent—” Cribbins turned his back, and against a chorus of snaps and twoings dragged the wretched dentures around the right way. Damned things! Why he had ever bothered to lever them out of the old man’s mouth, he’d never know. “I do beg your pardon, shister, a little dental mishap there…” he murmured, turning back and dabbing at his mouth. “Pray continue. ” “It’s funny you should say that, Reverend,” said the woman, her eyes bright with nervousness, “because I belong to a small group of ladies who run, well, a god-of-the-month club. Er…that is, we pick a god and believe in him…or her, obviously, or it, although we draw the line at the ones with teeth and too many legs, er, and foreign ones, of course, and then we pray to them for a month and then we sit down and discuss it. Well, there’s so many, aren’t there. Thousands! We’ve never really considered Om, though, but if you would care to give us a little talk next Tuesday I’m sure we’ll be happy to give him a jolly good try!” Springs pinged as Cribbins gave her a huge smile. “What is your name, shister?” he asked. “Berenice,” she said. “Berenice, er, Houser. ” Ah, no longer using the bastard’s name, very wise, thought Cribbins. “What a wonderful idea, Berenish,” he said. “I would consider it a pleshure!” She beamed. “There wouldn’t be any biscuits, would there, Berenish?” Cribbins added. Ms. Houser blushed. “I believe I have some chocolate ones somewhere,” she volunteered, as if letting him in on a big secret. “May Anoia rattle your drawers, shister,” said Cribbins to her retreating back. Wonderful, he thought, as she bustled off, blushing and happy. He tucked his notebook into his jacket and sat back and listened to the ticking of the clock on the wall and the gentle snores of the beggars, who were the normal habitués of this office on a hot afternoon. All was peaceful, settled, organized, just like life ought to be. It was going to be the gravy boat for him from this day forward. If he was very, very careful. MOIST RAN DOWN the lengths of the vaults toward the brilliant light at the far end. There was a tableau of peacefulness. Hubert was standing in front of the Glooper, occasionally tapping a pipe. Igor was blowing some curious glass creation over his little forge, and Mr. Clamp, formerly known as Owlswick Jenkins, was sitting at his desk with a faraway look on his face. Moist sensed the doom ahead. Something was wrong. It might not be even a particular thing, it was just a sheer platonic wrongness—and he did not like Mr. Clamp’s expression at all. Nevertheless, the human brain, which survives by hoping from one second to another, will always endeavor to put off the moment of truth. Moist approached the desk, rubbing his hands together. “How’s it going then, Owl—I mean Mr.

Clamp,” he said. “Finished it yet, have we?” “Oh, yes,” said Clamp, a strange, mirthless little smile on his face. “Here it is. ” On the desk in front of him was the other side of the first proper dollar bill ever to be designed. Moist had seen pictures quite like it, but they had been when he was four years old, in nursery school. The face of what was presumably meant to be Lord Vetinari had two dots for eyes and a broad grin. The panorama of the vibrant city of Ankh-Morpork appeared to consist of a lot of square houses, with a window, all square, in each corner and a door in the middle. “I think it’s one of the best things I have ever done,” said Clamp. Moist patted him convivially on the shoulder and then marched toward Igor, who was already looking defensive. “What have you done to that man?” said Moist. “I have made him a well-balanthed perthonality, no longer bethet with anxthietieth, fearth, and the demonth of paranoia,” said Igor. Moist glanced at Igor’s workbench, a brave thing to do by any standards. On it was a jar with something indistinct floating in it. Moist looked closer, another minor act of heroism when you were in an Igor-rich environment. It was not a happy turnip. It was blotchy. It was bouncing gently from one side of the jar to another, occasionally turning over. “I see,” said Moist. “But it would appear, regrettably, that by giving our friend the relaxed and hopeful attitude toward life of, not to put too fine a point on it, a turnip, you have also given him the artistic abilities of, and I have no hesitation in using the term again, a turnip. ” “But he ith much happier in himthelf,” said Igor. “Granted, but how much of himself is, and I really don’t wish to keep repeating myself here, of a root-vegetable-like nature?” Igor considered this for some time. “Ath a medical man, thir,” he said, “I mutht conthider what ith betht for the pathient. At the moment he ith happy and content and hath no careth in the world. Why would he give up all thith for a mere fathility with a penthil?” Moist was aware of an insistent bonk-bonk. It was the turnip banging itself against the side of the jar. “That is an interesting and philosophical point,” he said, once again looking at Clamp’s happy yet somewhat unfocused expression. “But it seems to me that all those nasty little details were what made him, well, him. ” The frantic banging of the vegetable grew louder. Igor and Moist stared from the jar to the eerily smiling man. “Igor, I’m not sure you know what makes people tick. ” Igor gave an avuncular little chuckle. “Oh, believe me, thur—” “Igor?” said Moist. “Yeth, marthter,” said Igor gloomily. “Go and fetch the damn wires again, will you. ” “Yeth, marthter. ” MOIST GOT BACK upstairs again to find himself in the middle of a panic. A tearful Miss Drapes spotted him and click-clicked over, at speed. “It’s Mr. Bent, sir. He just rushed out, yelling! We can’t find him anywhere!” “Why are you looking?” said Moist, and then realized he’d said it aloud. “I meant, what is the reason for you looking?” The story unfolded. As Miss Drapes talked, Moist got the impression that all the other listeners were getting the point and he wasn’t. “So, okay, he made a mistake,” he said. “No harm done, is there? It’s all been sorted out, right? A bit embarrassing, I dare say…” But, he reminded himself, an error is worse than a sin, isn’t it. But that’s plain daft, his sensible self pointed out. He could have said something like, “You see? Even I can make a mistake through a moment’s inattention! We must be forever vigilant!” Or he could have said, “I did this on purpose to test you!” Even schoolteachers know that one. I can think of half a dozen ways to wriggle out of something like that. But then I’m a wriggler. I don’t think he’s ever wriggled in his life. “I hope he hasn’t done something…silly,” said Miss Drapes, fishing a crumpled handkerchief out of a sleeve. Something…silly, thought Moist. That’s the phrase people used when they were thinking about someone jumping into the river or taking the entire contents of the medicine box in one go. Silly things like that. “I’ve never met a less silly man,” he said. “Well, er…we’ve always wondered about him, to be honest,” said a clerk. “I mean, he’s in at dawn and one of the cleaners told me he’s often in here late at night—What? What? That hurt!” Miss Drapes, who had nudged him hard, now whispered urgently in his ear. The man deflated and looked awkwardly at Moist. “Sorry, sir, I spoke out of turn,” he mumbled. “Mr. Bent is a good man, Mr. Lipwig,” said Miss Drapes. “He drives himself hard. ” “Drives all of you hard, it seems to me,” said Moist. This attempt at solidarity with the laboring masses didn’t seem to hit the mark. “If you can’t stand the heat, get off the pot, that’s what I say,” said a senior clerk, and there was a general murmur of agreement. “Er, I think you get out of the kitchen,” said Moist. “‘Get off the pot’ is the alternative when—” “Half the chief cashiers in the Plains have worked in this room,” said Miss Drapes. “And quite a few managers, now. And Miss Lee, who’s deputy manager of Apsly’s Commercial Bank in Sto Lat, she got the job because of the letter Mr. Bent wrote. Bent-trained, you see. That counts for a lot. If you’ve got a reference from Mr. Bent, you can walk into any bank and get a job with a snap of your fingers. ” “And if you stay, the pay here is better than anywhere,” a clerk put in. “He told the Board, if they want the best, they’d have to pay for it!” “Oh, he’s demanding,” said another clerk, “but I hear they’re all working for a human resources manager at Pipeworth’s Bank now, and if it comes to that I’ll take Mr. Bent any day of the week. At least he thinks I’m a person. I was hearing where she was timing how long people spent in the privy!” “They call it time-and-motion study,” said Moist. “Look, I expect Mr. Bent just wants to be alone for a while. Who was he yelling at, the lad who’d made a mistake?…Or didn’t make it, I mean. ” “That was young Hammersmith,” said Miss Drapes. “We sent him home because he was in a bit of a state. And no, he wasn’t really shouting at him. He wasn’t really shouting at anybody. He was—” she paused, searching for a word. “Gibbering,” said the clerk who had spoken out of turn, giving the turn another twist, “and you don’t all have to look at me like that. You all heard him. And he looked as though he’d seen a ghost. ” Clerks were wandering back into the counting house in ones and twos. They’d searched everywhere, was the general agreement, and there was strong support for the theory that he’d gone out through the Mint, it being rather busy in there with all the work still going on. Moist doubted it. The bank was old, and old buildings have all sorts of crannies, and Mr. Bent had been here for— “How long has he been here?” he wondered aloud. The general consensus was “since the mind of man can remember” but Miss Drapes, who seemed for some reason to have made herself well informed on the subject of Mavolio Bent, volunteered that it was thirty-nine years and he got a job when he was thirteen by sitting on the steps all night until the chairman came to work and impressing him with his command of numbers. He went from messenger boy to chief cashier in twenty years. “Speedy!” said Moist. “Never had a day off for illness, either,” Miss Drapes concluded. “Well. Perhaps he’s entitled to some now,” said Moist. “Do you know where he lives, Miss Drapes?” “Mrs. Cake’s boardinghouse. ” “Really? That’s a bit—” Moist stopped and chose from a number of options “—low rent, isn’t it?” “He says that as a bachelor it meets his needs,” said Miss Drapes, and avoided Moist’s gaze. Moist could feel the day slipping away from him. But they were all staring at him. There was only one thing he could say if he was to maintain his image. “Then I think I ought to see if he’s gone there,” said Moist. Their faces broke into smiles of relief. He added: “But I think that one of you should come with me. After all, you know him. ” It looks as though I don’t, he thought.

“I’ll fetch my coat,” said Miss Drapes. The only reason that her words came out at the speed of sound was that she couldn’t make them go any faster. CHAPTER 8 As below, so above No pain without gain A mind for puzzles Mr. Bent’s sad past Something in the wardrobe Wonderful money Thoughts on madness, by Igor A pot thickens HUBERT TAPPED thoughtfully on one of the Glooper’s tubes. “Igor?” he said. “Yeth, marthter?” said Igor, behind him. Hubert jumped. “I thought you were over by your lightning cells!” he managed. “I wath, thur, but I am here now. What wath it you wanted?” “You’ve wired up all the valves, Igor. I can’t make any changes!” “Yeth, thur,” said Igor calmly. “There would be amathingly dire conthequentheth, thur. ” “But I want to change some parameters, Igor,” said Hubert, absentmindedly taking a rain hat off the peg. “I am afraid there ith a problem, thur. You athked me to make the Glooper ath accurate ath poththible. ” “Well, of course. Accuracy is vital. ” “It ith…extremely accurate, thur,” said Igor, looking uncomfortable. “Poththibly too accurate, thur. ” This “poththibly” caused Hubert to grope for an umbrella. “How can anything be too accurate?” Igor looked around. Suddenly, he was on edge. “Would you mind if I wind down on the lisp a little, sir?” “Can you do that?” “Oh yeth…or, indeed, yes, sir. But it’s a clan thing, you see. It’s expected, like the stitcheth. But I think you will find the explanation hard enough to understand as it is. ” “Well, er, thank you. Go ahead, please. ” It was quite a long explanation. Hubert listened with care, his mouth open. The term “cargo cult” whirled past, and was followed by a short dissertation on the hypothesis that all water, everywhere, knows where all the other water is, some interesting facts about hyphenated silicon and what happens to it in the presence of cheese, the benefits and hazards of morphic resonation in areas of high background magic, the truth about identical twins, and the fact that if the fundamental occult maxim “as above, so below” was true, then so was “as below, so above”… The silence that followed was broken only by the tinkle of water in the Glooper, and the sound of the former Owlswick’s pencil as he worked away with demon-haunted skill. “Do you mind going back to lisping, please?” said Hubert. “I don’t know why, it just sounds better that way. ” “Very good, thur. ” “All right. Now, are you really saying that I can now change the economic life of the city by adjusting the Glooper? It’s like a witch’s wax doll and I’ve got all the pins?” “That ith correct, thur. A very nice analogy. ” Hubert stared at the crystal masterpiece. The light in the undercroft was changing all the time as the economic life of the city pumped itself around the tubes, some of them no thicker than a hair. “It’s an economic model, in fact, which is the real thing?” “They are identical, thur. ” “So with one hammer blow I could throw the city into an irrevocable economic crash?” “Yeth, thur. Do you want me to fetch a hammer?” Hubert stared up at the rushing, trickling, foaming thing that was the Glooper and his eyes bulged. He started to giggle but it grew very quickly into a laugh. “Hahah! Ahahahah!!! AHAHAHAHA!!!!…can you get me a glass of water, please?…HAHAHAHA!!! Hahahahahah!!…HAHA HAHA!!!—” The laughter stopped abruptly. “That can’t be right, Igor. ” “Really, thur?” “Yes indeed! Look at our old friend Flask 244a! Can you see it? It’s empty!” “Indeed, thur?” “Indeed indeed,” said Hubert. “Flask 244a represents the gold in our very own vaults, Igor. And ten tons of gold just don’t get up and walk away! Eh? HAHAHAHA!!! Could you get me that glass of water I asked for? Hahahah ahah!!…HAHA HAHA!!!—” A SMILE PLAYED around Cosmo’s lips, which was a dangerous playground for anything as innocent as a smile. “All of them?” he said. “Well, all the counting-house clerks,” said Heretofore. “They just ran out into the street. Some of them were in tears. ” “A panic, in fact,” murmured Cosmo. He looked at the picture of Vetinari opposite his desk and was sure it winked at him. “Apparently it was some problem with the chief cashier, sir. ” “Mr. Bent?” “Apparently he made a mistake, sir. They said he was muttering to himself and then just ran out of the room. They said that some of the staff had gone back in to search for him. ” “Mavolio Bent made a mistake? I think not,” said Cosmo. “They say he ran off, sir. ” Cosmo very nearly raised an eyebrow without mechanical aid. It was that close. “Ran off? Was he carrying any large and heavy bags? They usually do. ” “I believe he wasn’t, sir,” said Heretofore. “That would have been…helpful. ” Cosmo leaned back in his chair, pulled off the black glove for the third time today, and held out his hand at arm’s length. The ring did look impressive, especially against the pale blue of his finger. “Have you ever seen a run on a bank, Drumknott?” he said. “Have you ever seen the crowds fighting for their money?” “No, sir,” said Heretofore, who was beginning to worry again. The tight boots had been, well, funny, but surely a finger shouldn’t look that color? “It’s a dreadful sight. It’s like watching a beached whale being eaten alive by crabs,” said Cosmo, turning his hand so that the light showed up the shadowy V. “It may squirm in its agony, but there can be only one outcome. It is a terrible thing, if done properly. ” This is how Vetinari thinks, his soul exulted. Plans can break down. You cannot plan the future. Only presumptuous fools plan. The wise man steers. “As a director of the bank and, of course, a concerned citizen,” he said dreamily, “I shall now write a letter to the Times. ” “Yes, sir, of course,” said Heretofore, “and shall I send for a jeweler, sir? I understand they have some fine little snips that—” “No pain without gain, Drumknott. It sharpens my thinking. ” The glove went back on. “Er…” and then Heretofore gave up. He’d tried his best, but Cosmo was bent on his own destruction, and all a sensible man could do was to make as much money as possible and then stay alive to spend it. “I’ve had another stroke of luck, sir,” he ventured. He’d have liked more time, but it was clear that time was getting short. “Indeed? What is this?” “That project I have been working on…” “Very expensively? Yes?” “I believe I can get you Vetinari’s stick, sir. ” “You mean his sword stick?” “Yes, sir. As far as I know, the blade has never been drawn in anger. ” “I understood it was always close to him. ” “I didn’t say it would be easy, sir. Or cheap. But after much, much work I now see a clear way,” said Heretofore. “They say the steel of the blade was taken from the iron in the blood of a thousand men…” “So I have heard, sir. ” “Have you seen it?” “Very briefly, sir. ” For the first time in his career, Heretofore found himself feeling sorry for Cosmo. There was a kind of yearning in the man’s voice. He didn’t want to usurp Vetinari. There were plenty of people in the city who wanted to usurp Vetinari. But Cosmo wanted to be Vetinari. “What was it like?” The voice was pleading. Poison from the sickening finger must have got to his brain, thought Heretofore. But his mind is pretty poisonous to begin with. Perhaps they will be friends. “Er…well, the handle and scabbard are just like yours, sir, but a little worn. The blade, though, is gray and looks—” “Gray?” “Yes, sir. It looks aged and slightly pitted. But here and there, when the light catches it, there are little red and gold flecks. I have to say that it looks ominous. ” “The flecks of light would be the blood, of course,” said Cosmo thoughtfully, “or, possibly, yes, very possibly the trapped souls of those who died to make the dreadful blade. ” “I had not thought of that, sir,” said Heretofore, who had spent two nights with a new blade, some hematite, a brass brush, and some chemicals to produce a weapon that looked as though it’d spring for your throat of its own accord. “You could get it tonight?” “I think so, sir. It will be dangerous, of course.

” “And require yet more expense, I imagine,” said Cosmo, with rather more insight than Heretofore would have expected in his current state. “There are so many bribes, sir. He will not be happy when he finds out, and I daren’t risk the time it would take to make an exact replacement. ” “Yes. I see. ” Cosmo pulled off the black glove again and looked at his hand. There seemed to be some greenish tint to his finger now, and he wondered if there was some copper in the ring’s alloy. But the pink, almost red streaks moving up his arm looked very healthy. “Yes. Get the stick,” he murmured, turning his hand to catch the light from the lamps. Odd, though, he couldn’t feel any heat on the finger, but that didn’t matter. He could see the future so clearly. The shoes, the cap, the ring, the stick…Surely, as he filled the occult space occupied by Vetinari, the wretched man would feel himself getting weaker and more confused, and he’d get things wrong and make mistakes…“See to it, Drumknott,” he said. LORD HAVELOCK VETINARI pinched the bridge of his nose. It had been a long day and was clearly going to be a long evening. “I think I need a moment to relax. Let’s get it over with,” he said. Drumknott walked over to the long table, which at this time of day held copies of several editions of the Times, his lordship being keen on keeping track of what people thought was going on. Vetinari sighed. People told him things all the time. Lots of people had been telling him things in the last hour. They told him things for all sorts of reasons: to gain some credit; to gain some money; for a favor quid pro quo; out of malice, mischief, or, suspiciously, out of a professed regard for the public good. What it amounted to was no information but a huge, Argus-eyed ball of little, wiggling factoids, out of which some information could, with care, be teased. His secretary laid before him the paper, carefully folded to the correct page and place, which was occupied by a square filled with a lot of smaller squares, some of them containing numbers. “Today’s ‘Jikan no Muda’ sir,” he said. Vetinari glanced at it for a few seconds, and then handed it back to him. The Patrician shut his eyes, drummed his fingers on the desktop for a moment. “Hmm…nine six three one seven four—” Drumknott scribbled hastily as the numbers streamed, and Vetinari eventually concluded: “—eight four seven three. And I’m sure they used that one last month. On a Monday, I believe. ” “Seventeen seconds, sir,” said Drumknott, his pencil still catching up. “Well, it has been a tiring day,” said Vetinari. “And what is the point? Numbers are easy to outwit. They can’t think back. The people who devise the crosswords, now they are indeed devious. Who would know that ‘pysdxes’ are ancient Ephebian carved-bone needle holders?” “Well, you, sir, of course,” said Drumknott, carefully stacking the files, “and the curator of Ephebian antiquities at the Royal Art Museum, ‘Puzzler’ of the Times, and Miss Grace Speaker, who runs the pet shop in Pellicool Steps. ” “We should keep an eye on that pet shop, Drumknott. A woman with a mind like that content to dispense dog food? I think not. ” “Indeed, sir. I shall make a note. ” “I’m pleased to hear that your new boots have ceased squeaking, by the way. ” “Thank you, sir. They have broken in nicely. ” Vetinari stared pensively at the day’s files. “Mr. Bent, Mr. Bent, Mr. Bent,” he said. “The mysterious Mr. Bent. Without him, the Royal Bank would be in far more trouble than it has been. And now that it is without him, it will fall over. It revolves around him. It beats to his pulse. Old Lavish was frightened of him, I’m sure. He said he thought that Bent was a…” he paused. “Sir?” said Drumknott. “Let us just accept the fact that he has, in every way, proved to be a model citizen,” said Vetinari. “The past is a dangerous country, is it not?” “There is no file on him, sir. ” “He has never drawn attention to himself. All I know for sure is that he arrived here as a child, on a cart owned by some traveling accountants…” “WHAT, LIKE TINKERS and fortune-tellers?” said Moist, as the cab rocked its way through streets that grew narrower and darker. “I suppose you could say so,” said Miss Drapes with a hint of disapproval. “They do big, you know, circuits all the way up to the mountains, doing the books for little businesses, helping people with their taxes, that sort of thing. ” She cleared her throat. “Whole families of them. It must be a wonderful life. ” “Every day a new ledger,” said Moist, nodding gravely, “and by night they drink beer, and happy, laughing accountants dance the Double-Entry Polka to the sound of accordions…” “Do they?” said Miss Drapes nervously. “I don’t know. It would be nice to think so,” said Moist. “Well, that explains something, at least. He was obviously ambitious. All he could hope for on the road was being allowed to steer the horse, I suppose. ” “He was thirteen,” said Miss Drapes, and she blew her nose loudly. “It’s so sad. ” She turned a tearful face toward Moist. “There’s something dreadful in his past, Mr. Lipstick. They say one day some men came to the bank and asked—” “This is it, Mrs. Cake’s,” said the cabman, pulling up sharply, “an’ that’ll be eleven pence and don’t ask me to hang about ’cos they’ll have the ’orse up on bricks and its shoes off in a wink. ” The door of the boardinghouse was opened by the hairiest woman Moist had ever seen, but in the area of Elm Street you learned to discount this sort of thing. Mrs. Cake was famously accommodating to the city’s newly arrived undead, giving them a safe and understanding haven until they could get on their feet, however many they had. “Mrs. Cake?” he said. “Mother’s at church,” said the woman. “She said to expect you, Mr. Lipwig. ” “You have a Mr. Bent staying here, I believe?” “The banker? Room seven on the second floor. But I don’t think he’s in. He’s not in trouble, is he?” Moist explained the situation, aware all the while of doors opening a fraction in the shadows beyond the woman. The air was sharp with the smell of disinfectant; Mrs. Cake believed that cleanliness was more to be trusted than godliness and, besides, without that sharp note of pine half the clientele would be driven mad by the smell of the other half. And in the middle of all this was the silent, featureless room of Mr. Bent, chief cashier. The woman, who volunteered that her name was Ludmilla, let them in, very reluctantly, with a master key. “He’s always been a good guest,” she said. “Never a moment’s trouble. ” One glance took in everything: the narrow room, the narrow bed, the clothes hanging neatly around the walls, the tiny jug-and-basin set, the incongruously large wardrobe. Lives collect clutter, but Mr. Bent’s did not. Unless, of course, it was all in the wardrobe. “Most of your long-term guests are unde—” “—differently alive,” said Ludmilla sharply. “Yes, of course, so I’m wondering why…Mr. Bent would stay here. ” “Mr. Lipwick, what are you suggesting?” said Miss Drapes. “You must admit it’s rather unexpected,” said Moist. And, because she was already distraught enough, he didn’t add: I don’t have to suggest anything. It suggests itself. Tall. Dark. Gets in before dawn, leaves after dark. Mr. Fusspot growls at him. Compulsive counter. Obsessive over detail. Gives you a gentle attack of the creeps which makes you feel mildly ashamed. Sleeps on a long, thin bed. Stays at Mrs. Cake’s, where the vampires hang up. It’s not very hard to connect the dots. “This isn’t about the man who was here the other night, is it?” said Ludmilla. “What man would that be?” “Didn’t give a name. Just said he was a friend. All in black, had a black cane with a silver skull on it. Nasty piece of work, Mum said. Mind you,” Ludmilla added, “she says that about nearly everyone. He had a black coach. ” “Not Lord Vetinari, surely. ” “Oh, no, Mum’s all for him, except she thinks he ought to hang more people. No, this one was pretty stout, Mum said. ” “Oh, really?” said Moist. “Well, thank you, ma’am. Well perhaps we should be going.

By the way, do you by any chance have a key to that wardrobe?” “No key. He put a new lock on it years ago, but Mum didn’t complain because he’s never any trouble. It’s one of those magic ones they sell at the university,” Ludmilla went on, as Moist examined the lock. The trouble with the wretched magical ones was that just about anything could be a key, from a word to a touch. “It’s rather strange that he hangs all his clothes on the walls, isn’t it?” he said, straightening up. Ludmilla looked disapproving. “We don’t use the word strange in this household. ” “Differently normal?” Moist suggested. “That’ll do. ” There was a warning glint in Ludmilla’s eye. “Who can say who is truly normal in this world?” Well, being someone whose fingernails don’t visibly extend when they’re annoyed would be a definite candidate, thought Moist. “Well, we should get back to the bank,” he said. “If Mr. Bent turns up, do tell him that people are looking for him. ” “And care about him,” said Miss Drapes quickly, and then put a hand over her mouth and blushed. I just want to make money, thought Moist, as he led the trembling Miss Drapes back to the area where cabs dared to go. I thought life in banking was profitable boredom punctuated by big cigars. Instead, it has turned out differently normal. The only really sane person in there is Igor, and possibly the turnip. And I’m not sure about the turnip. He dropped the snuffling Miss Drapes off at her lodgings in Welcome Soap, with a promise to let her know when the errant Mr. Bent broke cover, and took the cab onward to the bank. The night guards had already arrived, but quite a few clerks were still hanging around, apparently unable to come to terms with the new reality. Mr. Bent had been a fixture, like the pillars. Cosmo had been round to see him. It wouldn’t have been a social call. What had it been? A threat? Well, no one liked being beaten up. But perhaps it was more sophisticated. Perhaps it was we’ll tell people you are a vampire. To which a sensible person would reply: Stick it where the sun shineth not. That would have been a threat twenty years ago, but today? There were plenty of vampires in the city, neurotic as hell, wearing the black ribbon to show they’d signed the pledge, and in general getting on with, for want of a better word, their lives. Mostly, people just accepted it. Day after day went past with no trouble, and so the situation became regarded as normal. Differently normal, but still normal. Okay, Mr. Bent had kept quiet about his past, but that was hardly a pitchforking matter. He’d been sitting in a bank for forty years doing sums, for heavens’ sake. But perhaps he didn’t see it that way. You measured common sense with a ruler, other people measured it with a potato. He didn’t hear Gladys approach. He just became aware that she was standing behind him. “I Have Been Very Worried About You, Mr. Lipwig,” she rumbled. “Thank you, Gladys,” he said cautiously. “I Will Make You A Sandwich. You Like My Sandwiches. ” “That would be kind of you, Gladys, but Miss Dearheart will be joining me shortly for dinner upstairs. ” The glow in the golem’s eyes faded for a moment and then grew brighter. “Miss Dearheart. ” “Yes, she was here this morning. ” “A Lady. ” “She’s my fiancée, Gladys. She will be here quite a lot, I expect. ” “Fiancée,” said Gladys. “Ah, Yes. I Am Reading Twenty Tips To Make Your Wedding Go With A Swing. ” Gladys’s eyes dimmed. She turned around and plodded toward the stairs. Moist felt like a heel. Of course, he was a heel. But that didn’t make feeling like one feel any better. On the other hand, shedamn, he…it…Gladys was the fault of misplaced female solidarity. What could he hope to achieve against that? Adora Belle would have to do something about it. He was aware that one of the senior clerks was hovering politely. “Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?” “What do you want us to do, sir?” “What’s your name?” “Spittle, sir. Robert Spittle. ” “Why are you asking me, Bob?” “Because the chairman goes woof, sir. Safes need locking up. So does the ledger room. Mr. Bent had all the keys. It’s Robert, sir, if you don’t mind. ” “Are there any spare keys?” “There might be in the chairman’s office, sir,” said Spittle. “Look…Robert, I want you to go home and get a good night’s sleep, okay? And I’ll find the keys and turn every lock I can find. I’m sure Mr. Bent will be with us tomorrow, but if he’s not, I’ll call a meeting of the senior clerks. I mean, hah, you must know how it all works!” “Well, yes. Of course. Only…well…but…” The clerk’s voice faded into silence. But there’s no Mr. Bent, thought Moist. And he delegated with the same ease that oysters tango. What the hell are we going to do? “There’s people here? So much for banker’s hours,” said a voice from the doorway. “In trouble again I hear. ” It was Adora Belle, and of course she meant “Hello! It’s good to see you. ” “You look stunning,” said Moist. “Yes, I know,” said Adora Belle. “What’s happening? The cabbie told me all the staff had walked out of your bank. ” Later Moist thought: That was when it all went wrong. You have to leap on the stallion of rumor before he’s out of the yard, so that you might be able to pull on the reins. You should have thought: What did it look like, with staff running out of the bank? You should have run to the Times office. You should have got in the saddle and turned it right around, there and then. But Adora Belle did look stunning. Besides, all that had happened was that a member of staff had a funny turn and left the building. What could anyone make of that? And the answer, of course, was: Anything they wanted to. He was aware of someone else behind him. “Mr. Lipwig, thur?” Moist turned. It was even less fun looking at Igor when you’d just been looking at Adora Belle. “Igor, this is really not the time—” Moist began. “I know I’m not thupothed to come upthairth, thur, but Mr. Clamp thayth he hath finithed hith drawing. It ith very good. ” “What was all that about?” said Adora Belle. “I think I nearly got two of the words. ” “Oh, there’s a man down in the forni—the cellar, who is designing a dollar note for me. Paper money, in fact. ” “Really? I’d love to see that. ” “You would?” IT WAS TRULY wonderful. Moist looked at the back and the front of the dollar-note designs. Under Igor’s brilliant white lights they looked rich as plum pudding and more complicated than a dwarf contract. “We’re going to make so much money,” he said aloud. “Wonderful job, Owls—Mr. Clamp!” “I’m going to hold on to the Owlswick,” said the artist nervously. “It’s the Jenkins that matters, after all. ” “Well, yes,” said Moist, “there must be dozens of Owlswicks around. ” He looked at Hubert, who was on a stepladder and peering hopelessly at the tubing. “How’s it going, Hubert?” he said. “The money’s still rushing around okay, is it?” “What? Oh, fine. Fine. Fine,” said Hubert, almost knocking over the ladder in his haste to get down. He looked at Adora Belle with an expression of uncertain dread. “This is Adora Belle Dearheart, Hubert,” said Moist, in case the man was about to flee. “She is my fiancée. She’s a woman,” he added, in view of the worried look. Adora Belle held out her hand and said: “Hello, Hubert. ” Hubert stared. “It’s okay to shake hands, Hubert,” said Moist carefully. “Hubert’s an economist. That’s like an alchemist, but less messy. ” “So you know how the money moves around, do you, Hubert?” said Adora Belle, shaking an unresisting hand. At last the notion of speech dawned on Hubert. “I welded one thousand and ninety-seven joints,” he said, “and blew the law of diminishing returns. ” “I shouldn’t think anyone’s ever done that before,” said Adora Belle. Hubert brightened up. This was easy! “We are not doing anything wrong, you know!” he said. “I’m sure you aren’t,” said Adora Belle, trying to pull her hand away. “It can keep track of every dollar in the city, you know.

The possibilities are endless! But, but, but, um, of course we’re not upsetting things in any way!” “I’m very glad to hear it, Hubert,” said Adora Belle, tugging harder. “Of course we are having teething troubles! But everything is being done with immense care! Nothing has been lost because we’ve left a valve open or anything like that!” “How intriguing!” said Adora Belle, bracing her left hand on Hubert’s shoulder and wrenching the other one free. “We have to go, Hubert,” said Moist. “Keep up the good work, though. I’m very proud of you. ” “You are?” said Hubert. “Cosmo said I was insane, and wanted Auntie to sell the Glooper for scrap!” “Typical hidebound, old-fashioned thinking,” said Moist. “This is the Century of the Anchovy. The future belongs to men like you, who can tell us how everything works. ” “It does?” said Hubert. “You mark my words,” said Moist, ushering Adora Belle firmly toward the distant exit. When they were gone, Hubert sniffed the palm of his hand and shivered. “They were nice people, weren’t they,” he said. “Yeth, marthter. ” Hubert looked up at the glittering, trickling pipes of the Glooper, faithfully mirroring in its ebbing and flowing the tides of money around the city. Just one blow could rattle the world. It was a terrible responsibility. Igor joined him. They stood in a silence broken only by the sloshing of commerce. “What shall I do, Igor?” said Hubert. “In the Old Country we have a thaying,” Igor volunteered. “A what?” “A thaying. We thay, ‘If you don’t want the monthter you don’t pull the lever. ’” “You don’t think I’ve gone mad, do you, Igor?” “Many great men have been conthidered mad, Mr. Hubert. Even Dr. Hanth Forvord wath called mad. But I put it to you: could a madman have created a revolutionary living-brain extractor?” “IS HUBERT QUITE… normal?” said Adora Belle, as they climbed the marble staircase toward dinner. “By the standards of obsessive men who don’t get out into the sunlight?” said Moist. “Pretty normal, I’d say. ” “But he acted as if he’d never seen a woman before!” “He’s just not used to things that don’t come with a manual,” said Moist. “Hah,” said Adora Belle, “why is it only men that get like that?” Earns a tiny wage working for golems, thought Moist. Puts up with graffiti and smashed windows because of golems. Camps out in wilderness, argues with powerful men. All for golems. But he didn’t say anything, because he’d read the manual. They had reached the managerial floor. Adora Belle sniffed. “Smell that? Isn’t that just wonderful?” she said. “Wouldn’t it turn a rabbit into a carnivore?” “Sheep’s head,” said Moist gloomily. “Only to make the broth,” said Adora Belle. “All the soft wobbly bits get taken out first. Don’t worry. You’ve just been put off by the old joke, that’s all. ” “What old joke?” “Oh, come on! A boy goes into a butcher’s shop and says, ‘Mum says can we please have a sheep’s head and you’re to leave the eyes in ’cos it’s got to see us through the week. ’ You don’t get it? It’s using see in the sense of to last and also in the sense of, well, to see…” “I just think it’s a bit unfair to the sheep, that’s all. ” “Interesting,” said Adora Belle. “You eat nice, anonymous lumps of animals but think it’s unfair to eat the other bits? You think the head goes off thinking, ‘At least he didn’t eat me?’ Strictly speaking, the more we eat of an animal the happier its species should be, since we wouldn’t need to kill so many of them. ” Moist pushed open the double doors, and the air was full of wrongness again. There was no Mr. Fusspot. Normally he’d be waiting in his in tray, ready to greet Moist with a big, slobbery welcome. But the tray was empty. The room seemed larger, too, and this was because it also contained no Gladys. There was a little blue collar on the floor. The smell of cooking filled the air. Moist ran down the passage to the kitchen, where the golem was standing solemnly by the stove, watching the rattling lid of a very large pot. Grubby foam slid down and dripped onto the stove. Gladys turned when she saw Moist. “I Am Cooking Your Dinner, Mr. Lipwig. ” The dark moppets of dread played their paranoid hopscotch across Moist’s inner eyeballs. “Could you just put the ladle down and step away from the pot, please?” said Adora Belle, suddenly beside him. “I Am Cooking Mr. Lipwig’s Dinner,” said Gladys, with a touch of defiance. The scummy bubbles, it seemed to Moist, were getting bigger. “Yes, and it looks as if it’s nearly done,” said Adora Belle. “So I Would Like To See It, Gladys. ” There was silence. “Gladys?” In one movement the golem handed her the ladle and stood back, half a ton of living clay moving as lightly and silently as smoke. Cautiously, Adora Belle lifted the pot’s lid and plunged the ladle into the seething mass. Something scratched at Moist’s boot. He looked down into the worried goldfish eyes of Mr. Fusspot. Then he looked back at what was rising out of the pot, and realized that it was at least thirty seconds since he’d last drawn a breath. Peggy came bustling in. “Oh, there you are, you naughty boy!” she said, picking up the little dog. “Would you believe it, he got all the way down to the cold room!” She looked around, brushing hair out of her eyes. “Oh, Gladys, I did tell you to move it onto the cool plate when it started to thicken!” Moist looked at the rising ladle, and in the flood of relief various awkward observations scrambled to be heard. I’ve been in this job less than a week. The man I really depend on has run away screaming. I’m going to be exposed as a criminal. That’s a sheep’s head… And—thank you for the thought, Aimsbury—it’s wearing sunglasses. CHAPTER 9 Cribbins fights his teeth Theological advice “That’s what I call entertainment” Mr. Fusspot’s magic toy Sir Joshua’s books Breaking into banking The minds of policemen What about the gold? Cribbins warms up The return of Professor Flead, unfortunately Moist counts his blessings A werewolf revealed Splot: it does you good Time to pray “I’M AFRAID I have to close the office now, Reverend,” the voice of Ms. Houser broke into Cribbins’s dreams. “We open up again at nine o’clock tomorrow,” it added hopefully. Cribbins opened his eyes. The warmth and the steady ticking of the clock had lulled him into a wonderful doze. Ms. Houser was standing there, not gloriously naked and pink as so recently featured in the reverie, but in a plain brown coat and an unsuitable hat with feathers in it. Suddenly awake, he fumbled urgently in his pocket for his dentures, not trusting them with the custody of his mouth while he slept. He turned his head away in a flurry of unaccustomed embarrassment, as he fought to get them in, and then fought again to get them in and the right way up. They always fought back. In desperation he wrenched them out and banged them sharply on the arm of the chair once or twice to break their spirit before ramming them into his mouth once more. “Wshg!” said Cribbins, and slapped the side of his face. “Why, thank you, ma’am,” he said, dabbing at his mouth with his handkerchief. “I am sorry about that, but I’m a martyr to them, I shwear. ” “I didn’t like to disturb you,” Ms. Houser went on, her horrified expression fading. “I’m sure you needed your sleep. ” “Not sleeping, ma’am but contemplating,” said Cribbins, standing up. “Contemplating the fall of the unrighteous and the elevation of the godly. Is it not said that the last shall be first and the first shall be last?” “You know, I’ve always been a bit worried about that,” said Ms. Houser. “I mean, what happens to the people who aren’t first but aren’t really last, either? You know…jogging along, doing their best?” She strolled toward the door in a manner which, quite as subtly as she thought, invited him to accompany her. “A conundrum indeed, Berenice,” said Cribbins, following her. “The holy texts don’t mention it, but I have no doubt that…” His forehead creased. Cribbins was seldom troubled by religious questions, and this one was pretty difficult. He rose to it like a born theologian.

“I have no doubt that they will be found shtill jogging along, but possibly in the opposite direction. ” “Back toward the last?” she said, looking worried. “Ah, dear lady, remember that they will by then be the first. ” “Oh yes, I hadn’t thought of it like that. That’s the only way it could work, unless of course the original first would wait for the last to catch up. ” “That would be a miracle indeed,” said Cribbins, watching her lock the door behind them. The evening air was sharp and unwelcoming after the warmth of the newspaper room, and made the prospect of another night in the flophouse in Monkey Street seem doubly unwelcome. He needed his own miracle right now, and he had a feeling that one was shaping up right here. “I expect it’s very hard for you, Reverend, finding a place to stay,” Ms. Houser said. He couldn’t make out her expression in the gloom. “Oh, I have faith, shister,” he said. “If Om does not come, He shendsh—Arrg!” And at a time like this! A spring had slipped! It was a judgment! But agonizing as it was, it might yet have its blessing. Ms. Houser was bearing down on him with the look of a woman determined to do good at any price. Oh, it hurt, though; it had snapped right across his tongue. A voice behind him said, “Excuse me, I couldn’t help noticing…are you Mr. Cribbins, by any chance?” Enraged by the pain in his mouth, Cribbins turned with murder in his heart, but “That’s Reverend Cribbins, thank you,” said Ms. Houser, and his fists unclenched. “’Shme,” he muttered. A pale young man in an old-fashioned clerk’s robe was staring at him. “My name is Heretofore,” he said, “and if you are Cribbins, I know a rich man who wants to meet you. It could be your lucky day. ” “Ish zat sho?” muttered Cribbins. “And if zat man ish called Coshmo, I want to meet him. It could be hish lucky day, too. Ain’t we the lucky ones!” “YOU MUST HAVE had a moment of dread,” said Moist, as they relaxed in the marble-floored sitting room. At least, Adora Belle relaxed. Moist was searching. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, as he opened a cupboard. “Golems weren’t built to be free. They don’t know how to handle…stuff. ” “They’ll learn. And she wouldn’t have hurt the dog,” said Adora Belle, watching him pace the room. “You weren’t sure. I heard the way you were talking to her. ‘Put down the ladle and turn around slowly’ sort of thing. ” Moist pulled open a drawer. “Are you looking for something?” “Some bank keys. There should be a set of them somewhere around. ” Adora Belle joined in. It was that or argue about Gladys. Besides, the suite had a great many drawers and cupboards, and it was something to do while dinner was prepared. “What is this key for?” she asked after a mere few seconds. Moist turned. Adora Belle held up a silvery key on a ring. “No, there’ll be a lot more than that,” said Moist. “Where did you find that, anyway?” She pointed to the big desk. “I just touched the side here and—Oh, it didn’t do it this time…” It took Moist more than a minute to find the trigger that slid the little drawer out. Shut, it disappeared seamlessly into the grain of the wood. “It must be for something important,” he said, heading for another desk. “Maybe he kept the rest of the keys somewhere else. Just try it on anything. I’ve just been camping here, really. I don’t know what’s in half of these drawers. ” He returned to a bureau and was sifting through its contents when he heard a click and a creak behind him and Adora Belle said, in a rather flat voice: “You did say he entertained young ladies up here, right?” “Apparently, yes. Why?” “Well, that’s what I call entertainment. ” Moist turned. The door of a heavy cupboard stood wide-open. “Oh, no,” he said. “What’s all that for?” “You are joking?” “Well, yes, all right. But it’s all so…so black. ” “And leathery,” said Adora Belle. “Possibly rubbery, too. ” They advanced on the museum of inventive erotica just revealed. Some of it, freed at last from confinement, unfolded, slid, or, in a few cases, bounced onto the floor. “This…” Moist prodded something, which went spoing! “…is, yes, rubbery. Definitely rubbery. ” “But all this here is pretty much frilly,” said Adora Belle. “He must have run out of ideas. ” “Either that or there were no more ideas to be had. I think he was eighty when he died,” said Moist, as a seismic shift caused some more piles to slide and slither downward. “Well done him,” said Adora Belle. “Oh, and there’s a couple of shelves of books, too,” Adora Belle went on, investigating the gloom at the back of the cupboard. “Just here, behind the rather curious saddle and the whips. Bedtime reading, I assume. ” “I don’t think so,” said Moist, pulling out a leather-bound volume and flicking it open at a random page. “Look, it’s the old boy’s journal. Years and years of it. Good grief, there’s decades. ” “Let’s publish it and make a fortune,” said Adora Belle, kicking the heap. “Plain covers, of course. ” “No, you don’t understand. There may be something in here about Mr. Bent! There’s some secret…” Moist ran a finger along the spines. “Let’s see, he’s fifty-two, he came here when he was about thirteen, and a few months later some people came looking for him. Old Lavish didn’t like the look of them—Ah!” He pulled out a couple of volumes. “These should tell us something, they’re around the right time…” “What are these, and why do they jingle?” Adora Belle said, holding up a couple of strange devices. “How should I know?” “You’re a man. ” “Well, yes. And? I mean, I don’t go in for this stuff. ” “You know, I think it’s like horseradish,” said Adora Belle thoughtfully. “Pardon?” “Like…well, horseradish is good in a beef sandwich, so you have some. But one day a spoonful just doesn’t cut the mustard—” “As it were,” said Moist, fascinated. “—and so you have two, and soon it’s three, and eventually there’s more horseradish than beef, and then one day you realize the beef fell out and you didn’t notice. ” “I don’t think that is the metaphor you’re looking for,” said Moist, “because I have known you to make yourself a horseradish sandwich. ” “All right, but it’s still a good one,” said Adora Belle. She reached down and picked up something from the floor. “Your keys, I think. What they were doing in there we shall never know, with any luck. ” Moist took them. The ring was heavy with keys of all sizes. “And what shall we do with all this stuff?” Adora Belle kicked the heap again. It quivered, and somewhere inside something squeaked. “Put it back in the cupboard?” Moist suggested uncertainly. The pile of passionless frippery had a brooding, alien look, like some sea monster of the abyss that had been dragged unceremoniously from its native darkness into the light of the sun. “I don’t think I could face it,” said Adora Belle. “Let’s just leave the door open and let it crawl back by itself. Hey!” This was to Mr. Fusspot, who’d trotted smartly out of the room with something in his mouth. “Tell me that was just an old rubber bone,” she said. “Please?” “No-oh,” said Moist, shaking his head. “I think that would definitely be the wrong description. I think it was…was…it was not an old rubber bone, is what it was. ” “NOW LOOK,” SAID Hubert, “don’t you think we’d know if the gold had been stolen? People talk about that sort of thing! I’m pretty certain it’s a fault in the crossover multivalve, right here. ” He tapped a thin glass tube. “I don’t think the Glooper ith wrong, thur,” said Igor gloomily. “Igor, you realize that if the Glooper is right then I’ll have to believe there is practically no gold in our vaults?” “I believe the Glooper ith not in error, thur. ” Igor took a dollar out of his pocket and walked over to the well. “If you would be tho good ath to watch the ‘lotht money’ column, thur?” he said, and dropped the coin into the dark waters. It gleamed for a moment as it sank beyond the pockets of mankind. In one corner of the Glooper’s convoluted glass tubing a small blue bubble drifted up, dawdling from side to side as it rose, and burst on the surface with a faint gloop.

“Oh dear,” said Hubert. THE COMIC CONVENTION, when two people are dining at a table designed to accommodate twenty, is that they sit at either end. Moist and Adora Belle didn’t try it, but instead huddled together. Gladys stood at the other end, a napkin over one arm, her eyes two sullen glows. The sheep skull didn’t help Moist’s frame of mind at all. Peggy had arranged it as a centerpiece, with flowers around it, but the cool sunglasses were getting on his nerves. “How good is a golem’s hearing?” he said. “Extremely,” said Adora Belle. “Look, don’t worry, I have a plan. ” “Oh, good. ” “No, seriously. I’ll take her out tomorrow. ” “Can’t you just—” Moist hesitated, and then mouthed: “ change the words in her head? ” “She’s a free golem!” said Adora Belle sharply. “How would you like it?” Moist remembered Owlswick and the turnip. “Not much,” he admitted. “With free golems you should change minds by persuasion. I think I can do that. ” “Aren’t your golden golems due to arrive tomorrow?” “I hope so. ” “It’s going to be a busy day. I’m going to launch paper money and you’re going to march gold through the streets. ” “We couldn’t leave them underground. Anyway, they might not be golden. I’ll go and see Flead in the morning. ” “We will go and see him. Together!” She patted Moist’s arm. “Never mind. There could be worse things than golden golems. ” “I can’t think what they are,” said Moist, a phrase that he later regretted. “I’d like to take people’s minds off gold—” He stopped and stared at the sheep, which stared back in a calm enigmatic way. For some reason Moist felt it should have a saxophone and a little black beret. “Surely they looked in the vault,” he said aloud. “Who looked?” said Adora Belle. “That’s where he’d go. The one thing you can depend on, right? The foundation of all that’s worthy?” “Who’d go?” “Mr. Bent is in the gold vault!” said Moist, standing up so quickly that his chair fell over. “He’s got all the keys!” “Sorry? Is this the man who went haywire after making a simple mistake?” “That’s him. He’s got a Past. ” “One of those with a capital P?” “Exactly. Come on, let’s get down there!” “I thought we were going to have a romantic evening?” “We will! Right after we get him out!” THE ONLY SOUND in the vaults was the tap-tap-tapping of Adora Belle’s foot. It was really annoying Moist as he paced up and down in front of the gold room, by the light of silver candlesticks that had been gracing the dining-room table. “I just hope Aimsbury is keeping the broth warm,” said Adora Belle. Tap-tap tap-tap. “Look,” said Moist. “Firstly, to open a safe like this you need to have a name like Fingers McGee, and secondly, these little lock picks aren’t up to the job. ” “Well, let’s go and find Mr. McGee. He’s probably got the right sort. ” Tap-tap. Tap-tap. “That won’t be any good because, thirdly, there’s probably no such person, and, fourthly, the vault is locked from the inside and I think he’s left the key in the lock, which is why none of these work. ” He waved the key ring. “Fifthly, I’m trying to turn the key from this side with tweezers, an old trick which, it turns out, does not work!” “Good. So we can go back to the suite?” Tap-tap tap-tap. Moist peered again through the little spyhole in the door. A heavy plate had been slid across it on the inside, and he could just make out a glimmer of light around the edges. There was a lamp in there. What there was not, as far as he knew, was any kind of ventilation. It looked as though the vault had been built before the idea of breathing caught on. It was a man-made cave, built to contain something you never intended to take out. Gold didn’t choke. “I don’t think we have the option,” he said, “because sixthly, he’s running out of air. He may even be dead!” “If he’s dead, can we leave him until tomorrow? It’s freezing down here. ” Tap-tap tap-tap. Moist looked up at the ceiling. It was made of ancient oak beams, strapped together with iron bands. He knew what old oak could be like. It could be like steel, only nastier. It blunted axes and bounced hammers back in their owners’ faces. “Can’t the guards help?” Adora Belle ventured. “I doubt it,” said Moist. “Anyway, I don’t particularly want to encourage the idea that they can spend the night breaking into the vault. ” “But they’re mostly City Watch, aren’t they?” “So? When a man is legging it for the horizon with as much gold as he can carry he doesn’t worry much about what his old job was. I’m a criminal. Trust me. ” He walked toward the stairs, counting under his breath. “And now what are you doing?” “Working out which part of the bank is directly over the gold,” said Moist. “But you know what? I think I already know. The gold room is right under his desk. ” THE LAMP HAD burned low, and oily smoke swirled and settled on the sacks where Mr. Bent lay curled up in a tight ball. There was sound above, and voices muffled by the ancient ceiling. One of them said: “I can’t budge it. All right, Gladys, over to you. ” “Is This Ladylike Behavior?” a second voice rumbled. “Oh yes, it counts as moving furniture,” said a voice that was clearly female. “Very Well. I Shall Lift It Up And Dust Underneath It. ” There was the thunder of wood being scraped on wood, and a little dust fell onto the piled bullion. “Very Dusty Indeed. I Shall Fetch A Broom. ” “Actually, Gladys, I’d like you to lift up the floor now,” said the first voice. “There May Be Dust Underneath That Too?” “I’m certain of it. ” “Very Well. ” There were several thumps that made the beams creak, and then a rumble of: “It Does Not Say Anything About Dusting Under The Floor In Lady Waggon’s Book Of Household Management. ” “Gladys, a man may be dying under there!” “I See. That Would Be Untidy. ” The beams rattled under a blow. “Lady Waggon Says That Any Bodies Found During A Weekend Party Should Be Disposed Of Discreetly, In Case Of Scandal. ” Three more blows, and a beam shattered. “Lady Waggon Says Watchmen Are Disrespectful And Do Not Wipe Their Dirty Boots. ” Another beam cracked. Light lanced down. A hand the size of a shovel appeared, grabbed one of the iron straps, and snapped it— Moist peered into the gloom, while smoke poured up past him. “He’s down there! Ye gods, this reeks!” Adora Belle looked over his shoulder. “Is he alive?” “I certainly hope so. ” Moist eased himself between the beams and dropped onto the bullion boxes. After a moment he called up: “There’s a pulse. And there’s a key in the lock, too. Can you come down the stairs and give me a hand?” “Er…we have visitors,” Adora Belle called down. A couple of helmeted heads were now outlined against the light. Damn it! Using off-duty watchmen was all very well, but they tended to take their badges everywhere with them, and were just the sort of people who’d jump to conclusions merely because they’d found a man standing in the wreckage of a bank vault after hours. The words “Look, I can explain” presented themselves for utterance, but Moist strangled them just in time. It was his bank, after all. “Well, what do you want?” he demanded. This was sufficiently unexpected to throw the men, but one of them rallied. “Is this your bank vault, sir?” he said. “I’m the deputy chairman, you idiot! And there’s a sick man down here!” “Did he fall when you were breaking into the vault, sir?” Oh gods, you just couldn’t budge a born copper. They just kept going, in that patient, grinding tone. When you were a policeman, everything was a crime. “Officer—you are a copper, right?” “Constable Haddock, sir. ” “Well, constable, can we get my colleague into the fresh air? He’s wheezing. I’ll unlock the door down here. ” Haddock nodded to the other guard, who hurried away toward the stairs. “If you had a key, sir, why did you break in?” “To get him out, of course!” “So how—” “It’s all perfectly sensible,” said Moist. “Once I’ve got out of here we will all have a laugh. ” “I shall look forward to that, sir,” said Haddock, “because I like a laugh. ” TALKING TO THE Watch was like tap-dancing on a landslide.

If you were nimble, you could stay upright, but you couldn’t steer and there were no brakes and you just knew that it was going to end in a certain amount of fuss. It wasn’t Constable Haddock anymore. It had stopped being Constable Haddock just as soon as Constable Haddock had found that the pockets of the master of the Royal Mint contained a velvet roll of lock picks and a blackjack, and it then became Sergeant Detritus. Lock picks, as Moist knew, were technically not illegal. Owning them was fine. Owning them while standing in someone else’s house was not fine. Owning them while being found in a stricken bank vault was so far from fine it could see the curvature of the universe. So far, to Sergeant Detritus, so good. However, the sergeant’s grasp began to slip when confronted with the evidence that Moist quite legitimately had the keys for the vault he had broken into. This seemed to the troll to be a criminal act in itself, and he’d toyed for a while with the charge “Wasting Watch time by breaking in when you didn’t have to. ” He didn’t understand about the visceral need for the lock picks; trolls didn’t have a word for machismo in the same way that puddles don’t have a word for water. He also had a problem with the mind-set and actions of the nearly late Mr. Bent. Trolls don’t go mad, they get mad. So he gave up, and it became Captain Carrot. Moist knew him of old. He was big and smelled of soap, and his normal expression was one of blue-eyed innocence. Moist couldn’t see behind that amiable face, just couldn’t see a thing. He could read most people but the captain was a closed book in a locked bookcase. And the man was always courteous, in that really annoying way police have. He said, “Good evening,” politely, as he sat down opposite Moist in the little office that had suddenly become an interview room. “Can I start, sir, by asking you about the three men down in the cellar? And the big glass…thing?” “Mr. Hubert Turvy and his assistants,” said Moist. “They are studying the economic system of the city. They’re not involved in this. Come to think of it, I’m not involved in this either! There is, in fact, no this. I have explained all this to the sergeant. ” “Sergeant Detritus thinks you are too smart, Mr. Lipwig,” said Captain Carrot, opening his notebook. “Well, yes, I expect he thinks that about most people, doesn’t he?” Carrot’s expression changed not one iota. “Can you tell me why there is a golem downstairs who is wearing a dress and keeps ordering my men to wipe their dirty boots?” he said. “Not without sounding mad, no. What has this got to do with anything?” “I don’t know, sir. I hope to find out. Who is Lady Deirdre Waggon?” “She writes rather out-of-date books on etiquette and household management, for young ladies who would like to be the type of women who have time to arrange flowers. Look, is this relevant?” “I don’t know that, sir. I am endeavoring to assess the situation. Can you tell me why a small dog is running around the building, in possession of what I shall call a wind-up clockwork item of an intimate nature?” “I think it is because my sanity is slipping away,” said Moist. “Look, the only thing that is important here is that Mr. Bent had…a nasty turn and locked himself in the gold vault. I had to get him out quickly. ” “Ah, yes, the gold vault,” said the captain. “Can we talk about the gold for a moment?” “What’s wrong with the gold?” “I was hoping you could tell us, sir. I believe you wanted to sell it to the dwarfs?” “What? Well, yes, I said that, but it was only to make a point—” “A point,” said Captain Carrot solemnly, writing this down. “Look, I know how this sort of thing goes,” said Moist. “You just keep me talking in the hope that I’ll suddenly forget where I am and say something stupid and incriminating, right?” “Thank you for that, sir,” said Captain Carrot, turning over another page in his notebook. “Thank me for what?” “For telling me you know how this sort of thing goes, sir. ” See? Moist told himself, this is what happens when you get too comfortable. You lose the edge. Even a copper can outsmart you. The captain looked up. “I will tell you, Mr. Lipwig, that some of what you say has been corroborated by an unbiased witness who could not possibly be an accomplice. ” “You talked to Gladys?” said Moist. “Gladys being?” “She’s the one going on about dirty boots. ” “How can a golem be a ‘she,’ sir?” “Ah, I know this one. The correct answer is: How can a golem be a ‘he’?” “An interesting point, sir. That explains the dress, then. Out of interest, how much weight would you say a golem can carry?” “I don’t know. A couple of tons, maybe. What are you getting at?” “I don’t know, sir,” said Carrot cheerfully. “Commander Vimes says that when life hands you a mess of spaghetti, just keep pulling until you find the meatball. In fact, your story agrees, insofar as he understood events, with what we have been told by a Mr. Fusspot. ” “You talked to the dog?” “Well, he is the chairman of the bank, sir,” said the captain. “How did you understand what—Ah, you have a werewolf, right?” said Moist, grinning. “We don’t confirm that, sir. ” “Everyone knows it’s Nobby Nobbs, you know. ” “Do they, sir? Gosh. Anyway, your movements this evening are accounted for. ” “Good. Thank you. ” Moist started to rise. “However, your movements earlier this week, sir, are not. ” Moist sat down again. “Well? I don’t have to account for them, do I?” “It might help us, sir. ” “How would it help you?” “It might help us understand why there is no gold in the vault, sir. It’s a small detail in the great scheme of things, but it is something of a puzzler. ” At which point, somewhere close at hand, Mr. Fusspot began to bark… COSMO LAVISH SAT at his desk with his fingers steepled in front of his mouth, watching Cribbins eat. Not many people in a state to make a choice had ever done this for more than thirty seconds. “The soup is good?” he said. Cribbins lowered the bowl after one lengthy final gurgle. “Champion, Your Lordship. ” Cribbins removed a gray rag from his pocket and— He’s going to take his teeth out, right now, here at the table, thought Cosmo. Amazing. Ah, yes, and there’s still bits of carrot in them… “Don’t hesitate to repair your teeth,” he said, as Cribbins removed a bent fork from a pocket. “I’m a martyr to them, shir,” said Cribbins. “I’ll shwear they’re out to get me. ” Springs twanged as he fought them with the fork and then, apparently satisfied, he wrestled them back onto his gray gums and champed them into place. “That’s better,” he announced. “Good,” said Cosmo. “And now, in view of the nature of your allegations, which Drumknott here has carefully transcribed and you have signed, let me ask you: why have you not gone to Lord Vetinari?” “I’ve knowed men escape the noose, sir,” said Cribbins. “It ain’t too hard if you’ve got the readies. But I never heard of one get a big plum job the very next day. Gov’ment job, too. Then suddenly he’s a banker, no leshsh. Shomeone’s watching over him, and I don’t think it’s a bleeding fairy. If I wash to go to Vetinari, then I’d be a bit silly, right. But he’s got your bank, and you ain’t, which is a shame. Sho I’m your man, shir. ” “At a price, I have no doubt. ” “Well, yes, something in the way of expenses would help, yesh. ” “And you are sure that Lipwig and Spangler are one and the same?” “It’s the smile, shir. You never forget it. And he has this gift of chatting to people, he makes people want to do things his way. It’s like magic, the little ingrate. ” Cosmo stared at him and then said, “Give the reverend fifty dollars, Drum—Heretofore, and direct him to a good hotel. One where they might have a hot tub available. ” “Fifty dollarsh?” growled Cribbins. “And then please go ahead with that little acquisition, will you?” “Yes, sir. Of course. ” Cosmo pulled a piece of paper toward him, dipped a pen in the inkwell, and began to write furiously. “Fifty dollarsh?” said Cribbins again, appalled at the minimum wage of sin.

Cosmo looked up and stared at the man as if seeing him for the first time and not enjoying the novelty. “Hh, yes. Fifty dollars indeed for now, Reverend,” said Cosmo soothingly. “And in the morning, if your memory is still as good, we will all look forward to a richer and righteous future. Do not let me detain you. ” He returned to his paperwork. Heretofore grabbed Cribbins’s arm and towed him forcibly out of the room. He’d seen what Cosmo was writing. VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinari VetinariVetinariVetinar… It was time for the sword stick, he thought. Get it, hand it over, take the money, and run. THINGS WERE QUIET in the Department of Postmortem Communications. They were never very loud at the best of times, although you always got, when the sounds of the university slid into silence, the reedy little gnat-sized voices leaking through from The Other Side. The trouble was, thought Hicks, that too many of his predecessors had never had any kind of a life outside the department, where social skills were not a priority, and even when dead had completely failed to get a life, either. So they hung around the department, reluctant to leave the place. Sometimes, when they were feeling strong and the Dolly Sisters Players were doing a new production, he let them out to paint the scenery. Hicks sighed. That was the trouble with working in the DPC, you could never exactly be the boss. In an ordinary job people retired, wandered back to the ol’ workplace a few times while there were those who remembered them, and then faded into the ever-swelling past. But the former staff here never seemed to go… There was a saying: “Old necromancers never die. ” When he told them this, people would say “…and?” and Hicks would have to reply, “That’s all of it, I’m afraid. Just ‘Old necromancers never die. ’” He was just tidying up for the night when, from his shadowy corner, Charlie said: “Somebody coming through, well, I say some body…” Hicks spun around. The magic circle was glowing and a pearly pointy hat was already rising through the solid floor. “Professor Flead?” he said. “Yes, and we must hurry, young man,” said the shade of Flead, still rising. “But I banished you! I used the Ninefold Erasure! It banishes everything!” “I wrote it,” said Flead, looking smug. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m the only one it doesn’t work on. Ha, I’d be a damn fool to design a spell to work on myself, eh?” Hicks pointed a shaking finger. “You put in a hidden portal, didn’t you!” “Of course. A bloody good one. Don’t worry, I’m the only one who knows where it is, too. ” The whole of Flead was floating above the circle now. “And don’t try to look for it, a man of your limited talent will never find the hidden runes. ” Flead looked around the room. “Isn’t that wonderful young lady here?” he said hopefully. “Well, never mind. You must get me out of this place, Hicks. I want to see the fun!” “Fun? What fun?” said Hicks, a man planning to look through the Ninefold Erasure spell very, very carefully. “I know what kind of golems are coming!” WHEN HE WAS a child, Moist had prayed every night before going to bed. His family were very active in the Plain Potato Church, which shunned the excesses of the Ancient and Orthodox Potato Church. Its followers were retiring, industrious, and inventive, and their strict adherence to oil lamps and homemade furniture made them stand out in the region where most people used candles and sat on sheep. He’d hated praying. It felt as though he was opening a big black hole into space, and at any moment something might reach through and grab him. This may have been because the standard bedtime prayer included the line “If I die before I wake,” which on bad nights caused him to try and sit up until morning. He’d also been instructed to use the hours before sleep to count his blessings. Lying here now, in the darkness of the bank, rather cold and significantly alone, he sought for some. His teeth were good and he wasn’t suffering from premature hair loss. There! That wasn’t so hard, was it? And the Watch hadn’t actually arrested him, as such. But there was a troll guarding the vault, which had ominous black and yellow ropes strung around it. No gold in the vault. Well, even that wasn’t entirely true. There was five pounds of it, at least, coating the lead ingots. Someone had done a pretty good job there. That was a silver lining, right? At least it was some gold. It wasn’t as if there was no gold at all, right? He was alone because Adora Belle was spending a night in the cells for assaulting an officer of the Watch. Moist considered that this was unfair. Of course, depending on what kind of day a copper has had there is no action, short of being physically somewhere else, that may not be construed as assault, but Adora Belle hadn’t actually assaulted Sergeant Detritus; she’d merely attempted to stab his huge foot with her shoe, which resulted in a broken heel and a twisted ankle. Captain Carrot said this had been taken into consideration. The clocks of the city chimed four, and Moist considered his future, specifically in terms of length. Look on the bright side. He might just be hanged. He should have gone down to the vaults on day one, with an alchemist and a lawyer in tow. Didn’t they ever audit the vaults? Was it done by a bunch of jolly decent chaps who’d poke their head into some other chap’s vault and sign off on it quickly, so’s not to miss lunch? Can’t go doubting a chap’s word, eh? Especially when you didn’t want him to doubt yours. Maybe the late Sir Joshua had blown it all on exotic leather goods and young ladies. How many nights in the arms of beautiful women were worth a sack of gold? The price of a good woman was proverbially above rubies, so a skillfully bad one was worth presumably a lot more. He sat up and lit the candle, and his eye fell on Mr. Lavish’s journal on the bedside table. Thirty-nine years ago…well, it was the right year, and since at the moment he had nothing else to do… The luck that had been draining from his boots all day came back to him. Even though he wasn’t certain what he was looking for, he found it on the sixth random page: “A pair of funny-looking people came to the bank today, asking for the boy Bent. I bade the sta? send them away. He is doing exceedingly well. One wonders what he must have su? ered. ” Quite a lot of the journal seemed to be in some sort of code, but the nature of the secret symbols suggested that Mr. Lavish painstakingly recorded every amorous affair. You had to admire his directness, at least. He’d worked out what he wanted to get from life, and had set out to get as much of it as he could. Moist had to take his hat off to the man. And what had he wanted? He’d never sat down to think about it. But mostly, he wanted tomorrow to be different from today. He looked at his watch. Four fifteen, and no one about but the guards. There were watchmen on the main doors. He was indeed not under arrest, but this was one of those civilized little arrangements: he was not under arrest, provided that he didn’t try to act like a man who was not under arrest. Ah, he thought, as he pulled on his trousers, there was another small blessing: he had been there when Mr. Fusspot proposed to the werewolf— —which was, by then, balancing on one of the huge ornamental urns that grew like toadstools in the bank’s corridors. It was rocking. So was Corporal Nobbs, who was laughing himself sick at— —Mr. Fusspot, who was bouncing up and down with wonderfully optimistic enthusiasm. But he was holding in his mouth his new toy, which appeared to have been mysteriously wound up, and beneficent fate had decreed that at the top of each jump, its unbalancing action would cause the little dog to do one slow cartwheel in the air.

And Moist thought: So, the werewolf is female and has a Watch badge on her collar, and I’ve seen that hair color before. Hah! But his gaze had gone straight back to Mr. Fusspot, who was jumping and spinning with a look of total bliss on his little face— —and then Captain Carrot had plucked him out of the air, the werewolf fled, and the show was over. But Moist would always have the memory. Next time he walked past Sergeant Angua he’d growl under his breath, although that would probably constitute assault. Now, fully dressed, he went for a walk along endless corridors. The Watch had put a lot of new guards in the bank for the night. Captain Carrot was clever, you had to give him that. They were trolls. Trolls were very hard to talk around to your point of view. He could sense them watching him everywhere he went. There wasn’t one at the door into the undercroft, but Moist’s heart sank when he neared the pool of brilliant light around the Glooper and saw one standing by the door to freedom. Owlswick was lying on a mattress and snoring, his paintbrush in his hand. Moist envied him. Hubert and Igor were working on the tangle of glassware which, Moist could swear, looked bigger every time he came down here. “What’s wrong?” “Wrong? Nothing. Nothing’s wrong!” said Hubert. “It’s all fine! Is something wrong? Why do you think something is wrong? What would make you think there’s something wrong?” Moist yawned. “Any coffee? Tea?” he suggested. “For you, Mr. Lipwig,” said Igor, “I will make thplot. ” “Splot? Real Splot?” “Indeed, thur,” said Igor smugly. “You can’t buy it here, you know. ” “I am aware of that, thur. It hath now been outlawed in motht of the old country, too,” said Igor, rummaging in a sack. “Outlawed? It’s been outlawed? But it’s just an herbal drink! My granny used to make it!” “Indeed, it wath very traditional,” Igor agreed. “It put hairth on your chetht. ” “Yes, she used to complain about that. ” “This an alcoholic beverage?” said Hubert nervously. “Absolutely not,” said Moist. “My granny never touched alcohol. ” He thought for a moment and then added: “Except maybe aftershave. Splot’s made from tree bark. ” “Oh? Well, that sounds nice,” said Hubert. Igor retired to his jungle of equipment, and there was the clinking of glassware. Moist sat down at the cluttered bench. “How’s it going in your world, Hubert?” he said. “The water gurgling around okay, is it?” “It’s fine! Fine! It’s all fine! Nothing is wrong at all!” Hubert went blank, fished out his notebook, glanced at a page, and put it back. “How are you?” “Me? Oh, great. Except that there should be ten tons of gold in the gold vaults and there isn’t. ” It sounded as though a glass had broken in the direction of Igor, and Hubert stared in horror at Moist. “Ha? Hahahaha?” he said. “Ha ha ha ha a HAHAHA!! HA HA HA!!! HA HA—” There was a blur as Igor leaped the table and grabbed Hubert. “Thorry, Mr. Lipwig,” he said over his shoulder, “thith can go on for hourth—” He slapped Hubert twice across the face and pulled a jar out of his pocket. “Mr. Hubert? How many fingerth am I holding up?” Hubert slowly focused. “Thirteen?” he quavered. Igor relaxed, and dropped the jar back into his pocket. “Jutht in time. Well done, thur!” “I am so sorry—” Hubert began. “Don’t worry about it. I’m feeling a bit that way myself,” said Moist. “So…this gold…have you any idea who took it?” “No, but it must have been an inside job,” said Moist. “And now the Watch are going to pin it on me, I suspect. ” “Will that mean you won’t be in charge?” said Hubert. “I doubt I’ll be allowed to run the bank from inside the Tanty. ” “Oh dear,” said Hubert, looking at Igor. “Um…what would happen if it was put back?” Igor coughed loudly. “I think that’s unlikely, don’t you?” said Moist. “Yes, but Igor told me that when the Post Office burned down last year the gods themselves gave you the money to rebuild it!” “Harrumph,” said Igor. “I doubt if that’s likely twice,” said Moist. “And I don’t think there’s a god of banking. ” “One might take it on for the publicity,” said Hubert desperately. “It could be worth a prayer. ” “Harrumph!” said Igor, louder this time. Moist looked from one to the other. Okay, he thought, something’s going on, and I’m not going to be told what it is. Pray to the gods to get a big heap of gold? When had that ever worked? Well, last year it worked, true, but that was because I already knew where a big heap of gold was buried. The gods help those who help themselves, and my word, didn’t I help myself. “You think it’s really worth it?” said Moist. A small, steaming mug was placed in front of him. “Your Thplot,” said Igor. The words “Now please drink it up and go” accompanied it in every respect but the vocal. “Do you think I should pray, Igor?” said Moist, watching his face. “I couldn’t thay. The Igor position on prayer is that it is nothing more than hope with a beat to it. ” Moist leaned closer and whispered, “Igor, as one Überwald lad to another, your lisp just departed. ” Igor’s frown grew. “Thorry, thur, I have a lot on my mind,” he said, rolling his eyes to indicate the nervous Hubert. “My fault, I’m disturbing you good people,” said Moist, emptying the cup in one go. “Any minute now the dhdldlkp; kvyv vbdf[; jvjvf; llljvmmk; vvbvlm bnxgcgbnme—” Ah yes, Splot, thought Moist. It contained herbs and all natural ingredients. But belladonna was an herb, and arsenic was natural. There was no alcohol in it, people said, because alcohol couldn’t survive. But a cup of hot Splot got men out of bed and off to work when there was six feet of snow outside and the well was frozen. It left you clear-headed and quick-thinking. It was only a shame that the human tongue couldn’t keep up. Moist blinked once or twice and said, “Ughx…” He said his good-byes, even if they were his “gnyrxs,” and headed back up the length of the undercroft, the light from the Glooper pushing his shadow in front of him. Trolls watched him suspiciously as he climbed the steps, trying to keep his feet from flying away from him. His brain buzzed, but it had nothing to do. There was nothing to grab hold of, to worry a solution from. And in an hour or so, the country edition of the Times would be out and, very shortly after, so would he. There would be a run on the bank, which is a horrifying thing at best, and the other banks wouldn’t help him out, would they, because he wasn’t a chap. Disgrace and ignominy and Mr. Fusspot were staring him in the face, but only one of them was licking it. He’d made it to his office, then. Splot certainly took your mind off all your little problems by rolling them into the big one of keeping all of yourself on one planet. He accepted the little dog’s ritual slobbering kiss, got off his knees, and made it as far as the chair. Okay…sitting down, he could do that. But his mind raced. People would be here soon. There were too many unanswered questions. What to do, what to do? Pray? Moist wasn’t too keen on prayer, not because he thought the gods didn’t exist but because he was afraid they might. All right, Anoia had got a good deal out of him and he’d noticed her shiny new temple the other day, its frontage already hung with votive egg-slicers, fondant whisks, ladles, parsnip butterers, and many other useless appliances donated by grateful worshipers who had faced the prospect of a life with their drawers stuck. Anoia delivered, because she specialized. She didn’t even pretend to offer a paradise, eternal verities, or any kind of salvation. She just left you with a smooth pulling action and access to the forks. And practically no one had believed in her before he’d picked her, at random, as one of the gods to thank for the miraculous windfall. Would she remember? If he had some gold stuck in a drawer, then maybe. Turning dross into gold, probably not. Still, you turned to the gods when all you had left was a prayer. He wandered into the little kitchen and took a ladle off the hook.

Then he went back to the office and rammed it into a desk drawer, where it stuck, this being the chief function of ladles in the world. Rattle your drawers, that was it. She was attracted to the noise, apparently. “Oh Anoia,” he said, tugging at the drawer handle. “This is me, Moist von Lipwig, penitent sinner. I don’t know if you remember? We are, all of us, mere utensils, stuck in drawers of our own making, and none more than I. If you could find time in your busy schedule to unstick me in my hour of need you will not find me wanting in gratitude, yea indeed, when we put statues of the gods on the roof of the new Post Office. I never liked the urns on the old one. Covered in gold leaf, too, by the way. Thanking you in anticipation, amen. ” He gave the drawer one last tug. The ladle sprang out, twanging through the air like a leaping salmon, and smashed a vase in the corner. Moist decided to take that as a hopeful sign. You were supposed to smell cigarette smoke if Anoia was present, but since Adora Belle had spent more than ten minutes in this room, there was no point in sniffing. What next? Well, the gods helped those who helped themselves, and there was always one last Lipwig-friendly option. It floated up in his mind: wing it. CHAPTER 10 Doing it in style “The chairman goes woof” Harry King puts something by The screaming starts One kiss, no tongue Council of wars Moist takes charge A little magic, with stamps Arousing the professor’s interest A vision of paradise WING IT! There’s nothing left. Remember the nearly gold chain? This is the other end of the rainbow. Talk yourself out of a situation you can’t talk your way out of. Make your own luck. Put on a show. If you fall, let them remember how you turned it into a dive. Sometimes the finest hour is the last one. He went to the wardrobe and took out the best golden suit, the one he wore on special occasions. Then he went and found Gladys, who was staring out of the window. He had to speak her name quite loudly before she turned to face him, very slowly. “They Are Coming,” she said. “Yes, they are,” said Moist, “and I’d better look my best. Could you press these trousers, please?” Wordlessly, Gladys took the pants from him, held them against the wall, and ran a huge palm down them before handing them back. Moist could have shaved with the crease. Then she turned back to the window. Moist joined her. There was already a crowd in front of the bank, and coaches were pulling up as he watched. There were a fair number of guards around, too. A brief flash indicated that Otto Chriek of the Times was already taking pictures. Ah, yes, a deputation was now forming. People wanted to be in at the death. Sooner or later, someone would hammer at the door. Blow that for a game of soldiers. He couldn’t let that happen. Wash, shave, trim errant nose hairs, brush teeth. Comb hair, shine boots. Don hat, walk down stairs, unlock door very slowly so that the click was unlikely to be heard outside, wait until he heard a tread getting louder. Moist opened the door, sharply. “Well, gentlemen?” Cosmo Lavish wobbled as the knock failed to connect, but recovered and thrust a sheet of paper at him. “Emergency audit,” he said. “These gentlemen—” and here he indicated a number of worthy-looking men behind him “—are representatives of the major guilds and some of the other banks. This is standard procedure and you can’t stand in their way. You will note that we have brought Commander Vimes of the Watch. When we have established that there is indeed no gold in the vault, I shall instruct him to arrest you on suspicion of theft. ” Moist glanced at the commander. He did not like the man much, and was certain that Vimes did not like him at all. He was even more certain, though, that Vimes did not readily take orders from the likes of Cosmo Lavish. “I’m sure that the commander will do as he sees fit,” said Moist meekly. “You know the way to the vault. I am sorry it’s a bit of a mess at the moment. ” Cosmo half-turned, to make certain the crowd heard everything he said. “You are a thief, Mr. Lipwig. A cheat and a liar, an embezzler and have no dress sense whatsoever. ” “I say, that’s a bit on the harsh side,” said Moist as the men swept through. “I happen to think I dress rather snappily!” Now he was alone on the steps, facing the crowd. They weren’t a mob yet, but it could only be a matter of time. “Can I help anyone else?” he said. “What about our money?” said someone. “What about it?” said Moist. “Says in the paper you’ve got no gold,” said the inquirer. He pushed a damp copy of the Times toward Moist. The newspaper had, on the whole, been quite restrained. He had expected bad headlines, but the story was a single column on the front page and it was full of “we understand that” s and “we believe that” s and “the Times had been informed that” s and all the phrases that journalists use when they are dealing with facts about large sums of money they don’t fully understand and are not quite certain that what they have been told is true. He looked up into the face of Sacharissa Cripslock. “Sorry,” she said, “but there were watchmen and guards all around the place last night and we didn’t have much time. And frankly, Mr. Bent’s…attack was enough of a story in its own right. Everyone knows he runs the bank. ” “The chairman runs the bank,” said Moist stiffly. “No, Moist, the chairman goes woof,” said Sacharissa. “Look, didn’t you sign anything when you took over the job? A receipt or something?” “Well, maybe. There was a mass of paperwork. I just signed where I was told. So did Mr. Fusspot. ” “Ye gods, the lawyers would have fun with that,” said Sacharissa, her notebook magically appearing in her hand. “And it’s no joke, either. He could end up in debtors’ prison!” “Kennel,” said Moist. “He goes woof, remember? And that’s not going to happen. ” Sacharissa bent down to pat Mr. Fusspot on his little head, and froze in mid-bend. “What has he got in his—?” she began. “Sacharissa, can we go into this later? I really have not got time for it right now. I swear by any three gods you believe in, even though you are a journalist, that when this is over I will give you a story that will tax even the Times’ ability to avoid inelegant and suggestive subjects. Trust me. ” “Yes, but it looks like a—” she began. “Ah, so you do know what it is and I don’t need to explain,” said Moist briskly. He handed the paper back to its worried owner. “You are Mr. Cusper, aren’t you?” he said. “You have a balance of seven Ankh-Morpork dollars with us, I believe?” For a moment the man looked impressed. Moist was really good at faces. “I told you we aren’t bothered about gold here,” said Moist. “Yeah, but…” the man began. “Well, it’s not much of a bank if people can take the gold out of it, is it?” he said. “But it doesn’t make any difference,” said Moist. “I did tell you all. ” They looked uncertain. In theory, they should be stampeding up the steps. Moist knew what was holding them back. It was hope. It was the little voice inside that said: This isn’t really happening. It was the voice that drove people to turn out the same pocket three times in a fruitless search for lost keys. It was mad belief that the world is bound to start working properly again if I truly believe, and there will be keys. It was the voice that said “This can’t be happening” very loudly, in order to drown out the creeping dread that it was. He had about thirty seconds, while hope lasted. And then the crowd parted. Pucci Lavish did not know how to make an entrance. Harry King, on the other hand, did. The milling, uncertain throng opened up like the sea in front of a hydrophobic prophet, leaving a channel that was suddenly lined on either side by large, weathered-looking men with broken noses and a useful cross-section of scars. Along this recent avenue strode Harry King, trailing cigar smoke. Moist managed to stand his ground until Mr. King was a foot away, and made sure to look him in the eye. “How much money did I put in your bank, Mr. Lipwig?” asked Harry.

“Er, I believe it was fifty thousand dollars, Mr. King,” said Moist. “Yes, I believe it was something like that,” said Mr. King. “Can yer guess what I am going to do now, Mr. Lipwig?” Moist did not guess. The Splot was still circulating in his system, and, in his brain, the answer clanged like a funeral bell. “You’re going to put some more in, aren’t you, Mr. King?” Harry King beamed, as if Moist was a dog that had just done a new trick. “That’s right, Mr. Lipwig! I thought to myself, Harry, I thought, fifty thousand dollars seems a bit on the lonely side, so I’ve come along to round it up to sixty thousand dollars. ” On signal, some more of Harry King’s men came up behind him, carrying large chests between them. “Most of it’s gold and silver, Mr. Lipwig,” said Harry. “But I know you got lots of bright young men who can count it all up for you. ” “This is very kind of you, Mr. King,” said Moist, “but at any minute the auditors are going to come back and the bank is going to be in big, big trouble. Please! I can’t accept your money. ” Harry leaned closer to Moist, enveloping him in cigar smoke and a hint of decayed cabbage. “I know you’re up to something,” he whispered, tapping the side of his nose. “The bastards are out to get you, I can see that! I know a winner when I sees one, and I know you’ve got something up your sleeves, eh?” “Just my arms, Mr. King, just my arms,” said Moist. “And long may you keep them,” said Harry, slapping him on the back. The men filed past Moist and deposited their cases on the floor. “I don’t need a receipt,” said Harry. “You know me, Mr. Lipwig. You know you can trust me, just like I know I can trust you. ” Moist shut his eyes, just for a moment. To think that he had worried about ending the day hanging. “Your money is safe with me, Mr. King,” he said. “I know,” said Harry King. “And when you’ve won the day, I’ll send young Wallace along and he’ll have a little chat with your monkey about how much interest I’m gonna get paid on this little lot, all right? Fair’s fair?” “It certainly is, Mr. King. ” “Right,” said Harry. “Now I’m off to buy some land. ” There was some uncertain murmuring from the crowd, as he departed. The new deposit had thrown them. It had thrown Moist, too. People were wondering what Harry King knew. So did Moist. It was a terrible thing, to have someone like Harry believing in you. Now the crowd had evolved a spokesman, who said, “Look, what’s going on? Has the gold gone or not?” “I don’t know,” said Moist. “I haven’t had a look today. ” “You say that as if it doesn’t matter,” said Sacharissa. “Well, as I have explained,” Moist said, “the city is still here. The bank is still here. I am still here. ” He cast a glance toward Harry King’s broad, retreating back. “For the moment. So we don’t need the gold cluttering up the place, do we?” Cosmo Lavish appeared in the door behind Moist. “So, Mr. Lipwig, it would appear that you are a trickster to the end. ” “I beg your pardon?” said Moist. Other members of the ad hoc audit committee were pushing their way out, looking satisfied. They had, after all, been woken up very early in the morning, and those who are awakened very early in the morning expect to kill before breakfast. “Have you finished already?” said Moist. “Surely you must know why we were brought here,” said one of the bankers. “You know very well that last night the City Watch found no gold in your vaults. We can confirm this unhappy state of affairs. ” “Oh well, you know how it is with money,” said Moist. “You think you are flat-broke and there it was all the time in your other trousers. ” “No, Mr. Lipwig, the joke is on you,” said Cosmo. “The bank is a sham. ” He raised his voice. “I would advise all the investors you have misled to take their money back while they can!” “No! Squad, to me!” Commander Vimes pushed his way through the bewildered bankers at the same time as half a dozen troll officers pounded up the steps and ended up shoulder to shoulder in front of the double doors. “Are you a bloody fool, sir?” said Vimes, nose to nose with Cosmo. “That sounded to me like incitement to riot! This bank is closed until further notice!” “I am a director of the bank, Commander,” said Cosmo. “You cannot keep me out. ” “Watch me,” said Vimes. “I suggest you direct your complaint to his lordship. Sergeant Detritus!” “Yessir!” “Nobody goes in there without a chitty signed by me. And Mr. Lipwig, you will not leave the city, understood?” “Yes, Commander. ” Moist turned to Cosmo. “You know, you’re not looking well,” he said. “That’s not a good complexion you have there. ” “No more words, Lipwig. ” Cosmo leaned down. Up close, his face looked even worse, like the face of a wax doll, if a wax doll could sweat. “We’ll meet in court. It’s the end of the road, Mr. Lipwig. Or should I say…Mr. Spangler?” Oh, gods, I should have done something about Cribbins, thought Moist. I was too busy trying to make money… And there was Adora Belle, being ushered through the crowd by a couple of watchmen who were also acting as crutches. Vimes hurried down the steps as if he’d been expecting her. Moist became aware that the background noise of the city was getting louder. The crowd had noticed it too. Somewhere, something big was happening, and this little confrontation was just a sideshow. “You think you are clever, Mr. Lipwig?” said Cosmo. “No, I know I am clever. I think I’m unlucky,” said Moist. But he thought: I didn’t have that many customers, surely? I can hear screams! With triumphant shouting behind him, he pushed his way down to Adora Belle and the cluster of coppers. “Your golems, right?” he said. “Every golem in the city just stopped moving,” said Adora Belle. Their gazes met. “They’re coming?” said Moist. “Yes, I think they are. ” “Who are?” said Vimes suspiciously. “Er, them?” said Moist, pointing. A few people came running around the corner from the Maul and sprinted, gray-faced, past the crowd outside the bank. But they were only the flecks of foam driven before the tidal wave of people fleeing from the river area, and the wave of people broke on the bank as if it was a rock in the way of the flood. Floating on the sea of heads, as it were, was a circular canvas about ten feet across, of the sort that gets used to catch people who very wisely jump from burning buildings. The four people carrying it were Dr. Hicks and four other wizards, and it was at this point you would notice the chalked circle and the magic symbols. In the middle of the portable magic circle sat Professor Flead, belaboring the wizards unsuccessfully with his ethereal staff. They fetched up alongside the steps as the crowd ran onward. “I am sorry about this,” panted Hicks, “it’s the only way we could get him here and he insisted, oh how he insisted…” “Where’s the young lady?” Flead shouted. His voice was barely audible in the living daylight. Adora Belle pushed her way through the policemen. “Yes, Professor Flead?” she said. “I have found your answer! I have spoken with several Umnians!” “I thought they all died thousands of years ago!” “Well, it is a department of necromancy,” Flead said. “But I must admit they were a wee bit indistinct, even for me. Can I have a kiss? One kiss, one answer?” Adora Belle looked at Moist. He shrugged. The day was totally beyond him. He wasn’t flying anymore; he was simply being blown along by the gale. “All right,” she said. “But no tongues. ” “Tongues?” said Flead sadly. “I wish. ” There was the briefest of pecks, but the ghostly necromancer beamed. “Wonderful,” he said. “I feel at least a hundred years younger. ” “You have done the translations?” said Adora Belle. And at that moment Moist felt a vibration under foot. “What? Oh that,” said Flead. “It was those gold golems you were talking about—” —and another vibration, enough to cause a sense of unease in the bowels— “—although it turns out that the word in context doesn’t mean ‘gold’ at all. There are more than one hundred and twenty things it can mean, but in this case, taken in conjunction with the rest of the paragraph, it means ‘a thousand.

’” The street shook again. “Four thousand golems, I think you’ll find,” said Flead cheerfully. “Oh, and here they are now!” THEY CAME ALONG the streets six abreast, wall to wall and ten feet high, water and mud cascading off of them. The city echoed to their tread. They did not trample people, but mere market stalls and coaches splintered under their massive feet. They spread out as they moved, fanning out across the city, thundering down side streets, heading for the gates of Ankh-Morpork, which were always open, because there was no point in discouraging customers. And there were the horses, perhaps no more than a score in all the hurrying throng, saddles built into the clay of their backs, overtaking the two-legged golems, and not a man watched but thought: Where can I get one of those? The rest of the golems marched on with the sound of thunder, heading out of the city. One man-shaped golem stopped in the middle of Sator Square, dropped on one knee, raised a fist as if in salute, and went still. The horses halted beside it, as if awaiting riders. And when the many-walled city of Ankh-Morpork had one more wall, out beyond the gates, they stopped. As one, they raised their right hands in a fist. Shoulder to shoulder, ringing the city, the golems…guarded. Silence fell. In Sator Square, Commander Vimes looked up at the poised fist and then at Moist. “Am I under arrest?” said Moist meekly. Vimes sighed. “Mr. Lipwig,” he said, “there’s no word for what you are. ” THE PALACE’S BIG ground-floor council room was packed. Most people had to stand. Every guild, every interest group, and everyone who just wanted to say they had been there…was there. The crowd overflowed into the palace grounds and out onto the streets. Children were climbing on the golem in the square, despite the efforts of the watchmen who were guarding it. There was a large ax buried in the big table, Moist noticed; the force of it had split the wood. It had clearly been there for some time. Perhaps it was some kind of warning, or some kind of symbol. This was a council of war, after all, but without the war. “—However, we are already getting some very threatening notes from the other cities,” said Lord Vetinari, “so it is only a matter of time. ” “Why?” said Archchancellor Ridcully of Unseen University, who had managed to get a seat by dint of elevating its protesting occupant out of it. “All the things are doin’ is standin’ around outside the walls, yes?” “Quite so,” said Vetinari, “and it’s called aggressive defense. That is practically a declaration of war. ” He gave a sad little sigh, the sign of a brain shifting down a gear. “May I remind you of the famous dictum of General Tacticus: ‘Those who desire war, prepare for war’? Our city is surrounded by a wall of creatures each one of which, I gather, could only be stopped by a siege weapon. Miss Dearheart,” he paused to give Adora Belle a sharp little smile, “has been kind enough to bring Ankh-Morpork an army capable of conquering the world, although I’m happy to accept her assurance that she didn’t actually mean to. ” “Then why don’t we?” said Lord Downey, head of the Assassins’ Guild. “Ah, Lord Downey. Yes, I thought someone would say that,” said Vetinari. “Miss Dearheart? You have studied these golems. ” “I’ve had half an hour!” Adora Belle protested. “Hopping on one foot, I might add!” “Nevertheless, you are our expert. And you have had the assistance of the famously deceased Professor Flead. ” “He kept trying to see up my dress!” “Please, madam?” “They have no chem that I can get at,” said Adora Belle. “There’s no way of opening their heads! As far as we can tell they have one overriding imperative, which is to defend the city. And that’s all. It’s actually carved into their clay. ” “Nevertheless, there is such a thing as preemptive defense. That might be construed as ‘guarding. ’ In your opinion, would they attack another city?” “I don’t think so. Which city would you like me to test them on, my lord?” Moist shuddered. Sometimes Adora Belle just didn’t care. “None,” said Vetinari. “We are not going to have another wretched empire while I am Patrician. We’ve only just got over the last one. Professor Flead, have you been able to give them any instructions at all?” All heads turned to Flead and his portable circle, which had remained near the door out of the sheer impossibility of struggling further into the room. “What? No! I am certain I have the gist of Umnian, but I cannot make it move a step! I have tried every likely command, to no avail. It is most vexing!” He waved his staff at Dr. Hicks. “Come on, make yourself useful, you fellows. One more try!” “I think I might be able to communicate with them,” said Moist, staring at the ax, but his voice was lost in the disturbance as the grumbling students tried to manhandle the portable magic circle back through the crowded doorway. Let me just work out why, he thought. Yep…yep. It’s actually…simple. Far too simple for a committee. “As’ chairman of the, Merchant’s’ Guild gentlemen may, I point out that these thing’s represent a valuable labor force in this’ city—” said Mr. Robert Parker. “No slaves in Ankh-Morpork!” said Adora Belle, pointing a finger at Vetinari. “You’ve always said that!” Vetinari lifted an eyebrow at her. Then he held the eyebrow and raised her a further eyebrow. But Adora Belle was unabashable. “Miss Dearheart, you have yourself explained that they have no chem. You cannot free them. I am ruling that they are tools, and since they regard themselves as servants of the city, I will treat them as such. ” He raised both hands at the general uproar, and went on: “They will not be sold and will be treated with care, as tools should be. They will work for the good of the city and—” “No, that would be a terribly bad idea!” A white coat was struggling to get to the front of the crowd. It was topped by a yellow rain hat. “And you are…?” said Vetinari. The figure removed its yellow hat, looked around, and went rigid. A groan managed to escape from its mouth. “Aren’t you Hubert Turvy?” said Vetinari. Hubert’s face remained locked in a mask of terror, so Vetinari, in a kinder tone, added, “Do you want some time to think about that last question?” “I…only…just heard…about…” Hubert began. Hubert looked around at the hundreds of faces, and blinked. “Mr. Turvy, the alchemist of money?” Vetinari prompted. “It may be written down on your clothes somewhere?” “I think I can assist here,” said Moist, and elbowed his way to the tongue-tied economist. “Hubert,” he said, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder, “all the people are here because they want to hear your amazing theory that demonstrates the inadvisability of putting these new golems to work. You don’t want to disappoint them, do you? I know you don’t meet many people, but everyone’s heard of your wonderful work. Can you help them understand what you just shouted?” “We are agog,” said Lord Vetinari. In Hubert’s head, the rising terror of crowds was overturned by the urge to impart knowledge to the ignorant, which meant everyone except him. His hands grasped the lapels of his jacket. He cleared his throat. “Well, the problem is that, considered as a labor force, the golems are capable of doing the work per day of one hundred and twenty thousand men. ” “Think of what they could do for the city!” said Mr. Cowslick of the Artificers’ Guild. “Well, yes. To begin with, they would put one hundred and twenty thousand men out of work,” said Hubert, “but that would only be the start. They do not require food, clothing or shelter. Most people spend their money on food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, and, not least, taxes. What would these golems spend it on? The demand for many things would drop and further unemployment would result. You see, circulation is everything. The money goes around, creating wealth as it goes. ” “You seem to be saying that these things could beggar us!” said Vetinari. “There would be…difficult times,” said Hubert. “Then what course of action do you propose, Mr. Turvy?” Hubert looked puzzled.

“I don’t know, sir. I didn’t know I had to find solutions as well. ” “Any of the other cities would attack us if they had these golems,” said Lord Downey, “and surely we don’t have to think of their jobs, do we? Surely a little bit of conquest would be in order?” “An empirette, perhaps?” said Vetinari sourly. “We use our slaves to create more slaves? But do we want to face the whole world in arms? For that is what we would do, at the finish. The best that we could hope for is that some of us would survive. The worst is that we would triumph. Triumph and rot. That is the lesson of history, Lord Downey. Are we not rich enough?” That started another clamor. Moist, unnoticed, pushed his way through the heaving crowd until he reached Dr. Hicks and his crew, who were fighting their way back to the big golem. “Can I come with you, please?” he said. “I want to try something. ” Hicks nodded, but while the portable circle was being dragged out in the street, he said, “I think Miss Dearheart tried everything. The professor was very impressed. ” “There’s something she didn’t try. Trust me. Talking of trust, who are these lads holding the blanket?” “My students,” said Hicks, trying to keep the circle steady. “They want to study necro—er, postmortem communications? Why?” “Apparently it’s good for getting girls,” sighed Hicks. There were sniggers. “In a necromancy department? What kind of girls do they get?” “No, it’s because when they graduate they get to wear the hooded black robe and the skull ring. I think the term one of them used was ‘babe magnet. ’” “But I thought wizards aren’t allowed to marry?” “Marriage?” said Hicks. “Oh, I don’t think they are concerned about that. ” “We never were in my day!” shouted Flead, who was being shaken back and forth as the circle was dragged through the crowds. “Can’t you blast some of these people with Black Fire, Hicks? You’re a necromancer, for the sake of the seven hells! You are not supposed to be nice! Now that I can see what’s going on I think I shall have to spend a lot more time in the department!” “Could I have a quiet word?” whispered Moist to Hicks. “The lads can manage by themselves, can’t they? Tell them to catch up with us at the big golem. ” He hurried on, and was not at all surprised to find Hicks hurrying to catch up with him. He pulled the not-really-a-necromancer into the shelter of a doorway and said: “Do you trust your students?” “Are you mad?” “It’s just that I have a little plan to save the day, the downside of which is that Professor Flead will no longer, alas, be available to you in your department. ” “By ‘unavailable’ you mean…?” “Alas, you would never see him again,” said Moist. “I can tell that would be a blow. ” Hicks coughed. “Oh dear. He wouldn’t be able to come back at all?” “I think not. ” “Are you sure?” said Hicks carefully. “No possibility?” “I’m pretty sure. ” “Hm. Well, of course, it would indeed be a blow. ” “A big blow. A big blow,” Moist agreed. “I wouldn’t want him…hurt, of course. ” “Anything but. Anything but,” said Moist, trying not to laugh. We humans are good at this curly thinking, aren’t we, he thought. “And he has had a good innings, when all’s said and done. ” “Two of them,” said Moist, “when you come to think about it. ” “What do you want us to do?” said Hicks, against the distant shouts of the ghostly professor berating the students. “There’s such a thing, I believe, as…an insorcism?” “Those? We’re not allowed to do those! They’re totally against university rules!” “Well, wearing the black robe and the skull ring has got to count for something, hasn’t it? I mean, your predecessors would turn in their dark coffins if they thought you wouldn’t agree to the minor naughtiness I have in mind…” And Moist explained, in one simple sentence. Louder shouts and curses indicated that the portable circle was almost upon them. “Well, Doctor?” said Moist. A complex spectra of expressions chased one another across Dr. Hicks’s face. “Well, I suppose…” “Yes, Doctor?” “Well, it’d be like sending him to Heaven, right?” “Exactly! I couldn’t have put it better myself!” “Anyone could put it better than this bunch!” snapped Flead, right behind him. “The department has really been allowed to go uphill since my day! Well, we shall see what we can do about that!” “Before you do, Professor, I must speak to the golem,” said Moist. “Can you translate for me?” “Can but won’t,” snapped Flead. “You tried to help Miss Dearheart just earlier on. ” “She is attractive. Why should I bequeath to you knowledge it took me a century to acquire?” “Because there’s fools back there who want to use these golems to start a war?” “Then that will reduce the number of fools. ” In front of them now was the lone golem. Even kneeling, this one’s face was level with Moist’s eyes. The head turned to look blankly at him. The guards around the golem, on the other hand, looked at Moist with deep suspicion. “We are going to perform a little magic, officers,” Moist told them. The corporal in charge looked as if this did not meet with his approval. “We’ve got to guard it,” he pointed out, eyeing the black robes and the shimmering Professor Flead. “That’s fine, we can work around you,” said Moist. “Do please stay. I’m sure there’s not much risk. ” “Risk?” said the corporal. “Although perhaps it might be better it you fanned out to keep the public away,” Moist went on. “We would not want anything to happen to members of the public. If, perhaps, you could push them back a hundred yards or so?” “Told to stay here,” said the corporal, looking Moist up and down. He lowered his voice. “Er, aren’t you the postmaster general?” Moist recognized the look and the tone. Here we go… “Yes, indeed,” he said. The watchman lowered his voice still further. “So, er, do you by any chance have any of the blue—” “Can’t help you there,” said Moist quickly, reaching into his pocket, “but I do just happen to have here a couple of very rare 50p green stamps with the highly amusing ‘misprint’ that caused a bit of a stir last year, you may remember. These are the only two left. Very collectible. ” A small envelope appeared in his hand. Just as quickly, it vanished into the corporal’s pocket. “We can’t let anything happen to members of the public,” he said, “so I suggest we’d better keep them back a hundred yards or so. ” “Good thinking,” said Moist. A few minutes later, Moist had the square to himself, the watchmen having worked out quite quickly that the further back from danger they pushed the public the further from said danger they, too, would be. And now, Moist thought, for the Moment of Truth. If possible, though, it would become the Moment of Plausible Lies, since most people were happier with them. The Umnian golems were bigger and heavier than the ones commonly seen around the town, but they were beautiful. Of course they were—they had probably been made by golems. And their builders had given them what looked like muscles, and calm, sad faces. In the last hour or so, in defiance of the watchmen, the lovable kids of the city had managed to scrawl a black mustache on this one. O…kay. Now for the professor… “Tell me, Professor, do you enjoy being dead?” he said. “Enjoy? How can anyone enjoy it, you fool?” said Flead. “Not much fun?” “Young man, the word fun is not applicable to existence beyond the grave,” said Flead. “And is that why you hang around the department?” “Yes! It may be run by amateurs these days, but there’s always something going on. ” “Certainly,” said Moist. “However, I’m wondering if someone of your…interests would not find them better served somewhere where there is always something coming off. ” “I do not understand your meaning. ” “Tell me, Professor, have you heard of the Pink PussyCat Club?” “No, I have not. Cats are not normally pink in these times, are they?” “Really? Well, let me tell you about the Pink PussyCat Club,” said Moist. “Excuse us, Dr. Hicks. ” He waved away Hicks, who winked and led his students back to the crowd. Moist put his arm around the ghostly shoulders.

It was uncomfortable to hold it there with no actual shoulder to take the weight, but style was everything in these matters. The watchers heard some urgent whispering pass to and fro, and then Flead said, “You mean it’s…smutty?” Smut, thought Moist. He really is old. “Oh, yes. Even, I might go so far as to say, suggestive. ” “Do they show their…ankles?” said Flead, his eyes gleaming. “Ankles,” said Moist. “Ye—yes, I rather think they do. ” Ye gods, he wondered, is he that old? “All the time?” “Twenty-four hours a day. They never clothe,” said Moist. “And sometimes they spin around a pole upside down. Take it from me, Professor, for you, eternity might not be long enough. ” “And you just want a few words translated?” “A small glossary of instructions. ” “And then I can go?” “Yes!” “I have your word?” “Trust me. I’ll just explain this to Dr. Hicks. He may take some persuading. ” Moist strolled over to the huddles of people who weren’t necromancers at all. The postmortem communicator’s response was other than he expected. Second thoughts were arising. “I wonder if we’d be doing the right thing, setting him loose in a pole-dancing establishment?” said Hicks doubtfully. “No one will see him. And he can’t touch. They are very big on not touching in that place. I’m told. ” “Yes, I suppose all he can do is ogle the young ladies. ” There was some sniggering from the students. “So? They’re paid to be ogled at,” said Moist. “They are professional oglees. It’s an ogling establishment. For oglers. And you heard what’s going on in the palace. We could be at war in a day. Do you trust that lot? Trust me. ” “You use that phrase an awful lot, Mr. Lipwig,” said Hicks. “Well, I’m very trustworthy. Ready, then? Hold back until I summon you, and then you can take him to his last resting place. ” THERE WERE PEOPLE in the crowd, with sledgehammers. You’d have a job to crack a golem if it didn’t want you to, but he ought to get them out of here as soon as possible. This probably wouldn’t work. It was too simple. But Adora Belle had missed it, and so had Flead. The corporal now so bravely holding back the crowds wouldn’t have, because it was all about orders, but nobody had asked him. You just had to think a little. “Come on, young man,” said Flead, still where his bearers had left him and backed away. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?” Moist took a deep breath. “Tell me how to say: ‘Trust me, and only me. Form ranks of four and march ten miles hubward of the city. Walk slowly,’” he said. “Hee, hee. You are a sharp one, Mr. Lipstick!” said Flead, his mind full of ankles. “But it won’t work, you know. We tried things like that. ” “I can be very persuasive. ” “It won’t work, I tell you. I have found not one single word that they will react to. ” “Well, Professor, it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it, isn’t it? Sooner or later it’s all about style. ” “Hah! You are a fool, man. ” “I thought we had a deal, Professor? And I shall want a number of other phrases. ” He looked around at the golem horses, as still as statues. “And the one phrase I shall need is the equivalent of ‘giddyup’ and while I think of it I shall need ‘whoa,’ too. Or do you want to go back to the place where they’ve never heard of pole-dancing?” CHAPTER 11 The golems go True worth At work: servants of a higher truth Back in trouble again The beautiful butterfly The insanity of Vetinari Mr. Bent wakes up Mysterious requirements THINGS WERE GETTING heated in the conference room. This, to Lord Vetinari, was not a problem. He was a great believer in letting a thousand voices be heard, because this meant that all he actually needed to do was listen only to the ones that had anything useful to say, “useful” in this case being defined in the classic civil-service way as “inclining to my point of view. ” In his experience, it was a number generally smaller than ten. The people who wanted a thousand, etc. , really meant that they wanted their own voice to be heard while the other nine hundred ninety-nine were ignored, and for this purpose the gods had invented the committee. Vetinari was very good at committees, especially when Drumknott took the minutes. What the iron maiden was to stupid tyrants, the committee was to Lord Vetinari; it was only slightly more expensive, far less messy, considerably more efficient, and, best of all, you had to force people to climb inside the iron maiden. He was just about to appoint the ten noisiest people onto a Golem Committee that could be locked in a distant office, when a dark clerk appeared, apparently out of a shadow, and whispered something in Drumknott’s ear. The secretary leaned down toward his master. “Ah, it would seem that the golems are gone,” said Vetinari cheerfully, as the dutiful Drumknott stepped back. “Gone?” said Adora Belle, trying to see across to the window. “What do you mean, gone?” “Not here anymore,” said Vetinari. “Mr. Lipwig, it seems, has taken them away. They are leaving the vicinity of the city in an orderly fashion. ” “But he can’t do that!” Lord Downey was enraged. “We haven’t decided what to do with them yet!” “He, however, has,” said Lord Vetinari, beaming. “He shouldn’t be allowed to leave the city! He is a bank robber! Commander Vimes, do your duty and arrest him!” This was from Cosmo. Vimes’s look would have frozen a saner man. “I doubt if he’s going far, sir,” he said. “What do you wish me to do, Your Lordship?” “Well, the ingenious Mr. Lipwig appears to have a purpose,” said Vetinari, “so perhaps we should go and find out what it is?” The crowd made for the door, where it got stuck and fought itself. As it piled out into the street, Vetinari put his hands behind his head and leaned back with his eyes shut. “I love democracy. I could listen to it all day. Get the coach out, will you, Drumknott?” “That is being done at this moment, sir. ” “Did you put him up to this?” Vetinari opened his eyes. “Miss Dearheart, always a pleasure,” he murmured, waving away the smoke. “I thought you were gone. Imagine my delight at finding you are not. ” “Well, did you?” said Adora Belle, her cigarette noticeably shortening as she took another drag. She smoked as if it were a kind of warfare. “Miss Dearheart, I believe it would be impossible for me to put Moist von Lipwig up to anything that could be more dangerous than the things he finds to do of his own free will. While you were away, he took to climbing high buildings for fun, picked every lock in the Post Office, and took up with the Extreme Sneezing fraternity, who are frankly insane. He needs the heady whiff of danger to make his life worth living. ” “He never does that sort of thing when I’m here!” “Indeed. Can I invite you to ride with me?” “What did you mean by saying ‘indeed’ like that?” said Adora Belle suspiciously. Vetinari raised an eyebrow. “By now, if I have been adept at judging the way your fiancé thinks, we should be going to see an enormous hole…” WE’RE GOING TO need stone, thought Moist as the golems dug. Lots of stone. Can they make mortar? Of course they can. They’re the Lancre Army Knife of tools. It was fearful, the way they could dig, even in this worn-out, hopeless soil. Dirt was fountaining into the air. Half a mile away, the Old Wizarding Tower, a landmark on the road to Sto Lat, brooded over an area of scrub and desolation that was unusual on the heavily farmed plains. A lot of magic had been used here once. Plants grew twisty or not at all. The owls that haunted the ruins made sure their meals came from a distance away. It was the perfect site. No one wanted it. It was a wasteland, and a wasteland shouldn’t be allowed to go to waste. What a weapon, he thought, as his golem horse circled the diggers. They could collapse a city in a day. What a terrible force they would be in the wrong hands. Thank goodness they are in mine… The crowd was keeping its distance, but was also getting bigger and bigger. The city had turned out to watch. To be a true citizen of Ankh-Morpork was to never miss a show. As for Mr.

Fusspot, he was apparently having the time of his life standing on the horse’s head. There’s nothing a small dog likes more than a high place from which to yap madly at people…no, actually, there was, and the chairman had managed to wedge his toy between a clay ear and his paw, and stopped barking to growl every time Moist made a tentative grab at it. “Mr. Lipwig!” He looked around to see Sacharissa hurrying toward him, waving her notebook. How does she do it? he wondered, watching her as, dirt raining around her, she scurried past lines of digging golems. She’s even here before the Watch. “You have a golem horse, I see,” she shouted as she reached him. “It looks beautiful. ” “It’s rather like riding a flowerpot that you can’t steer,” Moist yelled to make himself heard over the noise. “The saddle could use some padding, too. Good, though, aren’t they? Notice how they keep shifting all the time, just like the real thing?” “And why are the golems burying themselves?” “I ordered them to!” “But they are immensely valuable!” “Yes. So we should keep them safe, right?” “But they belong to the city!” “They were taking up a lot of room, don’t you think? I’m not claiming them, in any case!” “They could do wonderful things for the city, couldn’t they?” More people were arriving now and gravitating toward the man in the golden suit, because he was always good value for money. “Like embroil it in a war or create an army of beggars? My way’s better!” “I’m sure you are going to tell us what it is!” shouted Sacharissa. “I want to base the currency on them! I want to make them into money! Gold that guards itself! You can’t fake it!” “You want to put us on the golem standard?” “Certainly! Look at them! How much are they worth?” shouted Moist, as his horse reared very convincingly. “They could build canals and dam floods, level mountains and make roads! If we need them to, they will! And if we don’t, then they’ll help to make us rich by doing nothing! The dollar will be so sound you could bounce trolls off of it!” The horse, with an astonishing grasp of public relations, reared again as Moist pointed at the laboring masses. “That is value! That is worth! What is the worth of a gold coin compared to the dexterity of the hand that holds it?” He replayed that line in his head and added, “That would make a good headline on page one, don’t you think? And it’s Lipwig with a G!” Sacharissa laughed. “Page one is already crowded! What’s going to happen to these things?” “They’ll stay here until cool heads decide what to do next!” “And what are they guarding the city from right now, exactly?” “Stupidity!” “One last thing, Moist. You are the only one who knows the secret of the golems, yes?” “Inexplicably, this seems to be the case!” “Why is this?” “I suppose I’m just a very persuasive person!” This got another laugh. “Who just happens to command a huge, unstoppable army? What demands are you going to make?” “None! No, on second thought, a coffee would be nice! I didn’t have any breakfast!” That got a much bigger laugh from the crowd. “And do you think the citizens should be glad it’s you in the saddle, as it were?” “Hell, yes! Trust me!” said Moist, dismounting and lifting a reluctant Mr. Fusspot down from his perch. “Well, you should know about that, Mr. Lipwig. ” This got a round of applause. “You wouldn’t care to tell us what happened to the gold from the bank, would you?” “’Es wearin’ it!” shouted a wag in the crowd, to cheering. “Miss Cripslock, your cynicism is, as ever, a dagger to my heart!” said Moist. “I intended to get to the bottom of that today, but ‘best-laid plans’ and all that. I just don’t seem to be able to clear my desk!” Even this got a laugh, and it wasn’t really very funny. “Mr. Lipwig? I want you to come with me…” Commander Vimes shoved his way through the crowd, with other watchmen materializing behind him. “Am I under arrest?” said Moist. “Hell, yes! You did leave the city!” “I think he could successfully argue, Commander, that the city has come with him. ” All heads turned. A path cleared itself for Lord Vetinari, as paths do for men known to have dungeons in their basement. And Adora Belle hobbled past him, threw herself at Moist, and started beating on his chest, shouting: “How did you get through to them? How did you make them understand? Tell me or I’ll never promise to marry you again!” “What are your intentions, Mr. Lipwig?” said Vetinari. “I was planning to hand them over to the Golem Trust, sir,” said Moist, fending off Adora Belle as gently as possible. “You were?” “But not the golem horses, sir. I’ll bet they are faster than any flesh-and-blood creatures. There are nineteen of them, and if you’ll take my advice, sir, you’ll give one to the king of the dwarfs, because I imagine he’s a bit angry right now. It’s up to you what you do with the others. But I’d like to ask for half a dozen of them for the Post Offce. In the meantime, the rest of them will be safe under ground. I want them to be the basis of the currency, because—” “Yes, I couldn’t help overhearing,” said Vetinari. “Well done, Mr. Lipwig, I can see you’ve been thinking about this. You have presented us with a sensible way forward, indeed. I have also been giving the situation much thought, and all that remains is for me—” “Oh, no thanks are necessary—” “—to say, ‘Arrest this man, Commander. ’ Be so good as to handcuff him to a sturdy officer and put him in my coach. ” “What?” said Moist. “What?” screamed Adora Belle. “The directors of the Royal Bank are pressing charges of embezzlement against you and the chairman, Mr. Lipwig. ” Vetinari reached down and picked up Mr. Fusspot by the scruff of his neck. The little dog swung gently back and forth in the Patrician’s grasp, wide eyes open wider in terror, his toy vibrating apologetically in his mouth. “You can’t seriously blame him for anything,” Moist protested. “Alas, he is the chairman, Mr. Lipwig. His pawprints are on the documents. ” “How can you do this to Moist after what’s just happened?” said Adora Belle. “Hasn’t he just saved the day?” “Possibly, although I’m not sure whom he has saved it for. The law must be obeyed, Miss Dearheart. Even tyrants have to obey the law. ” He paused, looking thoughtful, and continued, “No, I tell a lie, tyrants do not have to obey the law, obviously, but they do have to observe the niceties. At least, I do. ” “But he didn’t take—” Adora Belle began. “Nine o’clock tomorrow, in the Great Hall,” said Vetinari. “I invite all interested parties to attend. We shall get to the bottom of this. ” He raised his voice. “Are there any directors of the Royal Bank here? Ah, Mr. Lavish. Are you well?” Cosmo Lavish, walking unsteadily, pushed his way through the crowd, supported on one side by a young man in a brown robe. “You have had him arrested?” said Cosmo. “One uncontested fact is that Mr. Lipwig, on behalf of Mr. Fusspot, did formally take responsibility for the gold. ” “Indeed he did,” said Cosmo, glaring at Moist. “But in the circumstances I feel I should look into all aspects of the situation. ” “We are in agreement there,” said Cosmo. “And to that end I am arranging for my clerks to enter the bank tonight and examine its records,” Vetinari went on. “I cannot agree to your request,” said Cosmo. “Fortuitously, it was not a request. ” Lord Vetinari tucked Mr. Fusspot under his arm, and continued: “I have the chairman with me, you see. Commander Vimes, Mr. Lipwig into my coach, please. See that Miss Dearheart is escorted safely home, will you? We shall sort this out tomorrow. ” Vetinari looked at the tower of dust that now enveloped the industrious golems, and added, “We’ve all had a very busy day. ” OUT IN THE BACK alley behind the Pink PussyCat Club the insistent, pumping music was muffled but still pervasive. Dark figures lurked… “Mr. Hicks, sir?” The head of the Department of Postmortem Communications paused in the act of drawing a complicated rune among the rather less complex everyday graffiti and looked up at the concerned face of his student.

“Yes? Barnsforth?” “Is this exactly legal under college rules, sir?” “Of course not! Think of what might happen if this sort of thing fell into the wrong hands! Hold the lantern higher, Goatly, we’re losing the light. ” “And whose hands would that be, sir?” “Well, technically ours, as a matter of fact. But it’s perfectly all right if the council don’t find out. And they won’t, of course. They know better than to go around finding things out. ” “So it is illegal, technically?” “Well now,” said Hicks, drawing a glyph which flamed blue for a moment, “who among us, when you get right down to it, can say what is right and what is wrong?” “The college council, sir?” said Barnsforth. Hicks threw down the chalk and straightened up. “Now listen to me, you four! We are going to insorcise Flead, understand? To his eternal satisfaction and the not-inconsiderable good of the department, believe me! This is a difficult ritual but if you assist me you’ll be doctors of postmortem communication by the end of the term, understand? Straight A’s for the lot of you and, of course, the skull ring! Since you have so far managed to turn in one-third of an essay between you, I would say that is a bargain, wouldn’t you, Barnsforth?” The student blinked in the force of the question, but natural talent came to his aid. He coughed in a curiously academic way, and said, “I think I understand you, sir. What we are doing here goes beyond mundane definitions of right and wrong, does it not? We serve a higher truth. ” “Well done, Barnsforth, you will go a long way. Everyone got that? Higher truth. Good! Now let’s decant the old bugger and get out of here before anyone catches us!” A TROLL OFFICER in a coach is hard to ignore. He just looms. That was Vimes’s little joke, perhaps. Sergeant Detritus sat beside Moist, effectively clamping him into his seat. Lord Vetinari and Drumknott sat opposite, his lordship with his hands crossed on the silver-tipped cane and his chin resting on his hands. He watched Moist intently. Under Vetinari’s seat, Mr. Fusspot buzzed. There was a rumor that the sword in the stick was made with the iron taken from the blood of a thousand men. It seemed a waste, thought Moist, when for a bit of extra work you could get enough to make a ploughshare. Who made up these things, anyway? But with Vetinari, it seemed possible, if a bit messy. “Look, if you let Cosmo—” he began. “Pas devant le gendarme,” said Lord Vetinari. “Dat mean no talkin’ in front o’ me,” Sergeant Detritus supplied helpfully. “Then can we talk about angels?” said Moist, after a period of silence. “No we can’t. Mr. Lipwig, you appear to be the only person able to command the biggest army since the days of the Empire. Do you think that is a good idea?” “I didn’t want to! I just worked out how to do it!” “You know, Mr. Lipwig, killing you right now would solve an incredibly large number of problems. ” “I didn’t intend this! Well…not exactly like this. ” “We didn’t intend the Empire. It just became a bad habit. So, Mr. Lipwig, now that you have your golems, what else do you intend to do with them?” “Put one in to power every clacks tower. The donkey treadmills have never worked properly. The other cities can’t object to that. It will be a boon to ma—to peoplekind and the donkeys won’t object, I expect. ” “That will account for a few hundred, perhaps. And the rest?” “I intend to turn them into gold, sir. And I think it will solve all our problems. ” Lord Vetinari raised a quizzical eyebrow. “All our problems?” THE PAIN WAS breaking through again, but somehow reassuring. He was becoming Vetinari, certainly. The pain was good. It was a good pain, concentrated, it helped him think. Right now, Cosmo was thinking that Pucci really should have been strangled at birth, which family folklore said he had been trying to do. Everything about her was annoying. She was selfish, arrogant, greedy, vain, headstrong, and totally lacking in tact and the slightest amount of introspection. Those were not, within the clan, considered to be drawbacks in a person; one could hardly stay rich if one bothered all the time about whether what one was doing was wrong or right. But Pucci thought she was beautiful, and that grated on his nerves. She did have good hair, that was true, but those high heels! She looked like a tethered balloon! The only reason she had any figure at all was because of the wonders of corsetry. And, while he’d heard that fat girls had lovely personalities, she just had a lot, and all of it was Lavish. On the other hand, she was his age and at least had ambition and a wonderful gift for hatred. She wasn’t lazy like the rest of them. They spent their lives huddled around the money. They had no vision. Pucci was someone he could talk to. She saw things from a softer, female perspective. “You should have Bent killed,” she said. “I’m sure he knows something. Let’s hang him from one of the bridges by his ankles. That’s what Granddaddy used to do. Why are you still wearing that glove?” “He’s been a loyal servant of the bank,” said Cosmo, ignoring the last remark. “Well? What’s that got to do with it? Is there still something wrong with your hand?” “My hand is fine,” said Cosmo, as another red rose of pain bloomed all the way to his shoulder. I’m so close, he thought. So close! Vetinari thinks he has me, but I have him! Oh, yes! Nevertheless…perhaps it was time to start tidying up. “I will send Cranberry to see Mr. Bent tonight,” he said. “The man is no further use now that I have Cribbins. ” “Good. And then Lipsbig will go to prison and we’ll get our bank back. You don’t look well, you know. You are very pale. ” “As pale as Vetinari?” said Cosmo, pointing at the painting. “What? What are you talking about? Don’t be silly,” said Pucci. “And there’s a funny smell in here, too. Has something died?” “My thoughts are unclouded. Tomorrow will be Vetinari’s last day as Patrician, I assure you. ” “You’re being silly again. And ever so sweaty, I might add,” said Pucci. “Honestly, it’s dripping off your chin. Pull yourself together!” “I imagine the caterpillar feels it is dying when it begins to turn into a beautiful butterfly,” said Cosmo dreamily. “What? What? Who knows? What’s that got to do with anything?” Pucci demanded. “That’s not how it works in any case, because, listen, this is very interesting: the caterpillar dies, right, and goes all mushy, and then a tiny bit of it, like a kidney or something, suddenly wakes up and eats the caterpillar soup, and that’s what comes out as the butterfly. It’s a wonder of nature. You’ve just got a touch of flu. Don’t be a big baby. I have a date. See you in the morning. ” She flounced out, leaving Cosmo alone except for Cranberry, who was reading in the corner. It occurred to Cosmo that he really knew very little about the man. As Vetinari, of course, he would soon know everything about everybody. “You were at the Assassins’ School, weren’t you, Cranberry?” he said. Cranberry took the little silver bookmark from his top pocket, placed it carefully on the page, and closed the book. “Yes, sir. Scholarship boy. ” “Oh, yes. I remember them, scuttling about all the time. They tended to get bullied. ” “Yes, sir. Some of us survived. ” “Never bullied you, did I?” “No, sir. I would have remembered. ” “That’s good. That’s good. What is your first name, Cranberry?” “Don’t know, sir. Foundling. ” “How sad. Your life must have been very hard. ” “Yes, sir. ” “The world can be so very harsh at times. ” “Yes, sir. ” “Will you be so good as to kill Mr. Bent tonight?” “I have made a mental note, sir. I will take an associate and undertake the task an hour before dawn. Most of Mrs. Cake’s lodgers will be out at that time and the fog will be thickest. Fortuitously, Mrs. Cake is staying with her old friend Mrs. Harms-Beetle in Welcome Soap tonight. I checked earlier, having anticipated this eventuality. ” “You are a craftsman, Cranberry. I salute you. ” “Thank you, sir. ” “Have you seen Heretofore anywhere?” “No, sir. ” “I wonder where he’s got to? Now go off and have your supper, anyway.

I will not be dining tonight. “Tomorrow I will change,” he said aloud, when the door had shut behind Cranberry. He reached down and drew the sword. It was a thing of beauty. In the picture opposite, Lord Vetinari raised an eyebrow and said: “Tomorrow you will be a beautiful butterfly. ” Cosmo smiled. He was nearly there. Vetinari had gone completely mad. MR. BENT OPENED his eyes and stared at the ceiling. After a few seconds, this uninspiring view was replaced by an enormous nose, with the rest of a worried face some distance beyond it. “You’re awake!” Mr. Bent blinked and refocused and looked up at Miss Drapes, a shadow against the lamplight. “You had a bit of a funny turn, Mr. Bent,” she said in the slow, careful voice people use for talking to mental patients, the elderly, and the dangerously armed. “A funny turn? I did something funny?” He raised his head from the pillow, and sniffed. “You are wearing a necklace of garlic, Miss Drapes?” he said. “It’s…a precaution,” said Miss Drapes, looking guilty, “against…colds…yes, colds. You can’t be too careful. How do you feel, in yourself?” Mr. Bent hesitated. He wasn’t certain how he felt. He wasn’t certain who he was. There seemed to be a hole inside. There was no himself in himself. “What has been happening, Miss Drapes?” “Oh, you don’t want to worry about all that,” said Miss Drapes, with fragile cheerfulness. “I believe I do, Miss Drapes. ” “The doctor said you weren’t to get excited, Mr. Bent. ” “I, to the best of my knowledge, have never been excited in my life, Miss Drapes. ” The woman nodded. Alas, the statement was so easy to believe. “Well, you know Mr. Lipwig? They say he stole all the gold out of the vault! The—” —story unfolded. It was, in many places, speculations, both new and secondhand, and because Miss Drapes was a regular reader of the Tanty Bugle, it was recounted in the style and language in which tales of ’orrible murder are discussed. What shocked her was the way the man just lay there. Once or twice he asked her to go back over a detail, but his expression never changed. She tried to add excitement, she painted the walls with exclamation marks, and he did not budge. “—and now he’s banging up in the Tanty,” Miss Drapes said. “They say he will be hangéd by the neck until dead. I think hangéd is worse than just being hanged. ” “But they cannot find the gold…” whispered Mavolio Bent, leaning back against the pillow. “That’s right! Some say it has been spirited away by dire accomplices!” said Miss Drapes. “They say informations have been laid against him by Mr. Lavish. ” “I am a damned man, Miss Drapes, judged and damned,” said Mr. Bent, staring at the wall. “You, Mr. Bent? That’s no way to talk! You, who’ve never made a mistake?” “But I have sinned. Oh, indeed I have! I have worshiped false idols!” “Well, sometimes you can’t get real ones,” said Miss Drapes, patting his hand and wondering if she should call someone. “Look, if you want absolution, I understand the Ionians are doing two sins for one this week—” “It’s caught me,” he whispered. “Oh dear, Miss Drapes. There is something rising inside that wants to get out!” “Don’t you worry, we’ve got a bucket,” said Miss Drapes. “No! You should go, now! This will be horrible!” “I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Bent,” said Miss Drapes, a study in determination. “You’re just having a funny turn, that’s all. ” “Ha,” said Mr. Bent. “Ha…ha…haha…” The laugh climbed up his throat like something from the crypt. His skinny body went rigid and arced as if it was rising from the mattress. Miss Drapes flung herself across the bed, but she was too late. The man’s hand rose, trembling, and extended a finger toward the wardrobe. “Here we are again!” Bent screamed. The lock clicked. The doors swung open. In the cupboard was a pile of ledgers and something…shrouded. Mr. Bent opened his eyes and looked up into those of Miss Drapes. “I brought it with me,” he said, as if talking to himself. “I hated it so much but I brought it with me. Why? Who runs the circus?” Miss Drapes was silent. All she knew was that she was going to follow this to the end. After all, she’d spent the night in a man’s bedroom, and Lady Deirdre Waggon had a lot to say about that. She was technically a Ruined Woman, which seemed unfair given that, even more technically, she wasn’t. She watched as Mr. Bent…changed. He had the decency to do so with his back turned, but she closed her eyes anyway. Then she remembered that she was Ruined, and so there wasn’t much point, was there? She opened them again. “Miss Drapes?” said Mr. Bent dreamily. “Yes, Mr. Bent?” she said through chattering teeth. “We need to find…a bakery. ” Cranberry and his associate stepped into the room, and stopped dead. This was not according to the plan. “And possibly a ladder,” said Mr. Bent. He pulled a strip of pink rubber from his pocket, and bowed. CHAPTER 12 No help from on high Drumknott reports A possible jape Mr. Fusspot takes the stage Strange things in the air The return of Mr. Bent “Look out, he’s got a daisy!” Pucci’s big moment Cosmo needs a hand THERE WAS CLEAN straw in Moist’s cell and he was pretty certain no one had gobbed in the stirabout, which contained what, if you were forced to name it, you would have to concede was meat. News had somehow got around that Moist was the reason that Bellyster was no longer on the staff. Even his fellow screws had hated the bullying bastard, so Moist also got a second helping without asking, his shoes cleaned, and a complimentary copy of the Times in the morning. The marching golems had forced the bank’s troubles onto page five. The golems were all over the front page, and a lot of the inner pages were full of Vox Pops, which meant people in the street who didn’t know anything told other people what they knew, and lengthy articles by people who also didn’t know anything but could say it very elegantly in 2,500 words. He was just staring at the crossword puzzle when someone knocked very politely on the cell door. It was the warden, who hoped Mr. Lipwig had enjoyed his brief stay with them, would like to show him to his carriage, and looked forward to the pleasure of his custom again should there be any further temporary doubts about his honesty. In the meantime, he would be grateful if Mr. Lipwig would be kind enough to wear these lightweight manacles, for the look of the thing, and when they were taken off him, as they surely would be when his character was proved to be spotless, would he please remind the officer in charge that they were prison property, thank you very much. There was a crowd outside the prison, but they were standing back from the large golem which, down on one knee and with fist thrust into the air, was waiting outside the gate. It had turned up last night and if Mr. Lipwig could see his way clear to getting it to move, said the warden, everyone would be most appreciative. Moist tried to look as though he’d expected it. He had told Black Mustache to await further orders. He hadn’t expected this. In fact, it stomped after the coach all the way to the palace. There were a lot of watchmen lining the route and there seemed to be a black-clad figure on every rooftop. It looked as though Vetinari was not taking any chances on him escaping. There were more guards waiting in the back courtyard—more than was efficient, Moist could tell, since it can be easier for a swift-thinking man to get away from twenty men than from five. But somebody was Making A Statement. It didn’t matter what it was, so long as it looked impressive. He was led by dark passages into the sudden light of the Great Hall, which was packed. There was a smattering of applause, one or two cheers, and a ringing series of “boo” s from Pucci, who was sitting next to her brother in the front row of the big block of seats. Moist was led to a small podium, which was going to serve as a dock, where he could look around at the guild leaders, senior wizards, important priests, and members of the Great and the Good, or at least the Big and the Noisy.

There was Harry King, grinning at him, and the cloud of smoke that indicated the presence of Adora Belle, and—oh yes, the new high priestess of Anoia, her crown of bent spoons all shiny, her ceremonial ladle held stiffly, her face rigid with nerves and importance. You owe me, girl, Moist thought, ’cos a year ago you had to work in a bar in the evenings to make a living and Anoia was just one of half a dozen demigoddesses who shared an altar, which, let’s face it, was your kitchen table with a cloth on it. What’s one little miracle compared to that? There was a whisking of cloth and suddenly Lord Vetinari was in his seat, with Drumknott by his side. The buzz of conversation ceased, as the Patrician looked around the hall. “Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Let us get on, shall we? This is not a court of law, as such. It is a court of inquiry, which I have convened to look into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of ten tons of gold bullion from the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork. The good name of the bank has been called into question, and so we will consider all matters apparently pertaining to it—” “No matter where they lead?” “Indeed, Mr. Cosmo Lavish, no matter where they lead. ” “We have your assurance on this?” Cosmo insisted. “I believe I have already given it, Mr. Lavish. Can we proceed? I have appointed the Learned Mr. Slant, of Morecombe, Slant and Honeyplace, as counsel to the inquiry. He will examine and cross-examine as he sees fit. I think it is known to all that Mr. Slant commands the total respect of Ankh-Morpork’s legal profession. ” Mr. Slant bowed to Vetinari and let his steady gaze take in the rest of the room. It lingered a long time on the ranks of the Lavishes. “First, the matter of the gold,” said Vetinari. “I present Drumknott, my secretary and chief clerk, who overnight took a team of my senior clerks into the bank—” “Am I in the dock here?” said Moist. Vetinari glanced at him and looked down at his paperwork. “I have here your signature on a receipt for some ten tons of gold,” he said. “Do you dispute its authenticity?” “No but I thought that was just a formality!” said Moist. “Ten tons of gold is a formality, is it? And did you later break into the vault?” “Well, yes, technically. I couldn’t unlock it because Mr. Bent had fainted inside and left the key in the lock. ” “Ah, yes, Mr. Bent, the chief cashier. Is he with us today?” A quick survey found the room Bentless. “I understood that he was in a somewhat distressed state but not seriously harmed,” said Lord Vetinari. “Commander Vimes, please be so good as to send some men along to his lodgings, will you? I would like him to join us. ” He turned back to Moist. “No, Mr. Lipwig, you are not on trial, as yet. Generally speaking, before someone is put on trial it helps to have some clear reason for doing so. It is considered neater. I must point out, though, that you took formal responsibility for the gold which, we must assume, was clearly gold and clearly in the vault at that time. In order to have a thorough understanding of the bank’s disposition at this time I asked my secretary to audit the bank’s affairs, which he and his team did last nigh—” “If I’m not actually on trial at this moment can I get rid of these shackles? They do rather bias the case against me,” said Moist. “Yes, very well. Guards, see to it. Now Mr. Drumknott, if you please?” I’m going to be hung out to dry, thought Moist, as Drumknott started speaking. What is Vetinari playing at? He stared at the crowds as Drumknott went through the tedious litany of accountancy. Right in front, in a great black mass, was the Lavish family. From here, they looked like vultures. This was going to take a long time, by the sound of Drumknott’s earnest drone. They were going to set him up, and Vetinari was—ah, yes, and then it would be, in some quiet room: “Mr. Lipwig, if you could see your way clear to telling me how you controlled those golems…” A commotion near the door came as a welcome respite and now Sergeant Fred Colon, trailed by his inseparable associate Nobby Nobbs, was practically swimming through the crowd. Vimes pushed his way toward them, with Sacharissa drifting in his wake. There was a hurried conversation, and a ripple of horrified excitement rolled through the crowd. Moist caught the word murdered! Vetinari stood up and brought his stick down flat on the table, ending the noise like the punctuation of the gods. “What has happened, Commander?” he said. “Bodies, sir. In Mr. Bent’s lodgings!” “He’s been murdered?” “Nossir!” Vimes conferred briefly and urgently with his sergeant. “Body provisionally identified as Professor Cranberry, sir, not a real professor, he’s a nasty hired killer who likes reading. We thought he’d left the city. Sounds like the other one is Ribcage Jack, who was kicked to death—” there was another whispered briefing, but Commander Vimes tended to raise his voice when he was angry “—by a what? On the second floor? Don’t be daft! So what got Cranberry? Eh? Did you just say what I thought you said?” He straightened up. “Sorry, sir, I’m going to have to go and see this for myself. I think someone is having a jape. ” “And poor Bent?” said Vetinari. “No sign of him, sir. ” “Thank you, Commander. ” Vetinari waved a hand. “Do hurry back when you know more. We cannot have japes. Thank you, Drumknott. I gather you found nothing untoward apart from the lack of gold. I’m sure that comes as a relief to us all. The floor is yours, Mr. Slant. ” The lawyer arose with an air of dignity and mothballs. “Tell me, Mr. Lipwig, what was your job before you came to Ankh-Morpork?” he said. O…kay, thought Moist, looking at Vetinari, I’ve worked it out. If I’m good and say the right things, I might live. At a price. Well, no thanks. All I wanted to do was make some money. “Your job, Mr. Lipwig?” Slant repeated. Moist looked along the rows of watchers, and saw the face of Cribbins. The man winked. “Hmm?” he said. “I asked you what your job was before you arrived in this city!” It was at this point that Moist became aware of a regrettably familiar whirring sound, and from his raised position he was the first to see the chairman of the Royal Bank appear from behind the curtains at the far end of the hall with his wonderful new toy clamped firmly in his mouth. Some trick of the vibrations was propelling Mr. Fusspot backward across the shiny marble. People in the audience craned their necks as, with tail wagging, the little dog passed behind Vetinari’s chair and disappeared behind the curtains on the opposite side. I’m in a world where that just happened, Moist thought. Nothing matters. It was an insight of incredibly wonderful liberation. “Mr. Lipwig, I asked you a question,” Slant growled. “Oh, sorry. I was a crook. ”…And he flew! This was it! This was better than hanging off some old building! Look at the expression on Cosmo’s face! Look at Cribbins! They had it all planned out, and now it had got away from them. He had them all in his hand, and he was flying! Slant hesitated. “By ‘crook’ you mean—” “Confidence trickster. Occasional forgery. I’d like to think I was more of a scallywag, to be frank. ” Moist saw the looks that passed between Cosmo and Cribbins, and exulted within. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? And now you’re going to have to run to keep up… Mr. Slant was certainly having trouble in that area. “Can I be clear here? You broke the law for a living?” “Mostly I took advantage of other people’s greed, Mr. Slant. I think there was an element of education, too. ” Mr. Slant shook his head in amazement, causing an earwig to fall, with a keen sense of the appropriate, out of his ear. “Education?” he said. “Yes. A lot of people learned that no one sells a real diamond ring for one-tenth of its value. ” “And then you stepped into one of the highest public offices in the city?” said Mr. Slant, above the laughter. It was a release. People had been holding their breath for too long. “I had to. It was that or be hanged,” said Moist, and added, “again. ” Mr.

Slant looked flustered, and turned his eyes to Vetinari. “Are you sure you wish me to continue, my lord?” “Oh yes,” said Vetinari. “To the death, Mr. Slant. ” “Er…you have been hanged before?” Slant said to Moist. “Oh, yes. I did not wish it to become a habit. ” That got another laugh. Mr. Slant turned again to Vetinari, who was smiling faintly. “Is this true, my lord?” “Indeed,” said Vetinari calmly. “Mr. Lipwig was hanged last year under the name of Albert Spangler, but it turned out that he had a very tough neck, as was found when he was being placed in his coffin. You may be aware, Mr. Slant, of the ancient principle quia ego sic dico? A man who survives being hanged may have been selected by the gods for a different destiny, as yet unfulfilled? And since fortune had favored him, I resolved to put him on parole and charge him with resurrecting the Post Office, a task which had already taken the lives of four of my clerks. If he succeeded, well and good. If he failed, the city would have been spared the cost of another hanging. It was a cruel joke which, I am happy to say, rebounded to the general good. I don’t think that anyone here would argue that the Post Office is now a veritable jewel of the city? Indeed, the leopard can change his shorts!” Mr. Slant nodded automatically, remembered himself, and fumbled with his notes. He had lost his place. “And now we come to, er, the matter of the bank—” “Mrs. Lavish, a lady many of us were privileged to know, recently confided in me that she was dying,” said Vetinari. “She asked me for advice on the future of the bank, given that her obvious heirs were, in her words, ‘as nasty a bunch of weasels as you could ever hope not to meet—’” All thirty-one of the Lavish lawyers stood up and spoke at once, incurring a total cost to their clients of $AM119. 28p. Mr. Slant glared at them. Mr. Slant did not, despite what had been said, have the respect of Ankh-Morpork’s legal profession. He commanded its fear. Death had not diminished his encyclopedic memory, his guile, his talent for corkscrew reasoning, and the vitriol of his stare. Do not cross me this day, it advised the lawyers. Do not cross me, for if you do I will have the flesh from your very bones and the marrow therein. You know those leather-bound tomes you have on the wall behind your desk to impress your clients? I have read them all, and I wrote half of them. Do not try me. I am not in a good mood. One by one, they sat down. “If I may continue?” said Vetinari. “I understand that Mrs. Lavish subsequently interviewed Mr. Lipwig and considered that he would be a superb chairman in the very best traditions of the Lavish family and the ideal guardian for the dog Mr. Fusspot, who is, by the custom of the bank, its chairman. ” Cosmo rose slowly to his feet and stepped out into the center of the floor. “l object most strongly to the suggestion that this scoundrel is in the best traditions of my—” he began. Mr. Slant was on his feet as though propelled by a spring. Quick as he was, Moist was faster. “I object!” he said. “How do you dare object,” Cosmo spat, “when you have admitted to being an arrogant scofflaw?” “I object to Lord Vetinari’s allegation that I have had anything to do with the fine traditions of the Lavish family,” said Moist, staring into eyes that now seemed to be weeping green tears. “For example, I have never been a pirate or traded in slaves—” There was a great rising of lawyers. Mr. Slant glared. There was a great seating. “They admit it,” said Moist. “It’s in the bank’s own official history!” “That is correct, Mr. Slant,” said Vetinari. “I have read it. Volenti non fit injuria clearly applies. ” The whirring started again. Mr. Fusspot was coming back the other way. Moist forced himself not to look. “Oh, this is low indeed!” snarled Cosmo. “Whose history could withstand this type of malice!” Moist raised a hand. “Oooh, oooh, I know this one!” he said. “Mine can. The worst I ever did was rob people who thought they were robbing me, but I never used violence and I gave it all back. Okay, I robbed a couple of banks, well, defrauded, really, but only because they made it so easy—” “Gave it back?” said Slant, looking for some kind of response from Vetinari. But the Patrician was staring over the heads of the crowd, who were almost all engrossed in the transit of Mr. Fusspot, and merely raised a finger in either acknowledgment or dismissal. “Yes, you may recall that I saw the error of my ways last year when the gods—” Moist began. “‘Robbed a couple of banks’?” said Cosmo. “Vetinari, are we to believe that you knowingly put the most important bank in the city into the charge of a known bank robber?” The mass ranks of the Lavishes arose, united in the defense of the money. Vetinari still stared at the ceiling. Moist looked up. A disc, something white, skimmed through the air near the ceiling, descended as it circled, and hit Cosmo between the eyes. A second one swooped on over the head of Moist and landed in the bosoms of the Lavishes. “Should he have left it in the hands of unknown bank robbers?” a voice shouted, as collateral custard landed on every smart black suit. “Here we are again!” A second wave of pies was already in the air, circling the room in trajectories that dropped them into the struggling Lavishes. And then a figure fought its way out of the crowd, to the groans and screams of those who’d temporarily been in its way; this was because those who managed to escape having their feet trodden on by the big shoes jumped back in time to be scythed down by the ladder the newcomer was carrying. Then it’d innocently turned to see what mayhem it had caused, and the swinging ladder felled anyone too slow to get away. There was a method to it, though; as Moist watched, the clown stepped away from the ladder, leaving four people trapped among the rungs in such a way that any attempt to get out would cause huge pain to the other three and, in the case of one of the watchmen, a serious impairment of marriage prospects. Red-nosed and raggedy-hatted, it bounced into the arena in great, leaping strides, his enormous boots flapping on the floor with every familiar step. “Mr. Bent?” said Moist. “Is that you?” “My jolly good pal Mr. Lipwig!” shouted the clown. “You think the ringmaster runs the circus, do you? Only by the consent of the clowns, Mr. Lipwig! Only by the consent of the clowns!” Bent drew back his arm and hurled a pie at Lord Vetinari, but Moist was already in full leap before the pie started its journey. His brain came a poor third, and delivered its thoughts all in one go, telling him what his legs had apparently worked out for themselves: that the dignity of the great could rarely survive a faceful of custard, that a picture of an encustarded Patrician on the front page of the Times would rock the power politics of the city, and most of all, that in a post-Vetinari world he, Moist, would not see tomorrow, which was one of his lifelong ambitions. As in a silent dream, he sailed toward the oncoming nemesis, reaching out with snail-pace fingers while the pie spun on to its date with history. It hit him in the face. The Patrician had not moved. Custard flew up and four hundred fascinated eyes watched as a glob of the stuff was thrown up by the collision and headed on toward Vetinari, who caught it in an upraised hand. The little smack as it landed in his palm was the only sound in the room. Vetinari inspected the captured custard. He dipped a finger into it, and tasted the blob thereon. He cast his eyes upward thoughtfully, while the room held its collective breath, and then said: “I do believe it is pineapple. ” There was a thunder of applause. There had to be; even if you hated Vetinari, you had to admire the timing. And now he was coming down the steps, advancing on a frozen and fearful clown. “The clowns do not run my circus, sir,” he said, grabbing the man by his big red nose and pulling it to the full extent of the elastic. “Is that understood?” The clown produced a bulbous horn and gave a mournful honk. “Good. I’m glad you agree.

And now I want to talk to Mr. Bent, please. ” There were two honks this time. “Oh yes he is,” said Vetinari. “Shall we get him out for the boys and girls? What is 15. 3 percent of 59. 66?” “You leave him alone! Just you leave him alone!” The battered crowd parted yet again, this time for a disheveled Miss Drapes, as outraged and indignant as a mother hen. She was clasping something heavy to her sparse bosom, and Moist realized that it was a stack of ledgers. “This is what it’s all about!” she announced triumphantly, flinging her arms wide. “It’s not his fault! They took advantage of him!” She pointed an accusatory finger at the dripping ranks of the Lavishes. If a battle goddess was allowed to have a respectable blouse and hair escaping rapidly from a tight bun, then Miss Drapes could have been deified. “It was them! They sold the gold years ago!” This caused a general and enthusiastic uproar on all sides not containing a Lavish. “There will be silence!” shouted Vetinari. The lawyers rose. Mr. Slant glared. The lawyers sank. And Moist wiped pineapple custard from his eyes just in time. “Look out! He’s got a daisy!” he shouted, and then thought: I just shouted “Look out! He’s got a daisy,” and I think I’m going to remember forever just how embarrassing this was. Lord Vetinari looked down at the improbably large flower in the clown’s buttonhole. A tiny drop of water glistened in the almost-well-concealed nozzle. “Yes,” he said, “I know. Now, sir, I do indeed believe you are Mr. Bent. I recognize the walk, you see. If you are not, then all you have to do is squeeze, and all I have to do is let go. I repeat: I’d like to hear from Mr. Bent. ” Sometimes the gods don’t have the right sense of occasion, Moist thought. There should be thunder, a plangent tone, a chord of tension, some kind of celestial acknowledgment that here was the moment of tru— “9. 12798,” said the clown. Vetinari smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Welcome back,” he said, and looked around the room until his gaze found Dr. Whiteface of the Fools’ Guild. “Doctor, would you take care of Mr. Bent, please? I think he needs to be among his own. ” “It would be an honor, my lord. Seven pies in the air at once and a four-man ladder tie? Exemplary! Whoever you are brother, I offer you the joke handshake of welcome…” “He’s not going anywhere without me,” said Miss Drapes grimly, as the white-faced clown stepped forward. “Indeed, who could imagine how he would,” said Vetinari. “And please extend the courtesy of your guild to Mr. Bent’s young lady, Doctor,” he added, to the surprise and delight of Miss Drapes, who clung on daily to the “lady” but had reluctantly said good-bye to the “young” years ago. “And will somebody please release those people from that ladder? I think a saw will be required,” Vetinari went on. “Drumknott, collect up these intriguing new ledgers that Mr. Bent’s young lady has so kindly supplied. And I think Mr. Lavish needs medical attention—” “I…do…not!” Cosmo, dripping custard, was trying to remain upright. It was painful to watch. He managed to point a furious but wavering finger at the tumbled books. “Those,” he declared, “are the property of the bank!” “Mr. Lavish, it is clear to us all that you are ill—” Vetinari began. “Yes, you’d like everyone to believe that, wouldn’t you—impostor!” Cosmo said, visibly swaying. In his head the crowd cheered. “The Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork,” said Vetinari, without taking his eyes off Cosmo, “prides itself on its red-leather ledgers, which without fail are embossed with the seal of the city in gold leaf. Drumknott?” “These are cheap cardboard-bound ones, sir. You can buy them anywhere. The writing within, however, is the unmistakable fine copperplate hand of Mr. Bent. ” “You are sure?” “Oh, yes. He does a wonderful cursive script. ” “Fake,” said Cosmo, as if his tongue was an inch thick, “all fake. Stolen!” Moist looked at the watching people and saw the shared expression. Whatever you thought of him, it was not good to see a man fall to bits where he stood. A couple of watchmen were sidling carefully toward him. “I never stole a thing in my life!” said Miss Drapes, bridling enough for gymkhana. “They were in his wardrobe—” she hesitated and decided she’d rather be scarlet than gray—“and I don’t care what Lady Deirdre Waggon thinks! And I’ve taken a look inside them, too! Your father took the gold and sold it and forced him to hide it in the numbers! And that’s not the half of it!” “…Beautiful but’fly,” Cosmo slurred, blinking at Vetinari. “You not me any mo’. Walked mile in y’shoes!” Moist also edged in his direction. Cosmo had the look of someone who might explode at any moment, or collapse, or just possibly fall on Moist’s neck, mumbling things like “You’re m’bestest pal, you are, it’s you’n me ’gainst the worl’ pal. ” Greenish sweat was pouring down the man’s face. “I think you need a lie-down, Mr. Lavish,” said Moist cheerfully. Cosmo tried to focus on him. “’S a good pain,” the dripping man confided. “Got ’li’l hat, got got sword o’ t’ouands mens—” and with a whisper of steel, a gray blade, with an evil red glitter to it, was pointing between Moist’s eyes. It didn’t waver. Behind it, Cosmo was trembling and twitching, but the sword stayed rigid and unmoving. The advancing watchmen slowed down a little. Their job had a pension. “Will no one at all make any move, please? I think I can deal with this,” said Moist, squinting along the blade. This was a time for delicacy… “Oh, this is so silly,” said Pucci, strutting forward with a clatter of heels. “We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. It’s our gold, isn’t it? Who cares what he wrote down in his books?” The phalanx of Lavish lawyers rose very cautiously to their feet, while the two employed by Pucci began to whisper urgently to her. She ignored them. Everyone was staring at her now, not her brother. Everyone was paying attention to her. “Could you please be quiet, Miss Lavish?” said Moist. The stillness of the blade worried him. Some part of Cosmo was functioning very well indeed. “Oh yes, I expect you just would like me to shut up, and I’m not going to!” said Pucci gleefully. Like Moist confronted by an open notebook, she triumphantly plunged on without a care: “We can’t steal what already belongs to us, can we? So what if Father put the wretched gold to better use? It was just sitting there! Honestly, why are you all so dense? Everybody does it. It’s not stealing. I mean, the gold still exists, yes? In rings and things. It’s not as though anyone’s going to throw it away. Who cares where it is?” Moist resisted the impulse to look at the other bankers in the room. Everyone does it, eh? Pucci was not going to get many Hogswatch cards this year. And her brother was staring at her in horror. The rest of the clan, those who weren’t still engrossed in decustarding themselves, were contriving to give the impression that they had never seen Pucci before. Who is this mad woman? said their faces. Who let her in? What is she talking about? “I think your brother is very ill, miss,” he said. Pucci tossed her admittedly fine locks dismissively. “Don’t worry about him, he’s just being silly,” she said. “He’s only doing it to attract attention. Silly boyish stuff about wanting to be Vetinari, as if anyone in their right mind would—” “He’s dribbling green,” said Moist, but nothing cut through the barrage of chatter. He stared at Cosmo’s ravaged face, and everything made sense. Beard. Cap. Sword stick, yes, with someone’s tacky idea of what a blade made from the iron in the blood of a thousand men should look like. And what about the murder of a man who made rings? And under that stinking glove… This is my world. I know how to do this. “I beg your pardon! You are Lord Vetinari, aren’t you?” he said. For a moment, Cosmo drew himself up and a spark of imperiousness shone through. “Indeed! Yes indeed,” he said, raising one eyebrow. Then it sagged, and his puffy face sagged with it. “Got ring. Vetin’ry ring,” he mumbled. “’S mine really. Good pain…” The sword dropped, too.

Moist grabbed the man’s left hand and tore the glove off. It came away with a sucking sound and a smell that was unimaginably, nose-cakingly bad. The nearest guard threw up. So many colors, thought Moist. So many…wiggling things… And there, still visible in the suppurating mass, was the unmistakable sullen gleam of stygium. Moist grabbed Cosmo’s other hand. “I think you ought to come outside, my lord, now you are the Patrician,” he said loudly. “You must meet the people…” Once again, some inner Cosmo got a slippery grip, enough to cause the dribbling mouth to utter “Yes, this is very important…” before reverting to “Feel ill. Finger looks funny…” “The sunshine will do it good,” said Moist, taking him gently in tow. “Trust me. ” CHAPTER 13 Gladys Is Doing It For Herself To the House of Mirth The history of Mr. Bent Usefulness of clowns as nurses is questioned Owlswick gets an angel The golden secret (not exactly dragon magic) The return of the teeth Vetinari looks ahead The bank triumphant The Glooper’s little gift How to spoil a perfect day ON THE FIRST day of the rest of his life Moist von Lipwig woke up, which was nice, given that on any particular day a number of people do not, but woke up alone, which was less pleasing. It was six a. m. , and the fog seemed glued to the windows, so thick that it should have contained croutons. But he liked these moments, before the fragments of yesterday reassembled themselves. Hold on, this wasn’t the suite, was it? This was his room in the Post Office, which had all the luxury and comfort that you would normally associate with the term “civil-service issue. ” A piece of yesterday fell into place. Oh yes, Vetinari had ordered the bank shut while his clerks looked at everything this time. Moist wished them luck with the late Sir Joshua’s special cupboard… There was no Mr. Fusspot, which was a shame. You don’t appreciate an early-morning slobber until it’s gone. And there was no Gladys, either, which was worrying. She didn’t turn up while he was getting dressed, either, and there was no copy of the Times on his desk. His suit needed pressing, too. He eventually found her pushing a trolley of mail in the sorting room. The blue dress was gone, to be replaced by a gray one which, by the nascent standards of golem dressmaking, looked quite smart. “Good morning, Gladys,” Moist ventured, “any chance of some pressed trouser?” “There Is Always A Warm Iron In The Postmen’s Locker Room, Mr. Lipwig. ” “Oh? Ah. Right. And, er…the Times?” “Four Copies Are Delivered To Mr. Groat’s Office Every Morning, Mr. Lipwig. ” “I suppose a sandwich is totally out of—” “I Really Must Get On With My Duties, Mr. Lipwig,” said the golem reproachfully. “You know, Gladys, I can’t help thinking that there’s something different about you,” said Moist. “Yes! I Am Doing It For Myself,” said Gladys, her eyes glowing. “Doing what, exactly?” “I Have Not Ascertained This Yet, But I Am Only Ten Pages Into The Book. ” “Ah. You have been reading a new book? But not one by Lady Deirdre Waggon, I’ll wager. ” “No, Because She Is Out Of Touch With Modern Thought. I Laugh With Scorn. ” “Yes, I imagine you would do,” said Moist thoughtfully. “And I expect Miss Dearheart gave you said book?” “Yes. It Is Entitled Why Men Get Under Your Feet, By Releventia Flout,” said Gladys earnestly. And we start out with the best of intentions, thought Moist, find ’em out, dig ’em up, make ’em free. But we don’t know what we’re doing, or what we’re doing it to. “Gladys, the thing about books…well, the thing…I mean just because it’s written down, you don’t have to…that is to say, it doesn’t mean it’s…what I’m getting at is that every book is—” He stopped. They believe in words. Words give them life. I can’t tell her that we just throw them around like jugglers, we change their meaning to suit ourselves— He patted Gladys on the shoulder. “Well, read them all and make up your own mind, eh?” “That Was Very Nearly Inappropriate Touching, Mr. Lipwig. ” Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression. “Er, only for Ms. Flout, I expect,” he said, and went to grab a Times before they were all stolen. It must have been another bittersweet day for the editor. After all, there can only be one front page. In the end he’d stuffed in everything—the “I do believe it is pineapple” line, with a picture showing the dripping Lavishes in the background and, oh yes, here was Pucci’s speech, in detail. It was wonderful. And she’d gone on and on. It was all perfectly clear, from her point of view: she was right and everyone was silly. She was so in love with her own voice that the watchmen had to write down their official caution on a piece of paper and hold it up in front of her before they towed her away, still talking… And someone had got a picture of Cosmo’s ring catching the sunlight. It was near perfect surgery, they said down at the hospital, and had probably saved his life, they said, and how had Moist known what to do, they said, when the entirety of Moist’s relevant medical knowledge was that a finger shouldn’t have green mushrooms growing on it— The paper was twitched out of his hands. “What have you done with Professor Flead?” Adora Belle demanded. “I know you’ve done something! Don’t lie. ” “I haven’t done anything!” Moist protested, and checked the wording. Yes, technically true. “I’ve been to the Department of Postmortem Communications, you know!” “And what did they say?” “I don’t know! There was a squid blocking the door! But you’ve done something, I know it! He told you the secret of getting through to the golems, didn’t he!” “No. ” Absolutely true. “He didn’t?” “No. I got some extra vocabulary, but that’s no secret. ” “Will it work for me?” “No. ” Currently true. “They’d only take orders from a man? I bet that’s it. ” “I don’t think so. ” True enough. “So there is a secret?” “It’s not really a secret. Flead told us. He just didn’t know it was a secret. ” True. “It’s a word?” “No. ” True. “Look, why won’t you tell me? You know you can trust me!” “Well, yes. Of course. But can I trust you if someone holds a knife to your throat?” “Why should they do that?” Moist sighed. “Because you’ll know how to command the biggest army there has ever been! Didn’t you look around outside? Didn’t you see all the coppers? They turned up right after the hearing!” “What coppers?” “Those trolls re-laying the cobbles? How often do you see that happening? The line of cabs that aren’t interested in passengers? The battalion of beggars? And the coach yard around the back is full of hangers-on, lounging about and watching the windows. Those coppers. It’s called a stakeout, and I’m the meat—” There was a knock at the door. Moist recognized it; it sought to alert without disturbing. “Come in, Stanley,” he said. The door opened. “It’s me, sir,” said Stanley, who went through life with the care of a man reading a manual translated from a foreign language. “Yes, Stanley. ” “Head of stamps, sir,” said Stanley. “Yes, Stanley?” “Lord Vetinari is in the coach yard, sir, inspecting the new automatic pick-up mechanism. He says there is no rush, sir. ” “He says there is no rush,” said Moist to Adora Belle. “We’d better hurry, then?” “Exactly. ” “REMARKABLY LIKE a gibbet,” said Lord Vetinari, while behind him coaches rumbled in and out of the fog. “It will allow a fast coach to pick up mailbags without slowing,” said Moist. “That means letters going from small country offices can travel express without slowing the coach. It could save a few minutes on a long run. ” “And, of course, if I let you have some of the golem horses the coaches might travel at a hundred miles an hour, I’m told, and I wonder if those glowing eyes could see even through this murk. ” “Possibly, sir. But, in fact, I already have all the golem horses,” said Moist. Vetinari gave him a cool look, and then said, “Hah! And you also have all your ears. What exchange rate are we discussing?” “Look, it’s not that I want to be Lord of the Golems—” Moist began. “On the way, please. Do join me in my coach,” said Vetinari.

“Where are we going?” “Hardly any distance. We’re going to see Mr. Bent. ” THE CLOWN WHO opened the little sliding door in the Fools’ Guild’s forbidding gates looked from Vetinari to Moist to Adora Belle, and wasn’t very happy about any of them. “We are here to see Dr. Whiteface,” said Vetinari. “I require you to let us in with the minimum of mirth. ” The door snapped back. There was some hurried whispering and a clanking noise, and one half of the double doors opened a little way, just enough for people to walk through in single file. Moist stepped forward, but Vetinari put a restraining hand on his shoulder and pointed up with his stick. “This is the Fools’ Guild,” he said. “Expect…fun. ” There was a bucket balanced on the door. He sighed, and gave it a push with his stick. There was a thud and a splash from the other side. “I don’t know why they persist in this, I really don’t,” he said, sweeping through. “It’s not funny and it could hurt someone. Mind the custard. ” There was a groan from the dark behind the door. “Mr. Bent was born Charlie Benito, according to Dr. Whiteface,” said Vetinari, pushing his way through the tent that occupied the Guild’s quadrangle. “And he was born a clown. ” Dozens of clowns paused in their daily training to watch them pass. Pies remained unflung, trousers did not fill with whitewash, invisible dogs paused in mid-widdle. “Born a clown?” said Moist. “Indeed, Mr. Lipwig. A great clown, from a family of clowns, who have worn the Charlie Benito makeup for centuries. You saw him last night. ” “I thought he’d gone mad!” “Dr. Whiteface, on the other hand, thinks he has come to his senses. Young Bent had a terrible childhood, I gather. No one told him he was a clown until he was thirteen. And his mother, for reasons of her own, discouraged all clownishness in him. ” “She must have liked clowns once,” said Adora Belle. She looked around them. All the clowns hurriedly looked away. “She loved clowns,” said Vetinari. “Or should I say, one clown. And for one night. ” “Oh. I see,” said Moist. “And then the circus moved on?” “As circuses do, alas. After which I suspect she rather went off men with red noses. ” “How do you know all this?” said Moist. “Some of it is informed conjecture, but Miss Drapes has got a lot out of him in the last couple of days. She is a lady of some depth and determination. ” On the far side of the big tent there was another doorway, where the head of the Guild was waiting for them. He was white all over—white hat, white boots, white costume, and white face—and on that face, delineated in thin lines of red greasepaint, was a smile belying the real face, which was as cold and proud as that of a prince of Hell. Dr. Whiteface nodded at Vetinari. “My lord…” “Dr. Whiteface,” said the Patrician. “And how is the patient?” “Oh, if only he had come to us when he was young,” said Whiteface, “what a clown he would have been! What timing! Oh, by the way, we do not normally allow women visitors into the Guild, but in these special circumstances we are waiving this rule. ” “Oh, I’m so glad,” said Adora Belle, acid etching every syllable. “It is simply that, whatever the Jokes For Women group says, women are just not funny. ” “It is a terrible affliction,” Adora Belle agreed. “An interesting dichotomy, in fact, since neither are clowns,” said Vetinari. “I’ve always thought so,” said Adora Belle. “They are tragic,” said Vetinari, “and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd. ” “Where do the squeaky balloon animals fit in?” said Moist. “I have no idea. But I understand that when the would-be murderers broke in, Mr. Bent strangled one with quite a lifelike humorous pink elephant made out of balloons. ” “Just imagine the noise,” said Adora Belle cheerfully. “Yes! What a turn! And without any training! And the business with the ladder? Pure battle-clowning! Superb!” said Whiteface. “We know it all now, Havelock. After his mother died, his father came back and, of course, took him off to the circus. Any clown could see the boy had funny bones. Those feet! They should have sent him to us! A boy of that age, it can be very tricky! But no, he was bundled into his grandfather’s old gear and shoved out into the ring in some tiny little town, and well, that’s where clowning lost a king. ” “Why? What happened?” said Moist. “Why do you think? They laughed at him. ” IT WAS RAINING, and wet branches lashed at him as he bounded through the woods, whitewash still dribbling from his baggy trousers. The pants themselves bounced up and down on their elastic braces, occasionally hitting him under the chin. The boots were good. They were amazing boots. They were the only ones he’d had that fitted. But Mother had brought him up properly. Clothes should be a respectable gray, mirth was indecent, and makeup was a sin. Well, punishment had come fast enough! At dawn he found a barn. He scraped off the dried custard and caked greasepaint and washed himself in a puddle. Oh, that face! The fat nose, the huge mouth, the white tear painted on—he would remember it in nightmares, he knew it. At least he still had his own shirt and drawers, which covered all the important bits. He was about to throw everything else away when an inner voice stopped him. His mother was dead and he hadn’t been able to stop the bailiffs taking everything, even the brass ring Mother polished every day, he’d never see his father again…he had to keep something, there had to be something, so that he might remember who and why he was and where he’d come from and even why he’d left. The barn yielded a sack full of holes; that was good enough. The hated suit was stuffed inside. Later that day he’d come across some caravans parked under the trees, but they were not the garish carts of the circus. Probably they were religious, he thought, and Mother had approved of the quieter religions, provided the gods weren’t foreign. They gave him rabbit stew. And when he looked over the shoulder of a man sitting quietly at a small folding table, he saw a book full of numbers, all written down. He liked numbers. They’d always made sense in a world that didn’t. And then he’d asked the man, very politely, what the number at the bottom was, and the answer had been, “It’s what we call the total,” and he’d replied, “No, that’s not the total, that’s three farthings short of the total. ” “How do you know?” said the man, and he’d said, “I can see it is,” and the man had said, “But you only just glanced at it!” and he’d said, “Well, yes, isn’t that why?” And then more books were opened and the people gathered round and gave him sums to do, and they were all so, so easy… It was all the fun the circus couldn’t be, and involved no custard, ever. HE OPENED HIS eyes and made out the indistinct figures. “Am I going to be arrested?” Moist glanced at Vetinari, who waved a hand vaguely. “Not necessarily,” said Moist carefully. “We know about the gold. ” “Mr. Lavish said he would let it be known about my…family,” said Mr. Bent. “Yes, we know. ” “People would laugh. I couldn’t stand that. And then I think I…you know, I think I convinced myself that it was all a dream? That provided I never looked for it, it would still be there. ” He paused, as if random thoughts were queuing for the use of the mouth. “Mr. Whiteface has been kind enough to show me the history of the Charlie Benito face…” Another pause. “I hear I threw custard pies with considerable accuracy. Perhaps my ancestor will be proud. ” “How do you feel now?” said Moist. “Oh, quite well in myself,” said Bent, “whoever that is. ” “Good. Then I want to see you at work tomorrow, Mr. Bent. ” “You can’t ask him to go back so soon!” Miss Drapes protested. Moist turned to Whiteface and Vetinari.

“Could you please leave us, gentlemen?” There was an affronted look on the chief clown’s face, which was made worse by the permanent happy smile, but the door shut behind them. “Listen, Mr. Bent,” said Moist urgently. “We’re in a mess—” “I believed in the gold, you know,” said Bent. “Didn’t know where it was, but I believed. ” “Good. And it probably still exists in Pucci’s jewelry box,” said Moist. “But I want to open the bank again tomorrow, and Vetinari’s people have been through every piece of paper in the place, and you can guess what kind of mess they leave. And I want to launch the notes tomorrow, you know? The money that doesn’t need gold? And the bank doesn’t need gold. We know this. It worked for years with a vault full of junk! But the bank needs you, Mr. Bent. The Lavishes are in real trouble; Cosmo’s locked up somewhere; Mr. Fusspot’s in the palace; and tomorrow, Mr. Bent, the bank opens and you must be there. Please? Oh, and the chairman has graciously barked assent to putting you on a salary of sixty-five dollars a month. I know you are not a man to be influenced by money, but the raise might be worth considering by a man contemplating a, ah, change in his domestic arrangements?” It wasn’t a shot in the dark. It was a shot in the light—clear, blazing light. Miss Drapes was definitely a woman with a plan, and it had to be a better one than the rest of a life spent in a narrow room in Elm Street. “It’s your choice, of course,” he said, standing up. “Are they treating him all right, Miss Drapes?” “Only because I’m here,” she said smartly. “This morning three clowns came in with a big rope and a small elephant and wanted to pull one of his poor teeth! And then I’d hardly got them out when two more came in and started to whitewash the room, very inefficiently, in my opinion! I got them out of here in very short order, I can tell you!” “Well done, Miss Drapes!” Vetinari was waiting outside the Guild with the coach door open and, Moist noted with relief, Mr. Fusspot asleep on the cushions. “You will get in,” Vetinari said. “You too, Miss Dearheart. ” “Actually it’s a very short walk to—” “Get in, Mr. Lipwig. We will go the pretty way. “I believe you think our relationship is a game,” said Vetinari, as the coach pulled away. “You believe that all sins will be forgiven. So let me give you this. ” He took up a black walking stick with a silver skull on the handle, and tugged at the handle. “This curious thing was in the possession of Cosmo Lavish,” he said, as the blade slid out. “I know. Isn’t it a replica of yours?” said Moist. “Oh really,” said Vetinari. “Am I a sword-made-of-the-blood-of-a-thousand-men kind of ruler? It’ll be a crown of skulls next, I suppose. I believe Cosmo had it made. ” “So it’s a replica of a rumor?” said Adora Belle. Outside the coach, some gates were swung open. “Indeed,” said Vetinari. “A copy of something that does not exist. One can only assume that it is authentic in every respect. ” The coach door was opened, and Moist and Adora Belle stepped down into the palace gardens. They had the usual look of such places—neat, tidy, lots of gravel and pointy trees and no vegetables. “Why are we here?” said Adora Belle. “It’s about the golems, isn’t it?” “Miss Dearheart, what do our local golems think about this new army?” “They don’t like them. They think they will cause trouble. They have no chem that can be changed. They’re worse than zombies. ” “Thank you. A further question: Will they kill?” “Historically, golem-makers have learned not to make golems that kill—” “Is that a no?” “I don’t know!” “We make progress. Is it possible to give them an order which cannot be countermanded by another person?” “Well, er…Yes. If they don’t know the wretched secret. ” “Which is?” Vetinari turned back to Moist and drew the sword. “It must be the way I give the orders, sir,” said Moist, squinting downward at the blade for the second time. It really did glint. He was braced for what happened, except that it happened in entirely the wrong way. Vetinari handed him the sword and said, “Miss Dearheart, I really wish you would not leave the city for long periods. It makes this man seek danger. Tell us the secret, Mr. Lipwig. ” “I think it could be too dangerous, sir. ” “Mr. Lipwig, do I need a button that says TYRANT?” “Can I make a bargain?” “Of course. I am a reasonable man. ” “Will you keep to it?” “No. But I will make a different bargain,” said Vetinari. “The Post Office can have six golem horses. The other golem warriors will be considered wards of the Golem Trust, but the use of four hundred of them to improve the operation of the clacks system will, I am sure, meet with international approval. We will replace gold with golems as a basis for our currency, as you have so eloquently pleaded. The two of you have made the international situation very…interesting—” “Sorry, why is it me that’s holding this sword?” said Moist. “—and you tell us the secret and, best of all, you live,” Vetinari finished, “and who is going to give you a better offer?” “Oh, all right,” said Moist. “I knew this would have to happen. The golems obey me be—” “—because you wear a golden suit and therefore, in their eyes, must be an Umnian priest,” said Vetinari, “because for an order to be fully realized the right person must say the right words to the right recipient. I used to be quite a scholar. It’s a matter of reasoning. Do not continue to stand there with your mouth open. ” “You already knew?” “It wasn’t exactly dragon magic. ” “So why did you give me this horrible sword?” “It is tasteless, isn’t it,” said Vetinari, taking it from him. “One might imagine it belonging to someone with a name like Krax the Mighty. I was just interested to see that you were more fearful when you were holding it. You really are not a violent man, are you…” “That wasn’t necessary!” said Moist. Adora Belle was grinning. “Mr. Lipwig, Mr. Lipwig, Mr. Lipwig, will you never learn?” said Vetinari, sheathing the sword. “One of my predecessors used to have people torn apart by wild tortoises. It was not a quick death. He thought it was a hoot. Forgive me if my pleasures are a little more cerebral, will you? Let me see now, what was the other thing. Oh yes, I regret to tell you that a man called Owlswick Clamp has died. ” There was something about the way he said it… “Did an angel call him?” said Moist. “Very likely, Mr. Lipwig. But should you find yourself in need of more designs, I’m sure I can find someone in the palace to assist. ” “It was meant to be, I’m sure,” said Moist. “I’m glad he’s gone to a better place. ” “Less damp, certainly. Go now. My coach is at your disposal. You have a bank to open! The world spins on, and this morning it is spinning on my desk. Follow me, Mr. Fusspot. ” “Can I make a suggestion that might help?” said Moist, as Vetinari turned away. “What is it?” “Well, why don’t you tell all the other Plains governments about the golden secret? That would mean no one could use them as soldiers. That would take the pressure off. ” “Hmm, interesting. And would you agree with that, Miss Dearheart?” “Yes! We don’t want golem armies! It’s a very good idea!” Vetinari reached down and gave Mr. Fusspot a dog biscuit. When he straightened up, there was an almost imperceptible change in his expression. “Last night,” he said, “some traitor sent the golden secret to the rulers of every major city in the plains, via a clacks message the origin of which appears to be untraceable. It wasn’t you, was it, Mr. Lipwig?” “Me? No!” “But you just suggested it, did you not? Some would call it treason, incidentally. ” “I only just mentioned it,” said Moist. “You can’t pin it on me! Anyway, it was a good idea,” he added, trying not to catch Adora Belle’s eye. If you don’t think of not using fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will. ” He heard her giggle, for the first time ever. “You have found fifty-foot-high killer golems now, Miss Dearheart?” said Vetinari, looking stern, as though he might add, “Well, I hope you brought enough for everybody!” “No, sir.

There aren’t any,” said Adora Belle, trying to look serious and not succeeding. “Well, never mind, I’m sure some ingenious person will devise one for you eventually. When they do, don’t hesitate to refrain from bringing it home. In the meantime, we have this wretched fait accompli. ” Vetinari shook his head in what Moist was sure was genuinely contrived annoyance and went on: “An army that will obey anyone with a shiny jacket, a megaphone, and the Umnian words for ‘Dig a hole and bury yourselves’ would turn war into nothing but a rather entertaining farce. Rest assured, I’m putting together a committee of inquiry. It will not rest, apart from statutory tea and biscuit breaks, until it has found the culprit. I shall take a personal interest, of course. ” Of course you will, Moist thought. And I know that lots of people heard me shout Umnian commands, but I’m betting on a man who thinks war is a wicked waste of customers. A man who’s a better con artist than I’ll ever be, who thinks committees are a kind of wastepaper basket, who can turn sizzle into sausage, every day… Moist and Adora Belle looked at one another. Their glances agreed: It’s him. Of course it’s him. Downey and all the rest of them will know it’s him. Things that live on damp walls will know it’s him. And no one will ever prove it. Moist’s thoughts added: He’s probably got our signed confessions in his pocket right now, just in case. Owlswick’s probably as busy as a bee and as happy as a pig in muck. Still, it could be worse. Better the devil who knows you… “You can trust us,” he said. “Yes. I know,” said Vetinari. “Come, Mr. Fusspot. There may be cake. ” MOIST DIDN’T FANCY another ride in the coach. Coaches carried some unpleasant associations right now. “He’s won, hasn’t he,” said Adora Belle, as the fog billowed around them. “Well, he’s got the chairman eating out of his hand. ” “Is he allowed to do that?” “I think that comes under the quia ego sic dico rule. ” “Yes, what did that mean?” “‘Because I say so,’ I think. ” “That doesn’t sound like much of a rule. ” “Actually, it’s the only one he needs. All in all he could be—” “You owe me five grand, Mishter Shpangler!” The figure was out of the gloom and behind Adora Belle in one movement. “No tricks, miss, on account o’ this knife,” said Cribbins, and Moist heard Adora Belle’s sharp intake of breath. “Your chum promised it to me for peaching you, and since you peached yourself and sent him to the loony house I reckon you owe me, right?” Moist’s slowly moving hand found his pocket, but it was bereft of aid; the Tanty didn’t like you to bring blackjacks and lock picks in with you and expected you to buy such things from the wardens, like everyone else. “Put the knife away and we can talk,” he said. “Oh yeah, talk! You like talkin’, you do! You got a magic tongue, you have! I sheen you! You flap it about and you’re the golden boy! You tell ’em you’re goin’ to rob them and they laugh! How d’you get away with that, eh?” Cribbins was champing and spitting with rage. Angry people make mistakes, but that’s no comfort when they’re holding a knife a few inches from your girlfriend’s kidneys. She’d gone pale, and Moist had to hope that she’d worked out that this was no time to stamp her foot. Above all, he had to stop himself from looking over Cribbins’s shoulder, because in the edge of his vision he was sure someone was creeping up. “This is no time for rash moves,” he said loudly. The shadow in the fog appeared to halt. “Cribbins, this is why you never made it,” Moist went on. “I mean, do you expect me to have that much money on me?” “Plenty of places round here for ush to be coshy while we wait, eh?” Dumb, thought Moist. Dumb but dangerous. And a thought said: It’s brain against brain. And a weapon he doesn’t know how to use belongs to you. Push him. “Just back away and we’ll forget we saw you,” he said. “That’s the best offer you’re going to get. ” “You’re going to try to talk your way out of thish, you shmarmy bashtard? I’m goin’ to—” There was a muffled twang, and Cribbins made a noise. It was the sound of someone trying to scream, except that even screaming was too painful. Moist grabbed Adora Belle as the man bent double, clutching at his mouth. There was another twang, and blood appeared on Cribbins’s cheek, causing him to whimper and roll up into a ball. Even then, there were more twangs as a dead man’s dentures, mistreated and ill-used over the years, finally gave up the ghost, who made a determined effort to take the hated Cribbins with him. Later on, the doctor said one spring almost made it into a sinus. Captain Carrot and Nobby Nobbs ran out of the fog, and stared down at the man who twitched now and again with a ping. “Sorry, sir, we lost you in the muck,” said Carrot. “What happened to him?” Moist held Adora Belle tightly. “His dentures exploded,” he said. “How could that happen, sir?” “I have no idea, Captain. Why not do a good deed and get him to the hospital?” “Will you want to press charges, Mr. Lipwig?” Carrot said, lifting the whimpering Cribbins with some care. “I’d prefer a brandy,” said Moist. He thought: Perhaps Anoia was just awaiting her moment. I’d better go to her temple and hang up a big, big ladle. It may not be a good idea to be ungrateful… SECRETARY DRUMKNOTT TIPTOED into Lord Vetinari’s office on velvet-shod feet. “Good morning,” said his lordship, turning away from the window. “The fog has a very pleasing tint of yellow this morning. Any news about Heretofore?” “The watch in Quirm are searching for him, sir,” said Drumknott, putting the city edition of the Times in front of him. “Why?” “He bought a ticket for Quirm. ” “But he will have bought another one from the coachman for Genua. He will run as far as he can. Send a short clacks to our man there, will you?” “I hope you are right, sir. ” “Do you? I hope I am wrong. It will be good for me. Ah. Ahaha. ” “Sir?” “I see the Times has put color on the front page again. The front and back of the one-dollar note. ” “Yes, sir. Very nice. ” “Actual size, too,” said Vetinari, still smiling. “I see here that this is to familiarize people with the look of the things. Even now, Drumknott, even now, honest citizens are carefully cutting out both sides of this note and gluing them together. ” “Shall I have a word with the editor, sir?” “Don’t. It will be more entertaining to let things take their course. ” Vetinari leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes with a sigh. “Very well, Drumknott, I feel strong enough now to hear what the political cartoon looks like. ” There was a crackle of paper as Drumknott found the right page. “Well, there is a very good likeness of Mr. Fusspot. ” Under Vetinari’s chair the dog opened his eyes at the sound of his name. So did his new master, with more urgency. “Surely he has nothing in his mouth?” “No, sir, it is empty,” said Drumknott calmly. “This is the Times of Ankh-Morpork, sir. ” Vetinari relaxed again. “Continue. ” “He is on a leash, sir, and looking unaccustomedly ferocious. You are holding the leash, sir. In front of him, and backing nervously into a corner, are a group of very fat cats. They are wearing top hats, sir. ” “As cats do, yes. ” Vetinari nodded. “And they have the words THE BANKS on them,” Drumknott added. “Subtle indeed!” “While you, sir, are waving a handful of paper money at them and the speech bubble says—” “Don’t tell me. ‘THIS does NOT taste of pineapple’?” “Well done, sir. Incidentally, it does so happen that the chairmen of the rest of the city banks wish to see you, at your convenience. ” “Good. This afternoon, then. ” Vetinari got up and walked over to the window. The fog was thinning, but its drifting cloud still obscured the city. “Mr. Lipwig is a very…popular young man, is he not, Drumknott?” said Vetinari, staring into the gloom. “Oh yes, sir,” said the secretary, folding up the newspaper. “Extremely so. The Times likes him. The people seem to like him. He is an entertainer, and much is forgiven of such people. ” “And very confident in himself, I think. ” “I would say so.

” “And loyal?” “He took a pie for you, sir. ” “A tactical thinker at speed, then. ” “Oh yes. ” “Bearing in mind his own future was riding on the pie as well. ” “He is certainly sensitive to political currents, no doubt about it,” said Drumknott, picking up his bundle of files. “And, as you say, popular,” said Vetinari, still a gaunt outline against the fog. Drumknott waited. Moist was not the only one sensitive to political currents. “An asset to the city, indeed,” said Vetinari, after a while. “And we should not waste him. Obviously, though, he should be at the Royal Bank long enough to bend it to his satisfaction,” Vetinari mused. Drumknott said nothing, but arranged some of the files into a more pleasing order. A name struck him, and he shifted a file to the top. “Of course, then he will get restless again and become a danger to others as well as himself…” Drumknott smiled at his files. His hand hovered… “Apropos of nothing, how old is Mr. Creaser?” “The taxmaster? In his seventies, sir,” said Drumknott, opening the file he had just selected. “Yes, seventy-four, it says here. ” “We have recently pondered his methods, have we not?” “Indeed we have, sir. Last week. ” “Not a man with a flexible cast of mind, I feel. A little at sea in the modern world. Holding someone upside down over a bucket and giving them a good shaking is not the way forward. I won’t blame him when he decides to take an honorable and well-earned retirement. ” “Yes sir. When would you like him to decide that, sir?” said Drumknott. “No rush,” said Vetinari. “No rush. ” “Have you given any thought to his successor? It’s not a job that creates friends,” said Drumknott. “It would need a special sort of person. ” “I shall ponder it,” said Vetinari. “No doubt a name will present itself. ” THE BANK STAFF were at work early, pushing through the crowds who were filling the street because (a) this was another act in the wonderful street theater that was Ankh-Morpork and (b) there was going to be big trouble if their money had gone missing. There was, however, no sign of Mr. Bent or Miss Drapes. Moist was in the Mint. Mr. Spools’s men had, well, they’d done their best. It’s an apologetic phrase, commonly used to mean that the result is just one step above mediocre, but their best was one leap above superb. “I’m sure we can improve them,” said Mr. Spools, as Moist gloated. “They are perfect, Mr. Spools!” “Anything but. But it’s kind of you to say so. We’ve done seventy thousand so far. ” “Nothing like enough!” “With respect, we are not printing a newspaper here. But we’re getting better. You have talked about other denominations…?” “Oh, yes. Two, five, and ten dollars to start with. And the fives and tens will talk. ” Nothing like enough, he thought, as the colors of money flowed through his fingers. People will queue up for this. They won’t want the grubby, heavy coins, not when they see this! Backed by golems! What is a coin compared to the hand that holds it? That’s worth! That’s value! Hm, yes, that’d look good on the two-dollar note, too, I’d better remember that. “The money…will talk?” said Mr. Spools carefully. “Imps,” said Moist. “They’re only a sort of intelligent spell. They don’t even have to have a shape. We’ll print them on the higher denominations. ” “Do you think the university will agree to that?” said Spools. “Yes, because I’m going to put Ridcully’s head on the five-dollar note. I’ll go and talk to Ponder Stibbons. This looks like a job for inadvisably applied magic if ever I saw one. ” “And what would the money say?” “Anything we want it to. ‘Is your purchase really necessary?’ perhaps, or ‘Why not save me for a rainy day?’ The possibilities are endless!” “It usually says good-bye to me,” said a printer, to ritual amusement. “Well, maybe we can make it blow you a kiss as well,” said Moist. He turned to the Men of the Sheds, who were beaming and gleaming with newfound importance. “Now, if some of you gentlemen will help me carry this lot into the bank…” The hands of the clock were chasing one another to the top of the hour when Moist arrived at the head of the procession, and there was still no sign of Mr. Bent. “Is that clock right?” said Moist, as the hands began the relaxing stroll to the half hour. “Oh yes, sir,” said a counter clerk. “Mr. Bent sets it twice a day. ” “Maybe, but he hasn’t been here for more than—” The doors swung open, and there he was. Moist had, for some reason, expected the clown outfit, but this was the smooth and shiny, ironed-in-his-clothes Bent with the smart jacket and pinstripe trousers and— —the red nose. And he was arm-in-arm with Miss Drapes. The staff stared at it all, too shocked for a reaction. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Bent, his voice echoing in the silence. “I owe so many apologies. I have made many mistakes. Indeed, my whole life has been a mistake. I believed that true worth lodged in lumps of metal, metal which I doubt we shall see again. Much of what I believed is worthless, in fact, but Mr. Lipwig believed in me and so I am here today. Let us make money based not on a trick of geology but on the ingenuity of hand and brain. And now—” he paused, because Miss Drapes had squeezed his arm. “Oh, yes, how could I forget,” Bent went on, “what I do now believe with all my heart is that Miss Drapes will marry me in the Chapel of Fun in the Fools’ Guild on Saturday, the ceremony to be conducted by the Reverend Brother ‘Whacko’ Whopply. You are all, of course, invited—” “—but be careful what you wear because it’s a whitewash wedding,” said Miss Drapes coyly, or what she probably thought was coyly. “And with that it only remains for me to—” Bent tried to continue, but the staff had realized what their ears had heard, and closed in on the couple, the women drawn to the soon-not-to-be-Miss Drapes by the legendarily high gravity of an engagement ring and the men intent on slapping Mr. Bent on the back and then doing the hitherto unthinkable, which involved picking him up and carrying him around the room on their shoulders. Eventually, it was Moist who had to cup his hands and shout: “Look at the time, ladies and gentlemen! Our customers are waiting, ladies and gentlemen! Let us not stand in the way of making money! We mustn’t be a dam in the economic flow!” …and he wondered what Hubert was doing now… WITH HIS TONGUE out in concentration, Igor removed a slim tube from the gurgling bowels of the Glooper. A few bubbles zig-zagged to the top of the central hydro unit and burst on the surface with a gloop. Hubert breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Well done, Igor, only one more to…Igor?” “Right here, thur,” said Igor, stepping out from behind him. “It looks as though it’s working, Igor. Good old hyphenated silicon! But you’re sure it’ll still work as an economic modeler afterward?” “Yeth, thur. I am confident in the new valve array. The thity will affect the Glooper, if you withh, but not the other way around. ” “Even so, it would be dreadful if it fell into the wrong hands, Igor. I wonder if I should present the Glooper to the government. What do you think?” Igor gave this some thought. In his experience a prime definition of “the wrong hands” was “the government. ” “I think you ought to take the opportunity to get out a bit more, thur,” he said kindly. “Yes, I suppose I have been overdoing it,” said Hubert. “Um…about Mr. Lipwig…” “Yeth?” Hubert looked like a man who had been wrestling with his conscience and got a knee in his eye. “I want to put the gold back in the vault. That’ll stop all this trouble. ” “But it wath thtolen away yearth ago, thur,” Igor explained patiently. “It wathen’t your fault. It wath not even there when the Glooper wath built. ” “No, but they were blaming Mr. Lipwig, who’s always been very kind to us. ” “I think he got off on that one, thur. ” “But we could put it back,” Hubert insisted. “It would come back from wherever it was taken to, wouldn’t it?” Igor scratched his head, causing a faint metallic noise.

He had been following events with more care than Hubert employed, and as far as he could see, the missing gold had been disposed of by the Lavishes years ago. Mr. Lipwig had been in trouble, but it seemed to Igor that trouble hit Mr. Lipwig like a big wave hitting a flotilla of ducks. Afterward, there was no wave but there was still a lot of duck. “It might,” he conceded. “So that would be a good thing, yes?” Hubert insisted. “And he’s been very kind. We owe him that little favor. ” “I don’t think—” “That is an order, Igor!” Igor beamed. At last. All this politeness had been getting on his nerves. What an Igor expected was insane orders. That was what an Igor was born (and, to some extent, made) for. A shouted order to do something of dubious morality with an unpredictable outcome? Thweeet! Of course, thunder and lightning would have been more appropriate. Instead there was nothing more than the bubbling of the Glooper and gentle glassy noises that always made Igor think he was in a wind-chime factory. But sometimes you just had to improvise. He closed the little valve on the bottom of a funnel that drained into the Gold Reserve flask, and then filled it to the ten-tons marker, fiddled with the shiny valve array for a minute or two, and then stood back. “When I turn thith wheel, marthter, the Glooper will depothit into the vault flathk an analogue of ten tonth of gold. Thith will cauth ten tonth of gold to gently appear in the vault, tho that reality ith in balance. Ath thoon ath thith ith done, the Glooper will then clothe the connection. ” “Very good, Igor. ” “Er, you wouldn’t like to thtout thomthing, would you,” Igor hinted. “Like what?” “Oh, I don’t know…perhapth ‘They said’…sorry, ‘thaid’…thorry…‘I wath mad but thith will show them!!’” “That’s not really me. ” “No?” said Igor. “Perhapth a laugh, then?” “Would that help?” “Yeth, thur,” said Igor. “It will help me. ” “Oh, very well, if you think it will help,” said Hubert. He took a sip from the jug Igor had just used, and cleared his throat. “Hah,” he said. “Er, hahahh hah HA HA HA HA HA HA…” What a waste of a wonderful gift, thought Igor, and turned the wheel. Gloop! EVEN FROM DOWN here in the vaults, you could hear the buzz of activity in the banking hall. Moist walked slowly under the weight of a crate of bank notes, to Adora Belle’s annoyance. “Why can’t you put them in a safe?” “Because they’re full of coins. Anyway, we’ll have to keep them in here for now, until we get sorted out. ” “It’s really just a victory thing, isn’t it? Your triumph over gold?” “A bit, yes. ” “You got away with it again. ” “I wouldn’t exactly put it like that. Gladys has applied to be my secretary. ” “Here’s a tip: don’t let her sit on your lap. ” “I’m being serious here! She’s ferocious! She probably wants my job now! She believes everything she reads!” “There’s your answer, then. Good grief, she’s the least of your problems!” “Every problem is an opportunity,” said Moist primly. “Well, if you upset Vetinari again you will have a wonderful opportunity to never have to buy another hat. ” “No, I think he likes a little opposition. ” “And are you any good at knowing how much?” “No, that’s what I enjoy. You get a wonderful view from the point of no return. ” Moist opened the vault and put the crate on a shelf. It looked a bit lost and alone, but he could just make out the thudding of the press in the Mint as they worked hard at providing it with company. Adora Belle leaned on the door frame, watching him carefully. “I keep hearing that while I was away you did all kinds of risky things. Is that true?” “I like to flirt with risk. It’s always been part of my life. ” “But you don’t do that kind of stuff while I’m around,” said Adora Belle. “So I’m enough of a thrill, am I?” She advanced. The heels helped, of course, but Spike could move like a snake trying to sashay, and the severe, tight, and ostensibly modest dresses she wore left everything to the imagination, which is much more inflammatory than leaving nothing. Speculation is always more interesting than facts. “What are you thinking about right now?” she said. She dropped her cigarette stub and pinned it with a heel. “Piggy banks,” said Moist instantly. “Piggy banks?” “Yes, in the shape of not so much a pig as the bank and the Mint. To teach the kiddies the habits of thrift. The money could go in the slot where the Bad Penny is—” “Are you really thinking about money boxes?” “Er, no. I’m flirting with risk again. ” “That’s better!” “Although you must admit that it’s a pretty clev—” Adora Belle grabbed Moist by the shoulders. “Moist von Lipwig, if you don’t give me a big wet kiss right now—Ow! Are there fleas down here?” It felt like a hailstorm. The air in the vault had become a golden mist. It would have been pretty, if it wasn’t so heavy. It stung where it touched. Moist grabbed her hand and dragged her out as the teeming particles became a torrent. Outside, he took off his hat, which was already so heavy that it was endangering his ears, and tipped a small fortune in gold onto the floor. The vault was already half-full. “Oh no,” he moaned. “Just when it was going so well…” Epilogue WHITENESS, COOLNESS, the smell of starch. “Good morning, my lord. ” Cosmo opened his eyes. A female face, surrounded by a white cap, was looking down at him. Ah, so it had worked. He had known it would. “Would you like to get up?” said the woman, stepping back. There were a couple of heavily built men behind her, also in white. This was just as it should be. He looked down at the place where a whole finger should be, and saw a stump covered in a bandage. He couldn’t quite remember how this had happened, but that was fine. After all, in order to change, something had to be lost as well as gained. That was fine. So this was a hospital. That was fine. “This is a hospital, yes?” he said, sitting up in the bed. “Well done, Your Lordship. You are in the Lord Vetinari ward, as a matter of fact. ” That is fine, Cosmo thought. So I endowed a ward at some time. That was very forward-looking of me. “And those men are bodyguards?” he said, nodding at the men. “Well, they are here to see that no harm comes to you,” said the nurse, “so I suppose that’s true. ” There were a number of other patients in the long ward, all in white robes, some of them seated and playing board games, and a number of them standing at the big window, staring out. They stood in identical poses, their hands clasped behind their backs. Cosmo watched them for some time. Then he stared at the small table where two men were sitting opposite each other, apparently taking turns to measure each other’s foreheads. He had to pay careful attention for some time before he worked out what was going on. But Lord Vetinari was not a man to jump to conclusions. “Excuse me, nurse,” said Cosmo, and she hurried over. He beckoned her closer, and the two burly men drew nearer, too, not taking their eyes off him. “I know those people are not entirely sane,” he said. “They think they are Lord Vetinari, am I right? This is a ward for such people, yes? Those two are having an eyebrow-raising competition!” “You are quite right,” said the nurse. “Well done, my lord!” “Doesn’t it puzzle them when they see one another?” “Not really, my lord. Each one thinks he’s the real one. ” “So they don’t know that I am the real one?” One of the guards leaned forward. “No, my lord, we’re keeping very quiet about it,” he said, winking at his colleague. Cosmo nodded. “Very good. This is a wonderful place to stay while I’m getting better. The perfect place to be incognito. Who would think of looking for me in this room of poor, sad madmen?” “That’s exactly the plan, sir. Well done!” “You know, some sort of artificial skyline would make things more interesting for the poor souls at the window,” he said. “Ah, we can tell you’re the real thing, sir,” said the man, winking at his colleague. Cosmo beamed. And two weeks later, when he won the eyebrow-raising competition, he was happier than he’d ever been before.

THE PINK PUSSYCAT Club was packed again tonight…except for seat seven (front row, center). The record for anyone remaining in seat seven was nine seconds. The baffled management had replaced the cushions and the springs several times. It made no difference. On the other hand, everything else was going so inexplicably well lately. There seemed to be a good atmosphere in the club, especially among the dancers, who were working extra hard now that someone had invented a currency that could be stuck into a garter. Noisy drunks fell silent, disrespectful punters were hurrying frantically out of the door even before the bouncers got to them. The whole place was running like a clock, the management concluded, and it somehow had to do with that empty seat. Well, a happy house was worth a seat, especially in view of what had happened when they tried to take the damn thing away… Author’s Note Hemlines as a measure of national crisis (page 64): The author will be forever grateful to the renowned military historian and strategist Sir Basil Liddell Hart for imparting this interesting observation to him in 1968. It may explain why the mini-skirt has, since the ’60s, never really gone out of style. Students of the history of computing will recognize in the Glooper a distant echo of the Phillips Economic Computer, built in 1949 by engineer turned economist Bill Phillips, which also made an impressive hydraulic model of the national economy. No Igors were involved, apparently. One of the early machines is on display in the Science Museum, London, and a dozen or so others are on display around the world, for the interested observer. And finally, as ever, the author is grateful to the British Heritage Joke Foundation for its work in ensuring that the fine old jokes never die… About the Author TERRY PRATCHETT’s novels have sold more than forty-five million (give or take a few million) copies worldwide. He lives in England. www. terrypratchettbooks. com Visit www. AuthorTracker. com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author. Also by Terry Pratchett The Carpet People The Dark Side of the Sun Strata The Bromeliad Trilogy: Truckers • Diggers • Wings Only You Can Save Mankind Johnny and the Dead Johnny and the Bomb The Unadulterated Cat (with Gray Jolliffe) Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman) The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents The Wee Free Men A Hat Full of Sky Wintersmith The Discworld Books The Color of Magic The Light Fantastic Equal Rites Mort Sourcery Wyrd Sisters Pyramids Guards! Guards! Eric (with Josh Kirby) Moving Pictures Reaper Man Witches Abroad Small Gods Lords and Ladies Men at Arms Soul Music Interesting Times Maskerade Feet of Clay Hogfather Jingo The Last Continent Carpe Jugulum The Fifth Elephant The Truth Thief of Time Night Watch Monstrous Regiment Going Postal Thud! Where’s My Cow? (with Melvyn Grant) The Last Hero (with Paul Kidby) The Art of Discworld (with Paul Kidby) Mort: A Discworld Big Comic (with Graham Higgins) The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (with Stephen Briggs) The Discworld Companion (with Stephen Briggs) The Discworld Mapp (with Stephen Briggs) The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld (with Stephen Briggs) Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 Epilogue Author’s Note About the Author Also by Terry Pratchett Books by Terry Pratchett The Discworld® Series THE COLOR OF MAGIC CARPE JUGULUM THE LIGHT FANTASTIC THE FIFTH ELEPHANT EQUAL RITES THE TRUTH MORT THIEF OF TIME SOURCERY THE LAST HERO (illustrated by Paul Kidby) WYRD SISTERS PYRAMIDS THE AMAZING MAURICE ANDHIS EDUCATED RODENTS (for young adults) GUARDS! GUARDS! ERIC NIGHT WATCH (illustrated by Josh Kirby) THE WEE FREE MEN (for young adults) MOVING PICTURES REAPER MAN MONSTROUS REGIMENT WITCHES ABROAD A HAT FULL OF SKY (for young adults) SMALL GODS LORDS AND LADIES GOING POSTAL MEN AT ARMS THUD SOUL MUSIC WINTERSMITH (for young adults) INTERESTING TIMES MAKING MONEY MASKERADE UNSEEN ACADEMICALS FEET OF CLAY I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT (for young adults) HOGFATHER JINGO SNUFF THE LAST CONTINENT RAISING STEAM Other Books About Discworld THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD IV:JUDGEMENT DAY (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) TURTLE RECALL: THE DISCWORLD COMPANION … SO FAR (with Stephen Briggs) THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III: DARWIN’S WATCH (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD (with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby) (with Jacqueline Simpson) THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO THE WORLD OF POO (with Paul Kidby) (with the Discworld Emporium) THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK THE COMPLEAT ANKH-MORPORK CITY GUIDE (with Bernard Pearson) THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK (with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson) (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player) WHERE’S MY COW? THE DISCWORLD MAPP (illustrated by Melvyn Grant) (with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player) THE ART OF DISCWORLD A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP (with Paul Kidby) (with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby) THE WIT AND WISDOMOF DISCWORLD DEATH’S DOMAIN (compiled by Stephen Briggs) (with Paul Kidby) Shorter Writing A BLINK OF THE SCREEN Non-Discworld Books THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman) STRATA THE LONG EARTH (with Stephen Baxter) THE UNADULTERATED CAT THE LONG WAR (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe) (with Stephen Baxter) Non-Discworld Novels for Younger Readers THE CARPET PEOPLE JOHNNY AND THE DEAD TRUCKERS JOHNNY AND THE BOMB DIGGERS NATION WINGS DODGER ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2013 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company. Originally published in the UK by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, a division of the Random House Group Limited, London, in 2013. www. doubleday. com DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House LLC. Terry Pratchett® and Discworld® are registered trademarks. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pratchett, Terry, author. Raising Steam : a Discworld novel / Terry Pratchett. —First U. S. Edition. pages cm 1. Discworld (Imaginary place)—Fiction. 2. Fantasy fiction. 3. Humorous fiction. I. Title. PR6066. R34R35 2014 823′. 914—dc23 2014000869 ISBN 978-0-385-53826-8 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-385-53829-9 (eBook) Jacket design by Jason Booher Jacket illustration by Justin Gerard Map by the Discworld Emporium v3. 1 To David Pratchett and Jim Wilkins, both fine engineers who taught their sons to be curious. Contents Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Map First Page Acknowledgments About the Author It is hard to understand nothing, but the multiverse is full of it. Nothing travels everywhere, always ahead of something, and in the great cloud of unknowing nothing yearns to become something, to break out, to move, to feel, to change, to dance and to experience—in short, to be something. And now it found its chance as it drifted in the ether. Nothing, of course, knew about something, but this something was different, oh yes, and so nothing slid silently into something and floated down with everything in mind and, fortunately, landed on the back of a turtle, a very large one, and hurried to become something even faster. It was elemental and nothing was better than that and suddenly the elemental was captured! The bait had worked.

* Anyone who has ever seen the River Ankh sliding along its bed of miscellaneous nastiness would understand why so much of the piscine food for the people of Ankh-Morpork has to be supplied by the fishing fleets of Quirm. In order to prevent terrible gastric trouble for the citizenry, Ankh-Morpork fishmongers have to ensure that their suppliers make their catches a long, long way from the city. For Bowden Jeffries, purveyor of the very best in seafood, the two hundred miles or more which lay between the fish docks at Quirm and the customers in Ankh-Morpork was a regrettably long distance throughout the winter, autumn, and spring and a sheer penance in the summertime, because the highway, such as it was, became a linear furnace all the way to the Big City. Once you had had to deal with a ton of overheated octopus, you never forgot it; the smell lasted for days, and followed you around and almost into your bedroom. You could never get it out of your clothes. People were so demanding, but the elite of Ankh-Morpork and, indeed, everyone else wanted their fish, even in the hottest part of the season. Even with an icehouse built by his own two hands and, by arrangement, a second icehouse halfway along the journey, it made you want to cry, it really did. And he said as much to his cousin, Relief Jeffries, a market gardener, who looked at his beer and said, “It’s always the same. Nobody wants to help the small entrepreneur. Can you imagine how quickly strawberries turn into little balls of mush in the heat? Well, I’ll tell you: no time at all. Blink and you miss ’em, just when everybody wants their strawberries. And you ask the watercress people how difficult it is to get the damn stuff to the city before it’s as limp as a second-day sermon. We should petition the government!” “No,” said his cousin. “I’ve had enough of this. Let’s write to the newspapers! That’s the way to get things done. Everyone’s complaining about the fruit and vegetables and the seafood. Vetinari should be made to understand the plight of the small-time entrepreneur. After all, what do we occasionally pay our taxes for?” Dick Simnel was ten years old when, back at the family smithy in Sheepridge, his father simply disappeared in a cloud of furnace parts and flying metal, all enveloped in a pink steam. He was never found in the terrible haze of scorching dampness, but on that very day young Dick Simnel vowed to whatever was left of his father in that boiling steam that he would make steam his servant. His mother had other ideas. She was a midwife, and as she said to her neighbors, “Babbies are born everywhere. I’ll never be without a customer. ” So, against her son’s wishes, Elsie Simnel decided to take him away from what she now considered to be a haunted place. She packed up their belongings and together they returned to her family home near Sto Lat, where people didn’t inexplicably disappear in a hot pink cloud. Soon after they arrived something important happened to her boy. One day while waiting for his mother to return from a difficult delivery, Dick walked into a building that looked interesting, and which turned out to be a library. At first he thought it was full of poncy stuff, all kings and poets and lovers and battles, but in one crucial book he found something called mathematics and the world of numbers. And that was why, one day some ten years later, he pulled together every fiber of his being and said, “Mother, you know last year when I said I were going ’iking in the mountains of Uberwald with me mates, well, it were kind of … sort of … a kind of lie, only very small, mind you. ” Dick blushed. “You see, I found t’keys to Dad’s old shed and, well, I went back to Sheepridge and did some experimenting and”—he looked at his mother anxiously—“I think I know what ’e were doing wrong. ” Dick was braced for stiff objections, but he hadn’t reckoned on tears—so many tears—and as he tried to console her he added, “You, Mother, and Uncle Flavius got me an education, you got me the knowing of the numbers, including the arithmetic and weird stuff dreamed up by the philosophers in Ephebe where even camels can do logarithms on their toes. Dad didn’t know this stuff. He had the right ideas but he didn’t have the … tech-nol-ogy right. ” At this point, Dick allowed his mother to talk, and she said, “I know there’s no stopping you, our Dick, you’re just like your stubborn father were, pigheaded. Is that what you’ve been doin’ in the barn? Teck-ology?” She looked at him accusingly, then sighed. “I can see I can’t tell you what to do, but you tell me: how can your ‘logger-reasons’ stop you goin’ the way of your poor old dad?” She started sobbing again. Dick pulled out of his jacket something that looked like a small wand, which might have been made for a miniature wizard, and said, “This’ll keep me safe, Mother! I’ve the knowing of the sliding rule! I can tell the sine what to do, and the cosine likewise and work out the tangent of t’quaderatics! Come on, Mother, stop fretting and come wi’ me now to t’barn. You must see ’er!” Mrs. Simnel, reluctant, was dragged by her son to the great open barn he had kitted out like the workshop back at Sheepridge, hoping against hope that her son had accidentally found himself a girl. Inside the barn she looked helplessly at a large circle of metal which covered most of the floor. Something metallic whizzed round and round on the metal, sounding like a squirrel in a cage, giving off a smell much like camphor. “Here she is, Mother. Ain’t she champion?” Dick said happily. “I call her Iron Girder!” “But what is it, son?” He grinned hugely and said, “It’s what they call a pro-to-type, Mother. You’ve got to ’ave a pro-to-type if you’re going to be an engineer. ” His mother smiled wanly but there was no stopping Dick. The words just tumbled out. “The thing is, Mother, before you attempt owt you’ve got to ’ave some idea of what it is you want to do. One of the books I found in the library was about being an architect. And in that book, the man who wrote it said before he built his next big ’ouse he always made quite tiny models to get an idea of how it would all work out. He said it sounds fiddly and stuff, but going slowly and being thorough is the only way forward. And so I’m testing ’er out slowly, seeing what works and what doesn’t. And actually, I’m quite proud of me’sen. In the beginning I made t’track wooden, but I reckoned that the engine I wanted would be very ’eavy, so I chopped up t’wooden circle for firewood and went back to t’forge. ” Mrs. Simnel looked at the little mechanism running round and round on the barn floor and said, in the voice of someone really trying to understand, “Eee, lad, but what does it do? ” “Well, I remembered what Dad said about t’time he were watching t’kettle boiling and noticed t’lid going up and down with the pressure, and he told me that one day someone would build a bigger kettle that would lift more than a kettle lid. And I believe I have the knowing of the way to build a proper kettle, Mother. ” “And what good would that do, my boy?” said his mother sternly. And she watched the glow in her son’s eyes as he said, “Everything, Mother. Everything. ” Still in a haze of slight misunderstanding, Mrs. Simnel watched him unroll a large and rather grubby piece of paper. “It’s called a blueprint, Mother. You’ve got to have a blueprint. It shows you how everything fits together. ” “Is this part of the pro-to-type?” The boy looked at his doting mother’s face and realized that a little more exposition should be forthcoming. He took her by the hand and said, “Mother, I know they’re all lines and circles to you, but once you have the knowing of the circles and the lines and all, you know that this is a picture of an engine. ” Mrs. Simnel gripped his hand and said, “What do you think you’re going to do with it, our Dick?” And young Simnel grinned and said happily, “Change things as needs changing, Mother. ” Mrs.

Simnel gave her son a curious look for a moment or two, then appeared to reach a grudging conclusion and said, “Just you come with me, my lad. ” She led him back into the house, where they climbed up the ladder into the attic. She pointed out to her son a sturdy seaman’s chest covered in dust. “Your granddad gave me this to give to you, when I thought you needed it. Here’s the key. ” She was gratified that he didn’t grab it and indeed looked carefully at the trunk before opening it. As he pushed up the lid, suddenly the air was filled with the glimmer of gold. “Your granddad were slightly a bit of a pirate and then he got religion and were a bit afeared, and the last words he said to me on his deathbed were, ‘That young lad’ll do something one day, you mark my words, our Elsie, but I’m damned if I know what it’s going to be. ’ ” The people of the town were quite accustomed to the clangings and bangings emanating every day from the various blacksmith forges for which the area was famous. It seemed that, even though he had set up a forge of his own, young Simnel had decided not to enter the blacksmithing trade, possibly due to the dreadful business of Mr. Simnel Senior’s leaving the world so abruptly. The local blacksmiths soon got used to making mysterious items that young Mr. Simnel had sketched out meticulously. He never told them what he was constructing, but since they were earning a lot of money they didn’t mind. The news of his legacy got around, of course—gold always finds its way out somehow—and there was a scratching of heads among the population exemplified by the oldest inhabitant, who, sitting on the bench outside the tavern, said, “Well, bugger me! Lad were blessed wi’ an inherited fortune in gold and turned it into a load of old iron!” He laughed, and so did everybody else, but nevertheless they continued to watch young Dick Simnel slip in and out of the wicket gate of his old and almost derelict barn, double-padlocked at all times. Simnel had found a couple of local likely lads who helped him make things and move things around. Over time, the barn was augmented by a host of other sheds. More lads were taken on and the hammers were heard all day every day and, a bit at a time, information trickled into what might be called the local consciousness. Apparently the lad had made a pump, an interesting pump that pumped water very high. And then he’d thrown everything away and said things like, “We need more steel than iron. ” There were tales of great reams of paper laid out on desks as young Simnel worked out a wonderful “undertaking,” as he called it. Admittedly there had been the occasional explosion, and then people heard about what the lads called “the Bunker,” which had been useful to jump into on several occasions when there had been a little … incident. And then there was the unfamiliar but somehow homely and rhythmic “chuffing” noise. Really quite a pleasant noise, almost hypnotic, which was strange because the mechanical creature that was making the noise sounded more alive than you would have expected. It was noticed in the locality that the two main coworkers of Mr. Simnel, or “Mad Iron” Simnel as some were now calling him, seemed somewhat changed, more grown-up and aware of themselves; young men, acolytes of the mysterious thing behind the doors. And no amount of bribery by beer or by women in the pub would make them give up the precious secrets of the barn. *1 They conducted themselves now as befitted the masters of the fiery furnace. And then, of course, there were the sunny days when young Simnel and his cohorts dug long lines in the field next to the barn and filled them with metal while the furnace glowed day and night and everyone shook their heads and said, “Madness. ” And this went on, it seemed forever, until ever was finished and the banging and clanging and smelting had stopped. Then Mr. Simnel’s lieutenants pulled aside the double doors of the big barn and filled the world with smoke. Very little happened in this part of Sto Lat and this was enough to bring people running. Most of them arrived in time to see something heading out toward them, panting and steaming, with fast-spinning wheels and oscillating rods eerily appearing and disappearing in the smoke and the haze, and on top of it all, like a sort of king of smoke and fire, Dick Simnel, his face contorted with the effort of concentration. It was faintly reassuring that this something was apparently under the control of somebody human—although the more thoughtful of the onlookers might have added “So what? So’s a spoon,” and got ready to run away as the steaming, dancing, spinning, reciprocating engine cleared the barn and plunged on down the tracks laid in the field. And the bystanders, most of whom were now byrunners, and in certain instances bystampeders, fled and complained, except, of course, for every little boy of any age who followed it with eyes open wide, vowing there and then that one day he would be the captain of the terrible noxious engine, oh yes indeed. A prince of the steam! A master of the sparks! A coachman of the Thunderbolts! And outside, freed at last, the smoke drifted purposefully away from the shed in the direction of the largest city in the world. It drifted slowly at first, but gathered speed. Later that day, and after several triumphant turns around the short track in the field, Simnel sat down with his helpers. “Wally, Dave, I’m running out of brass, lads,” he said. “Get your mothers to get your stuff together, make us some butties, bring out the ’orses. We’re taking Iron Girder to Ankh-Morpork. I ’ear it’s the place where things ’appen. ” Of course Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, would occasionally meet Lady Margolotta, Governess of Uberwald. Why shouldn’t he? After all, he also occasionally had meetings with Diamond King of Trolls up near Koom Valley, and indeed with the Low King of the Dwarfs, Rhys Rhysson, in his caverns under Uberwald. This, as everybody knew, was politics. Yes, politics. The secret glue that stopped the world falling into warfare. In the past there had been so much war, far too much, but as every schoolboy knew, or at least knew in those days when schoolboys actually read anything more demanding than a crisp packet, not so long ago a truly terrible war, the last war of Koom Valley, had almost happened, out of which the dwarfs and trolls had managed to achieve not exactly peace, but an understanding from which, hopefully, peace might evolve. There had been the shaking of hands, important hands, shaken fervently, and so there was hope, hope as fragile as a thought. Indeed, thought Lord Vetinari as his coach rattled along toward Uberwald, in the rosy afterglow that had followed the famous Koom Valley Accord even goblins had finally been recognized as sapient creatures, to be metaphorically treated as brothers, although not necessarily as brothers-in-law. He reflected that, from a distance, the world might conceivably look to be at peace, a state of affairs that always ends in war, eventually. He winced as his coach hit another most egregious bump on the road. He’d had the seats supplemented with extra mattress padding but simply nothing could turn the journey to Uberwald into anything other than a penance at every pothole, leading to fundamental discomfort. Progress had been very slow, although stops at clacks towers along the route had allowed his secretary, Drumknott, to collect the daily crossword puzzle without which Lord Vetinari considered the day incomplete. There was a bang from outside. “Good grief! Must we hit every pothole on the road, Drumknott?” “I’m sorry, sir, but it appears that her ladyship cannot even now control the bandits around the Wilinus Pass. She has a culling every so often, but I’m afraid this is the least dangerous route. ” There was a shout outside, followed by more banging.

Vetinari blew out his reading lamp moments before a ferocious-looking individual pushed the point of a crossbow bolt to the glass of the carriage, which was now in darkness, and said, “Just you come out here with all your valuables or it’ll be the worse for you, okay! No tricks now! We’re assassins!” Lord Vetinari calmly put down the book he had been reading, sighed and said to Drumknott, “It appears, Drumknott, that we have been hijacked by assassins. Isn’t that … nice. ” And now Drumknott had a little smile. “Oh, yes, how nice, sir. You always like meeting assassins. I won’t get in your way, sir. ” Vetinari pulled his cloak around him as he stepped out of the coach and said, “There is no reason for violence, gentlemen. I will give you everything I have …” And it was no more than two minutes later that his lordship climbed back up into the coach and signaled for the driver to carry on as if nothing had happened. After a while, and out of sheer curiosity, Drumknott said, “What happened this time, my lord? I didn’t hear anything. ” Beside him, Lord Vetinari said, “Neither did they, Drumknott. Dear me, it’s such a waste. One wonders why they don’t learn to read. Then they’d recognize the crest on my coach, which would have enlightened them!” As the coach got up to what might be considered an erratic kind of speed, and after some thought, Drumknott said, “But your crest, sir, is black on a black background and it’s a very dark night. ” “Ah, yes, Drumknott,” Lord Vetinari replied, with what passed as a smile. “Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that. ” There was something inevitable about Lady Margolotta’s castle. As the great wooden doors slowly opened, every door hinge creaked. After all, there was such a thing as socially acceptable ambience. Indeed, what kind of vampire would live in a castle that didn’t creak and groan on cue? The Igors wouldn’t have it any other way, and now the resident Igor welcomed Lord Vetinari and his secretary into a cavernous hall with spiderwebs hanging pendulously from the ceiling. And there was a sense, only a sense, that down in the basement somewhere, something was screaming. But of course, Vetinari reflected, here was a wonderful lady, who had made vampires understand that returning from the grave so often that you got dizzy was rather stupid and who somehow had persuaded them to at least tone down their nocturnal activities. Besides which, she had introduced coffee to Uberwald, apparently exchanging one terrifying craving for another. Lady Margolotta was always short and to the point, as was the nature of the conversation that followed a splendid dinner a few days later. “It is the grags. The grags again, yes, Havelock? After all this time! My vord, even vorse, just as you, my dear, prophesied. How could you have foreseen it?” “Well, madam, Diamond King of Trolls asked me the very same thing, but all I can say is that it lies in the indefatigable nature of sapient creatures. In short, they can’t all be satisfied at the same time. You thought the bunting and fireworks and handshakes and pledges after Koom Valley was signed and sealed was the end of it, yes? Personally, I have always considered this a mere interlude. In short, Margolotta, peace is what you have while incubating the next war. It is impossible to accommodate everyone and twice as impossible to please all the dwarfs. You see, when I’m talking to Diamond King of Trolls he is the mouthpiece of the trolls, he speaks for all the trolls. Sensible as they are, they leave it all to him when it comes to the politics. “And then, on the other hand, we have yourself, dear lady: you speak for all your … folk in Bonk *2 and most agreements made with you are, well, quite agreeable … But the dwarfs, what a calamity. Just when you think you’re talking to the leader of the dwarfs, some wild-eyed grag will pop out on the landscape and suddenly all bets are off, all treaties instantly become null and void, and there is no possibility of trust! As you know, there is a ‘king’—a dezkaknik , *3 as they call him—in every mine on the Disc. How does one do business with people like this? Every dwarf his own inner tyrant. ” “Vell,” said Lady Margolotta, “Rhys Rhysson is managing quite vell in the circumstances and ve in higher Uberwald”—now her ladyship almost whispered—“are very much on the side of progress. But, yes, how can vun vin vunce and for all, that is vhat I vould like to know. ” His lordship set down his glass carefully and said, “That, alas, is never totally possible. The stars change, people change, and all we can do is assist the future with care and thoughtful determination to see the world at peace, even if it means ushering some of its worst threats to an early grave. “Although I’m bound to say that subtlety and careful interrogation of the things the world puts in front of us suggest to me that the Low King—whom, as protocol dictates, I called upon before coming here to meet you—is forming a plan right now; and when he makes his play we will throw everything in to support him. He is taking a very big gamble on the future. He believes that the time is right, especially since Ankh-Morpork is now well known to have the largest dwarf community in the world. ” “But I believe his people don’t like too much modernity. I must admit, I can see vhy. Progress is such a vorrisome thing when one is trying to maintain peace in the vorld. So … unpredictable. Can I remind you, Havelock, that many, many years ago, an Ephebian philosopher built an engine that vas very powerful, scarily so. If those people had persevered with the engine powered by steam the nature of life now might have been very much different. Don’t you find that vorryink? How can ve guide the future when von idiot can make a mechanism that might change everything ?” Lord Vetinari dribbled a last drop of brandy into his glass and said cheerfully, “Madam, only a fool would try to stop the progress of the multitude. Vox populi, vox deorum , carefully shepherded by a thoughtful prince, of course. And so I take the view that when it’s steam engine time, steam engines will come. ” “And what do you think you’re doing, dwarf?” Young Magnus Magnusson didn’t pay much attention at first to the senior dwarf whose face, insofar as it could be seen, was definitely grumpy, the kind of dwarf that had apparently never himself been young, and so he shrugged and said, “No offense, O venerable one, but what I think I’m doing is walking along minding my own business in the hope that others would be minding their own. I hope you have no rat with that?” *4 It is said that a soft answer turneth away wrath, but this assertion has a lot to do with hope and was now turning out to be patently inaccurate, since even a well-spoken and thoughtful soft answer could actually drive the wrong kind of person into a state of fury if wrath was what they had in mind, and that was the state the elderly dwarf was now enjoying. “Why are you wearing your helmet backward, young dwarf?” Magnus was an easygoing dwarf and did the wrong thing, which was to be logical. “Well, O venerable one, it’s got my Scouting badge on it, you know. Scouting? Out in the fresh air? Not getting up to mischief and serving my community well?” This litany of good intentions didn’t seem to get Magnus any friends and his sense of peril began belatedly to function much faster. The old dwarf was really, really unhappy about him, and during this short exchange a few other dwarfs had sauntered over to them, looking at Magnus as if weighing him up for the fight. It was Magnus’s first time alone in the twin cities of Bonk and Schmaltzberg and he hadn’t expected to be greeted like this. These dwarfs didn’t look like the ones he had grown up with in Treacle Mine Road and he began to back away, saying hurriedly, “I’m here to see my granny, right, if you don’t mind, she’s not very well and I’ve come all the way from Ankh-Morpork, hitching rides on carts and sleeping out every night in haystacks and barns. It’s a long, long way—” And then it all happened.

Magnus was a speedy runner, as befitted the Ankh-Morpork Rat Pack, *5 and as he ran he tried to figure out what it was that he had done wrong. After all, it had taken him forever by various means to get to Uberwald, and he was a dwarf, and they were dwarfs and … It dawned on him that there had been something in the newspapers back home saying that there were still a few dwarf societies that would have nothing to do with any organization that included trolls, the traditional and visceral enemy. Well, there were certainly trolls in the pack back home and they were good sports, all of them, a bit slow, mind you, but he had occasionally gone to tea with some of them and vice versa. Only now he remembered how occasionally old trolls and older dwarfs were upset for no other reason than that after hundreds of years of trying to kill one another they, by means of one handshake, were supposed to have become friends. Magnus had always understood that the Low City of the Low King was a dark place, and that was okay for dwarfs, as dwarfs and darkness always got on well together, but here he sensed a deeper darkness. In this trying moment it seemed that here he had no friends apart from his grandmother, and it looked as though there was going to be a lot of trouble between him and the other side of town where she lived. He was panting now but he could still hear the sounds of pursuit, even though he was leaving the deeper corridors and tunnels behind him and heading out of the underground city of Schmaltzberg, realizing he would have to come back another day … or another way. As he stopped briefly to get his breath back, a guard on the city gate stepped into his path with a certain greedy expression. “And where do you think you’re going in a hurry, Mister Ankh-Morpork? Back to the light with your troll friends, eh?” The guard’s spontoon knocked Magnus’s feet from under him and then the kicking started in earnest. Magnus rolled to get out of the way and as a kind of reflex shouted, “Tak does not want us to think of him, but he does want us to think!” He groaned and spat out a tooth as he saw another dwarf coming toward him. To his dismay the newcomer looked middle-aged and well-to-do, which certainly meant that there would be no friendship here. But instead of administering a kicking, the older dwarf shouted in a voice like hammers, “Listen to me, young dwarf, you must never let your guard down like this …” The newcomer smacked his original assailant to the ground with commendable ferocity and a gloriously unnecessary display of violence and as the guard lay groaning he pulled Magnus upright. “Well, you can run, kid, much better than most dwarfs I know, but a boy like you should know that Ankh-Morpork dwarfs are not in favor at the moment, at least not around these parts. To tell you the truth, I’m not that happy about them myself, but if there’s a fight it must be a fair one. ” At that he kicked the stricken guard very hard and said, “My name is Bashfull Bashfullsson. You, lad, better get yourself some micromail if you’re going to come calling on your granny looking all Ankh-Morpork. And it is ashamed I am that my fellow dwarfs treat a young dwarf so badly just because of what he wears. ” And the full stop to that rant was yet another blow to the recumbent guard. “I’ll hand it to you, lad, I really have never seen a dwarf that can run as fast as you were doing! My word, you can run, but it might now be time to learn how to hide. ” Magnus brushed himself down and stared at his savior, saying, “Bashfull Bashfullsson! But you’re a legend!” And he took a step backward, saying, “I’ve read all about you! You became a grag because you don’t like Ankh-Morpork!” “I may not, young dwarf, but I don’t hold with killing in the darkness like those bastard deep-downers and delvers. I like a stand-up fight, me. ” Saying this, Bashfull Bashfullsson kicked the fallen guard heavily yet one more time with his enormous iron-clad boot. And one of the most well-known and well-respected dwarfs in the world held out his hand to young Magnus, and said, “Now let your talent take you to safety. As you said, Tak does not require us to think of him, but remember that he does require us to think and you might want a thought or two about adjusting your attire when you come back to visit your granny again. Besides, she might not appreciate Ankh-Morpork fashions. Nice to have met you, Mister Speedy, and now get your sorry arse out of here—I might not be around next time. ” Far away and turnwise of Uberwald, Sir Harry King was pondering on the business of the day. He was widely known as the King of the Golden River because of the fortune he had made minding other people’s business. Harry was normally a cheerful man with a good digestion, but not today. He was also a loving husband, doting on Euphemia, his wife of many years, but alas, not today. And Harry was a good employer, but also not today, because today his stomach was giving him gyp by means of the halibut to which the phrase long time no see could not happily be applied. He hadn’t liked the look of it when it was on his plate, halibut being a fish which tends to look back at you reproachfully, and for the last few hours he had envisaged the damn thing looking at the insides of his stomach. The problem was, he thought, that Euphemia still remembered the good old days when they were poor as church mice and therefore necessarily frugal with their money, and such habits bite to the bone, very much like the inadvisably digested fish which had been swimming somewhere in the vicinity of Harry’s bowels and threatening to swim a lot further. Regrettably, Harry was a man brought up to eat everything that was put in front of him and that meant everything eaten up. When he had finally exited from the privy, where he fancied the damn fish had been watching him from the bowl, he had pulled the chain with such vehemence that it broke, causing the woman whom he sometimes called the Duchess to have words with him. And since words tend to lead to more words, nasty, spiteful little words flew on both sides, words that if Harry could help it would be flung back to the wretched fish which had started it all. But instead he and his wife had had what they had known all of their lives as an up-and-downer. And, of course, Effie, born in the next-door gutter to Harry, could give at least as good as she got in such situations, especially when armed with a quite valuable and decorative jug. Effie had a voice on her that at times could make a barrow boy blush, and she had called Harry the “King of Shit,” causing him to do what he never, ever wanted to do, which was to raise his hand in anger, especially since the jug with which his wife was now armed was also quite a heavy one. *6 Of course it would blow over, it always did, and genuine marital harmony would drift into its accustomed place in the household. But nevertheless, all afternoon Sir Harry prowled around his compound like an old lion. King of Shit , well, yes, and because of him the streets were clean, or at least considerably cleaner than they had been before what might be called the Harry King dynasty. He mused, as he wandered, that his work was all about those unimaginable things that people wanted to leave behind them. And therefore there wasn’t much for him on the top table of society. Oh, yes, he was Sir Harry, but he knew that Effie really wished they could leave behind the whole stinking business. “After all,” she said, “you’re as rich as Creosote as it is. Can’t you find something else to do—something that people actually want rather than need?” Generally speaking, Harry was not very good at philosophy. He was proud of what he had achieved, but a tiny part of him was agreeing with Effie that surely there was something better for him than chasing the pure *7 and making certain the unreliable septic tanks of the city didn’t overflow.

Somebody had to do it, of course—and it wasn’t as if it was actually Harry himself, not for many years, since he paid the gongfermors, dunnykin divers, and now a whole army of goblins as well to do the dirty work. Still, what he needed now, he thought, was an occupation that was manly without being despicable. Absentmindedly, he sacked his latest lawyer, a dwarf who had been caught with his nasty little fingers in the till, and managed to do it without actually throwing the little bugger all the way down the stairs. Unusually despondent, Harry prowled on, seeking to calm his nerves. At the edge of his compound he sniffed the air, so far as he dared. There was a wind blowing from the Hub and he turned to face it and caught a tantalizing smell: a manly smell, a smell with a purpose, a smell that wanted to take him places, and it said promise. The relationship between Moist von Lipwig and Adora Belle Dearheart was firm and happy, quite possibly because they didn’t see each other for substantial periods of time, since she was immersed in the running of the Grand Trunk and he was dealing with the Bank, the Post Office, and the Mint. Despite what Lord Vetinari thought , Moist did have proper work to do at these institutions and that was, in his own mind, called holding it all together. Things worked, in fact they worked very well, but they worked, Moist thought, because he was always seen in the Bank or the Mint or the Post Office being Mister Bank, Mister Post Office, and Mister Mint. He chatted to people, talked to them about their work, asked how their wives and husbands were, having memorized the names of all the family members of the person he was talking to. It was a knack, a wonderful knack, and it worked a treat. You took an interest in everybody and they took an interest in their work and it was vitally important that he was always around to keep the magic flowing. As for Adora Belle, the clacks were in her bones, it was her legacy and woe betide anyone who got between it and her, *8 even if that anyone was her husband. Somehow the system worked as hard as they did and so they could afford Crossly, the butler, and Mrs. Crossly too. *9 Their house in Scoone Avenue had a gardener too, who appeared to come with the territory. Crisp *10 was also a decent handyman and quite talkative, although Moist never understood a word he said. He came from somewhere in the Shires and spoke using a vocabulary that was theoretically Morporkian, but in reality had lots of straw in it with the syllable “ahh” working hard in every conversation. He made cider in his shed at the bottom of the garden, utilizing the apple trees that the previous owner had carefully cherished. He also, as a matter of course, cleaned the windows, and with the help of an enormous box full of every type of hammer, saw, drill, screwdriver and chisel, bags of nails, and a number of other items that Moist could not recognize, and moreover did not wish to, made Moist’s life easy whilst making Crisp possibly the richest handyman in the neighborhood. Moist von Lipwig had done some heavy work once and couldn’t see any future in it, but he could look at it for hours, provided other people were doing it, of course, and clearly some of them liked what they were doing, and so he shrugged and felt happy that Crisp was happy being a handyman whilst Moist was happy not picking up anything that was heavier than a glass. After all, his work was unseen and depended on words, which were fortunately not very heavy and didn’t need grease. In his career as a crook they had served him well and now he felt somewhat smug at using them to the benefit of the citizenry. There was a difference between a banker and a crook, there really was, and although it was very, very teeny Moist felt that he should point out that it did exist and, besides, Lord Vetinari always had his eye on him. So everybody was happy and Moist went to work in very clean clothes and with a very clean conscience. Having washed and dressed in said clothes in his private bathroom, *11 Moist went to see his wife, practising his smile on the way and endeavoring to look cheerful. You never knew with Adora Belle. *12 She could be quite acerbic. After all, she ran the whole clacks system these days. She also liked goblins, which was why there were some living behind the wainscoting of the house and others in the roof. They smelled, but the smell wasn’t, once you got over the shock, all that bad. The compensation was that the goblins had taken the clacks into their scrawny hearts, one and all. The wheels and levers fascinated them. Moist knew that generally goblins hid out in caves and insalubrious places that humans didn’t bother about, but now, when suddenly they were being treated as people, they had found their element which was generally the sky. They could scramble up a clacks tower faster than any man could run, and the rattling, back-and-forth clanking and relentlessly busy machinery of the clacks had them in its grip. Already, after only a few months in the city, the goblins had improved the efficiency of the clacks across the Sto Plains threefold. They were creatures of darkness, but their perception of light was remarkable. There was a whole malignity *13 of goblins up on the roof, but if you wanted your clacks to fly fast, you didn’t use the term out loud. The villains of the storybooks had found their place in society, at last. All it needed was technology. When Dick Simnel walked into Sir Harry King’s compound he wasn’t at all certain how you spoke to grand folk. Nevertheless, he managed to talk his way through the people in the front office, who had a rather jaundiced look and appeared to consider it their duty to ensure that no one should ever get to see Sir Harry King, especially greasy-looking young men with wild eyes trying hard to look respectable despite their extremely old clothing which, these gatekeepers thought, needed something, possibly a bonfire. However, Dick had the persistence of a wasp and the sharpness of a razor blade, and so eventually he ended up deposited in front of the big man’s desk like a supplicant. Harry, red-faced and impatient, looked over his desk and said to him, “Lad, time is money and I’m a busy man. You told Nancy down on Reception that you’ve got something I might like. Now stop fidgeting and look me in the face square like. If you’re another chancer wanting to bamboozle me I’ll have you down the Effing stairs *14 before you know it. ” Dick stared soundlessly at Harry for a moment, then said, “Mister Sir King, I’ve made a machine that can carry people and goods just about everywhere and it don’t need ’orses and it’s run on water ’n’ coal. It’s my machine, I built it and I can make it even better if you can see your way clear to advance me some investment. ” Harry King reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy gold watch. Dick couldn’t help but notice the famous gold rings that he had been told Sir Harry always wore, possibly as an ensemble of socially acceptable and extremely valuable knuckle-dusters. “Did I hear you right? It’s Mister Simnel, isn’t it? I’ll give you five minutes to catch my fancy and if I think you’re just another thimblerigger on the slant you’ll go out of here rather more quickly than you came in. ” “My old mother always said seeing is believing, Mister King, and so I’ve come prepared. If you can give me some time to get t’lads and t’ ’orses …” Dick coughed and continued, “I have to tell you, Mister Sir Harry, I took the liberty of parking them right outside your compound, ’cos I talked to people and they said that if Harry King wants something to start happening it ’as to ’appen fast. ” He hesitated. Was that a glint in Harry’s eye? “Well,” the magnate grumbled rather theatrically. “Young man, even though time is money, talk is cheap. I’ll come out in five minutes and you’d better have something solid to show me.

” “Thank you, Sir King, that’s very kind of you, sir, but we’ll have to get t’boiler warmed up first, sir, and so we’ll have ’er throbbing in no more than two hours, sir. ” Harry King took his cigar out of his mouth and said, “What?! Throbbing?” Dick smiled nervously. “You’ll see, sir, you’ll see. ” Very shortly afterward, and just in time, smoke and steam enveloped the compound and Harry King saw and, indeed, was amazed. And Harry King really was amazed. There was something insect-like about the metallic contraption, bits of which were spinning incessantly while the whole thing was shrouded in a cloud of smoke and steam of its own making. Harry King saw purpose personified. Purpose, moreover, that would be unlikely ever to ask for a day off for its granny’s funeral. Over the noise he shouted, “What did you say this thing is called, my lad?” “Iron Girder, sir. An engine that uses the expansion or rapid condensation of steam to generate power. Power for locomotion—that is to say, movement, sir. And if you’d allow us to lay down her rails, sir, we can really show you what she can do. ” “Rails?” “Aye, sir. She runs on an iron road, you’ll see. ” Suddenly there was the sound of a banshee in heat as Wally moved a lever. “Sorry, sir, you ’ave to let t’steam out. It’s all about ’arnessing t’steam. You heard her singing, sir, she wants motion, power is going to waste while she’s just sitting here. Give me time and allow me to put a test track around your compound. We’ll have ’er running very soon, I promise you. ” Harry was uncharacteristically silent. The thrumming of the machine was like a kind of spell. Again, the metal voice of steam rang out over the compound like a lost soul and he found himself unable to leave. Harry wasn’t a man for introspection and all that rubbish, but he thought that this, well, this was something worth a closer look. And then he noticed the faces of the crowd around the compound, the goblins climbing up to gawp at this new raging devil which was nevertheless under the control of two lads in flat caps and very little to speak of in regard to teeth. Getting his thoughts lined up properly, Harry turned to Dick Simnel and said, “Mister Simnel, I’ll give you two days, no more. You have your chance, mister, don’t waste it. I am, as I say, a busy man. Two days to show me something that astounds me. Go on. ” Dwarfs and men sat and listened intently to the old boy sitting in the corner of the Treacle Miner, *15 human, possibly, but with a beard any respectable dwarf would have coveted, who had decided to share with them his knowledge of the treacle-mining world. “Gather round, lads, fill my pot and I’ll tell you a tale that’s dark and sticky. ” He looked meaningfully at his empty tankard and there was laughter as it was replaced by some well-wisher and, as he sipped his ale, he began his tale. Years back, unexpected deep treacle reserves had been discovered under Ankh-Morpork, fathoms down, and as every treacle miner knew, the lower the treacle, the better the texture and therefore the better the taste. In truth, and in Ankh-Morpork at least, there was very little friction between dwarf clans on this matter, and the question of who would be allowed to mine the discovery was amiably dealt with by the old boys, dwarf and human. Everyone conceded that when it came to working underground there was nothing like the dwarfs, but, to the dismay of the older miners, very few of the dwarf youngsters of Ankh-Morpork were at all interested in mining under any circumstances. And so the grizzled old boys welcomed any local miners of any species to work under the venerable streets of Ankh-Morpork, for the sheer pleasure of seeing treacle being properly produced again, and the miners, whoever they were, went about their sticky business in the search for the deep shimmering treacle. And something happened, somewhere up near the Shires, where the dwarf miners had been working a reasonable seam, part of which was under land which at that time belonged to the Low King of the Dwarfs. In those not too distant days political relationships between human and dwarf were somewhat nervy. On the day when things came to a head there had been a sudden fall of dark toffee, extremely precious and very unusual, but feared by every treacle miner because of its tendency to spontaneously collapse into the tunnels. According to the eyewitnesses, both humans and dwarfs were mining underground while politicians argued on both sides of the political divide. And this fall was mostly on the human side of the seam, with many men trapped in a deluge of unrelenting stickiness. He hesitated for a moment and said, “Or it might have been the dwarf side, now I come to think about it …” He looked embarrassed, but continued. “Well, it doesn’t really matter now who they were, it was a long time ago anyway. The miners working the seam from the other side of the fall heard that there were many miners down there, trapped and drowning in refined sugar derivatives, and said, ‘Come on, lads, get the gear together and let’s get them out of there. ’ ” The old boy hesitated a further moment, possibly for effect, and said, “But of course that meant that they had to enter territory that required going through two bloody security barriers manned by armed guards. Guards, moreover, who were not that bothered about miners and were certainly not going to let any of the enemy down into their sovereign soil. ” Another significant pause, then the tale raced on. All the miners had piled up against the barriers. Someone said, “We can’t tackle them, they’ve got weapons!” and they looked at one another in what is known as wild surmise, and then another voice yelled, “But so have we, when you look at it the right way, and ours are bigger!” And the speaker waved his enormous fist and said, “And we’re mining every day, not standing around and looking smart. ” And so as one dwarf, or possibly human, they rushed the barricade and the guards, realizing they were failing to frighten people, ran for cover as the miners with the picks and shovels came down on them at speed and sixty miners were saved from a very sticky situation on both sides of the seam. Nothing official happened afterward because officialdom didn’t want any part of the shame of it. The old boy looked around and glowed as if he himself had been one of those miners and, quite possibly, he might have been, and his tankard was topped up once again and he said wistfully, “Of course, that was the old days. I wish it still was. ” * It was just short of the end of the second day when Simnel and his lads had Iron Girder chuffing slowly and purposefully along a short circular track in Harry’s compound. And Harry couldn’t help noticing that the look of the engine had changed and it now seemed somehow … smoother than before. In fact, he thought, he had been ready to say sleek , though it was hard to think of what looked like fifty tons of steel as sleek, but yes, he thought, why not? It shouldn’t be beautiful, but she was. Stuttering, stinking, growling, smoking, but so very beautiful. Dick said cheerfully, “We’re taking it slow, Mister Harry. We need to put down some real ballast before we can let ’er rip, but she grows on yer, don’t you think? And when we’ve built ’er up, and added on wagons and suchlike there’ll be no stoppin’ ’er. ” And there it was again. It really ought to be a he, Harry mused, but somehow the “she” stuck relentlessly. And then Harry’s rather crumpled brow furrowed even further. This young lad clearly knows his stuff, he thought, and he said his machine could carry people and goods … but who’d want to ride on this clanking great monster? On the other hand, the compound smelled of steam and coal and hot grease—manly, healthy smells … Yes, he’d give them that little bit longer. Perhaps another week. After all, coal wasn’t expensive and he wasn’t paying them anything. Harry King realized he was feeling unusually happy. Yes, they could have a little more time.

And the smell was good, unlike those he and Effie had put up with over the years. Oh, yes, they could definitely have their time, though he’d need to keep the lads on their toes. He looked up and the clacks towers blinked relentlessly and Harry King saw the future. The wind above the clacks towers was blowing from the Hub, cool and purposeful, and Adora Belle Dearheart fancied she could see the edge of the world from here. She cherished moments like this. They reminded her of when she was young, really young, when her mother would hang her cradle from the top of a tower while she was coding, leaving her daughter cheerfully making baby noises several hundred feet above the ground. In fact, her mother said her very first word was “checksum. ” And now she could see, clearly out of its mists, the mountain Cori Celesti glittering like a great green icicle. She sang as she tightened up the spinners on the upper gallery. She was out of the office, as far from it as was possible, and it felt good. After all, she could even see the office from up here. In fact, she could probably see everybody ’s office from here, but right now she sorted out the delicate little mechanisms and savored a world where she could reach out and touch the sun, well, metaphorically at least. This reverie was broken by one of the tower’s goblins. “I am bringing twenty spinners and a flask of coffee, very hygienic, I cleaned the mug myself with my own hand. Me. Of the Twilight the Darkness,” he said proudly. Adora Belle looked down at a face that would take a frantic battalion of mothers to love, but nevertheless she smiled and said, “Thanks, mister. I must say you’ve really got acclimatized for somebody who has spent most of their life in a cave. I can’t believe you don’t even worry about heights, that never ceases to amaze me. And thanks again, it really is good coffee and still warm, too. ” Of the Twilight the Darkness shrugged as only a goblin could shrug. The effect was rather like a parcel of snakes dancing. “Missus Boss, goblins no stranger to acclimatize. Don’t acclimatize, don’t live! And anyway, things going well down there, no problems. Goblins got respeck! And how is Mister Slightly Damp?” “ Moist is fine, my friend, and surely you know my husband doesn’t like the name you goblins have given him. He thinks you’re doing it on purpose. ” “You want that we stop doing it?” “Oh, no! It teaches him a lesson in humility. I think he needs to go to university on that score. ” The goblin grinned in the way of a conspirator, and he could see Adora Belle trying not to laugh, while overhead the clacks continued sending its messages to the world. Adora Belle could almost read the messages simply by watching the towers, but you had to be very, very fast; and the goblins were even faster than that. And who ever would have thought their eyesight was so discerning? Using the new augmented color shutter boxes after dark, most human clacks spotters could separate about four or five or maybe even six colors on a very good clear night, but who could have imagined that goblins, fresh out of their caves, would be uncannily able even to identify puce as opposed to pink, while most humans didn’t have a clue what a damn puce was if they saw it? Adora Belle glanced at Of the Twilight the Darkness and once again acknowledged to herself that goblins were the reason why clacks traffic was so much faster, more accurate, and streamlined than ever before. And yet how could she reward them for the increased efficiency? Sometimes the goblins never even bothered to take their pay. They liked rats, of which there was never a shortage, but because she was indeed the boss *16 she felt it incumbent on her to persuade the little nerds that there were, indeed, many other things you could be doing apart from coding and deciphering clacks messages. She almost shivered. They actively, obsessively liked to work, all day and all night if possible. She knew if the name on the door said “Boss,” then in theory she had to think about their welfare, but they weren’t interested in their own welfare. What they wanted to do was code and decipher, pausing only when the lady troll with the rat trolley came round. Honestly! They liked their work and not just liked it, but lived it. How many bosses had had to go all around the workplace telling people they really had to stop working now and go home? But then they didn’t go home, they wanted to stay up in their clacks towers, and in the small hours of the night chat by clacks to goblins elsewhere. They would rather chatter than eat, it seemed, and even slept on the tower, dragging in little straw beds for when they were forced by nature to take a nap. Adora Belle had insisted to the trustees that there should be a foundation set up, against the day when goblins and their children might want to move further into society. So a scant while after the remarkable musical talents of Tears of the Mushroom had been so spectacularly unveiled to Ankh-Morpork high society, the goblins had become people, strange people, yes, but people nevertheless. Of course, there was the smell, but you couldn’t have everything. Novelty went around Ankh-Morpork just like an embarrassing disease, thought Sir Harry King the following afternoon as he looked down on to the compound where people were peering through the gates and fencing in a great susurration of speculation. Harry knew his fellow citizens from the bottom up, as it were, willing slaves to novelty and the exotic, rubberneckers all of them. The whole crowd were turning their heads as one to keep track of Iron Girder, like a flock of starlings, and all the time Iron Girder was chuffing away with Dick waving from the footplate, the air still full of the smuts and smells. And yet, he thought, it’s all approval. No one’s disagreeing, no one’s frightened. A beast from nowhere. A fiery dragon, all smoke and cinders, has appeared among them and they hold up their children to look at it, waving as it goes past. What strange magic—? He corrected himself; what strange mechanics could have achieved this? There was the beast and they were loving it. I’ll have to get familiar with these words, Harry thought as he left his office: “footplate,” “boiler,” “reciprocal,” “molybdenum disulphide,” *17 and all the tiresome but fascinating language of steam. Having noticed that Harry was watching them, Dick Simnel allowed Iron Girder to slow down gently until, with an almost imperceptible bump, she came to a halt. Dick jumped off the footplate and strolled toward him, and Harry saw a triumphant look in his eye. Harry said, “Well done, lad, but be careful, be very, very careful. Be careful of everything right now. I’ve been watching the faces of them people with their noses pressed up against my fence, their little faces all corrugated, as it were. They’re fascinated, and fascinated people spend money. “The most important thing in business is to work out who gets that cash and it’s like this, my boy, it’s a jungle out there and I’m more than a multimillionaire, much more. I know that while happy handshakes are very pleasing and friendly, when it comes to business you can’t do without bloody lawyers because in this jungle I’m a gorilla! It’s best you tell me the name of yours and I’ll get my lawyer to get in touch so they can talk all lawyer-to-lawyer while totting up their dollars. I don’t want no one to say that Harry King fleeced the lad who tamed the steam. “For what it’s worth I’ll fund you up to a certain point, no doubt about that, because I think this engine of yours has real possibilities, huge possibilities. So now you’ve got my interest and by the time the papers find out about this you’ll have everyone ’s interest. ” Dick shrugged and said, “Well, Sir Harry, it’s great that you’re giving me a chance, so anything you suggest’ll be okay by me. ” Harry King almost screamed, “No, no, no! I like you, I like you a lot, but business is, well, business is business !” Harry’s face was now puce with anger.

“You don’t go and tell anyone that you’ll take whatever they want to give you! You bargain, lad. Don’t get starry-eyed! You bargain. You bargain hard. ” There was silence and then the lad said, “Mister King, before I decided to come to Ankh-Morpork I talked about things with me mother, a very shrewd lady—she ’ad to be, what with me dad being somewhere out there in the ether, if you catch my drift. And she said if someone wants to do business in the big city, Dick, make out that you’re simple and see ’ow they treat you. If they treats you properly, simple as you are, then it’s likely you can trust them. And then you can show them how smart you really are. And well, sir, it seems to me you’re as straight as lunchtime. I’ll go and find a lawyer right now. ” He hesitated. “Er, where can I find a lawyer I can trust? I might not be as clever as I think I am. ” Sir Harry laughed heartily. “It’s a tough call, lad, and a question I’ve lately needed to ask myself, as it happens. My friend Mustrum Ridcully over at the University told me about one only yesterday: a lawyer so straight he could be used as a crowbar. Why not let your lads go on showing Iron Girder to the crowd, and come with me in my carriage, although it’s not a patch on the one you brought here, eh? Eh! Come on, lad, let’s go, shall we?” At his office in the Lawyers’ Guild building, Harry King and Dick Simnel met Mr. Thunderbolt, surprisingly large and, surprisingly, a troll. A troll with a voice like gently flowing lava. “You will wish to know my credentials, gentlemen. I am a member of the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Lawyers and served my articles here under Mister Slant,” said Mr. Thunderbolt. “As well as my Ankh-Morpork practice I am the only troll to have, moreover, accreditation as a lawyer in the realm of the Low King. Apropos of nothing, Sir Harry, I am also the nephew of Diamond King of Trolls, although, of course, I must add that the nature of troll families is such that the mere word ‘nephew’ does not do the situation justice. ” The voice was the voice of a professor, but one who had chosen to speak in an echoing cave. The features were more or less like those of all trolls, unless you looked for the giveaway signs and recognized the careful masonry work, the richness of the plant life in the visible cavities, and, not least, that elusive shine, and possibly shimmer, which caught the light so delicately; not boldly in your face, but irresistibly there. “And yes, I am diamond through and through and therefore I cannot tell lies for fear of shattering. Furthermore, I have no intention of trying to do so. It appears to me, gentlemen, from what you tell me, that the two of you are in accord, neither wishing to play unfairly and both of you wishing to act decently with one another and so, on this occasion, much as my Guild colleagues might disapprove, I suggest I act as mediator and lawyer for both of you. Troll justice is remarkably straightforward—I only wish that this could be the case everywhere else. However, should you fall out then I would not undertake work from either of you subsequently. ” Mr. Thunderbolt smiled and little sparkles flashed around the room like a firework display. “I will put together a short document which might, in other places, be called an agreement to agree. And I am the judge not on the side of you individually but on the side of you both. I am diamond and I cannot allow injustice to happen. I suggest, gentlemen, that you continue with your project, which seems to me remarkable, and leave the paperwork to me. I look forward to seeing you at the compound tomorrow. ” Harry and Dick were silent in the coach until Dick said, “Weren’t he nice? For a lawyer. ” By the time they got back to the compound the goblin Billy Slick, who had worked for Harry for many years, was in a tizzy—although he didn’t know that, not knowing the word existed—and he was at the gate waiting for them when the carriage drew up. Frantically, he said, “I closed the gate, Sir Harry, but it looks like they’ll climb over anything to see this … this … this thing ! I keep telling ’em we ain’t running no fun house here. ” The light was fading and yet still the eyes of the onlookers were following Iron Girder as she traveled around the track while Simnel’s team put her through her paces, throwing off sparks in the twilight like signals to the universe that steam was here to stay. And when most of the sightseers had reluctantly left to go home for their supper, some of Harry’s goblins slunk into the compound to see the marvel of the age. They did indeed slink, Harry thought, not exactly like a burglar, but simply because the average goblin carcass was born slinking, except that right now they were dancing around Iron Girder, and the lads had their work cut out to keep skinny little goblin fingers out of dangerous places. Iron Girder sat and occasionally gave out a puff of steam or smoke while all the time, in the twilight, Harry heard tiny staccato voices interrogating the engineers: “What does this one do, mister?” “What happens if I push this, mister?” “I see, mister, that this one connects to the blastpipey armature. ” Harry and Dick joined Dave and Wally as they stood by Iron Girder answering the barrage of questions. To Harry’s surprise, instead of the complaints he was expecting to be issuing from the lads’ mouths, he saw they were smiling happily. “They seem to get it, sir! Oh, aye!” said Wally. “They’re into everything! We’re ’aving to keep an eye on them, but they seem to understand without being told, can you believe that?” And Harry marveled. He quite liked the little buggers, as any employer would quite like somebody who worked hard, but how does a goblin get the understanding of steam engines? It must be something in their nature. Their scruffy little faces were wreathed in smiles at the sight of something metallic and complicated. It was a sign of the times, he thought, and it looks like time for the goblins. Simnel was silent for a moment as if waking up the internal steam for the next thought, then said, in a careful kind of voice, “You really would think they were born to it!” “I can’t say I’m surprised, Dick,” said Harry. “The clacks people say the same thing. It’s uncanny but it seems that they automatically understand mechanisms, so be careful as they like to take things apart on the fly just to see what they do. But once they understand how whatever it is works they seem to put it all back together again. There’s no malice, they just like to tinker with the best and, you know what, sometimes they improve things. How can you explain that? But if I was you I’d have one of you three sleeping under Iron Girder of a night just so they don’t get creative. ” The following day Moist von Lipwig was gently awakened by Crossly, who as yet had failed to grasp his master’s attitude to sleep, a fact which was reinforced by Moist turning over in bed and saying, “Mumble mumble grunt mumble groan mumble off!” The sequence was repeated three minutes later, with the same response, this time with the emphasis on the last syllable, uttered three times with increasing volume. Subsequently—in fact and to be precise, fifteen minutes later—Moist von Lipwig was pulled out of the arms of Morpheus by the none too gentle prodding of a blade belonging to one of the Ankh-Morpork palace guards, a species he didn’t like very much in any case because they were stolid and dumb. Admittedly, so were the majority of the City Watch, in Moist’s opinion, but at least they were by and large creatively and, at least, humorously dumb, which made them a lot more interesting. After all, you could talk to them and therefore confuse them, whereas with the palace guards, well, all they knew was how to prod, and they were quite good at it. It was wise not to put them to any trouble, and so Moist, fully conversant with how this sort of thing worked, dressed grumpily and followed them to the palace, and undoubtedly an audience with Lord Vetinari.

The Patrician was, unusually, not at his desk, but paying attention to something on the large polished table that filled one half of the Oblong Office. He was, in fact, playing. It seemed ridiculous, but there was no denying it: he was watching a children’s toy quite intently, a little cart, or trolley of some sort, on a little metal rail, which allowed it to scuttle continuously in a circle for no readily apparent reason. He straightened up after Moist coughed loudly and said, “Ah, Mister Lipwig. It’s so kind of you to come … eventually. Tell me, what do you make of this ?” Somewhat perplexed, Moist said, “It looks like a children’s plaything, sir. ” “In fact it is a very well crafted model of something much bigger and far more dangerous. ” Lord Vetinari raised his voice and said, as if talking not only to Moist but to the world in general, “Some might say that it would have been easy for me to prevent this happening. A stiletto sliding quietly here, a potion dropped into a wineglass there, many problems solved at one stroke. Diplomacy, as it were, on the sharp end, regrettably unfortunate, of course, but not subject to argument. “People might say that I wasn’t paying attention and through neglect of my duties allowed the poison to seep into the imagination of the world and change it irrevocably. Perhaps I could have taken some action when I first saw Leonard of Quirm doodle something very much like this little toy in the margins of his drawing the Countess Quatro Fromaggio at Her Toilette , but of course I would rather shatter the most priceless antique vase than see any harm come to one hair on that most useful and venerable head. I thought it would go the way of his flying machines, nothing more than a toy. “And now it has come to this. One simply cannot trust the artificers; they design some terrible things for the sheer love of doing so, without wisdom, foresight, or responsibility, and frankly, I would like to see them chained up where they can do no harm. ” And here Lord Vetinari paused and added, “And I could have made that happen in an instant were it not for the fact, Mr. Lipwig, that the wretches are so damn useful. ” He sighed, causing Moist to worry. Moist had never seen his lordship so discomfited, staring intently at the little truck as it went round and round on its little rails and filled the room with a smell of methylated spirits. There was something hypnotic about it, for Lord Vetinari, at least. A silent hand dropped lightly, and eerily, onto Moist’s shoulder. He turned around quickly and behind him was Drumknott, smiling gently. “I suggest you pretend you didn’t hear anything, Mister Lipwig,” he whispered. “It’s the best way, especially when he has one of his, er, somber moments …” Still whispering, Drumknott continued, “A lot of this is to do with the crossword, of course. You know how he is about that. I intend personally to write to the editor. His lordship considers elegant completion to be a test of his integrity. A crossword is meant to be an engaging and educational puzzle. ” And then, his normally pink face reddening, Drumknott added, “I’m sure it’s not intended to be a form of torture, and I’m certain that there is no such word as lagniappe. However, his lordship has terrific powers of recovery, and if you care to wait while I make you some coffee I’d wager he’ll be his old self again before you can say ‘death warrant. ’ ” In fact, Lord Vetinari stared at the wall for only eight minutes more before he appeared to shake himself down. He beamed at Drumknott and, less warmly, acknowledged the presence of Moist, who had been surreptitiously looking at the unfinished crossword lying prominently across the table. Moist said, brightly but with the best of intentions, “My lord, I’m sure you know that lagniappe is spelled differently than it sounds. Just a thought, of course, only trying to be helpful, sir. ” “Yes. I know,” said Lord Vetinari, in dark tones. “Can I be of any other assistance, my lord?” said Moist, reckoning that he hadn’t been prodded out of his bed for an undone crossword, or to admire a child’s toy. Lord Vetinari looked down his nose at Moist momentarily and said icily, “Since you have finally decided to join us at this difficult time, Mister Lipwig, I will tell you that there was once a man called Ned Simnel who made a mechanical device, propelled in some arcane way, for taking in the harvest. The present difficulties might have begun there, but fortuitously his device didn’t work, tending, apparently, to explode and burst into flames, and so the balance of the world was maintained. But, of course, the men who are drawn to tinkering continue to tinker in their little sheds! And not only that, they find ladies, good sensible ladies, who inexplicably agree to marry them, thus breeding a race of little tinkerers. “One of them, a scion of the aforesaid Simnel, has apparently been scratching about in his father’s shed and most certainly wondered if he, with his infinite curiosity, could achieve what his father, alas, had not. And now this young man has created a machine which devours wood and coal and spews out flames, polluting the sky, undoubtedly scaring every living creature for miles around, and making the gods’ own noise. Or so I am told. “Finally, young Mister Simnel has found his way to our good friend Sir Harry King. And apparently the two of them are now dreaming up an enterprise, which I believe is called … the rail way. ” Vetinari paused only briefly before continuing. “Mister Lipwig, I feel the pressure of the future and in this turning world must either kill it or become its master. I have a nose for these things, just as I had for you, Mister Lipwig. And so I intend to be like the people of Fourecks and surf the future. Giving it a little tweak here and there has always worked for me and my instincts are telling me that this wretched rail way, which appears to be a problem, might just prove to be a remarkable solution. ” Moist looked at the Patrician’s grey expression. He had articulated the term “rail way” in something like the voice of an elderly duchess finding something unmentionable in her soup. It had total disdain floating in the air around it. But if you watched the weather of Lord Vetinari, and Moist was an expert in the Patrician’s meteorology, you would notice that sometimes a metaphysical cloudburst might very shortly turn into a lovely day in the park. He could almost smell his lordship coming to terms with the reality in front of him: tiny movements of the face, changes of posture, and the whole litany of Havelock Vetinari thinking suddenly delivered one of those smiles which Moist knew suggested that the game was afoot, and the mind of Lord Vetinari was running and well oiled. Vetinari said, getting more cheerful at every word, “My coach is waiting downstairs, Mister Lipwig. Come. ” Moist knew that any kind of argument was useless, and he also knew that Lord Vetinari most definitely knew that too; but there was such a thing as pride, and so he said, “My lord, I must protest! I have a lot of work to be done. Surely you are aware?” Lord Vetinari, his robe fluttering behind him like a banner, was already halfway to the door. He was a long-boned man and Moist had to run to keep up, occasionally hopping down the stairs two at a time, with Drumknott in pursuit. Ahead of him his lordship said, over his shoulder, “Mister Lipwig, you don’t in fact have a great deal of work to do. In fact, as Postmaster General, Deputy Chairman of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork, *18 and, of course, Master of the Royal Mint, you employ on our behalf a great many extremely clever people, who work very hard, that is true. Your strange camaraderie, your skill at getting people to like you against all the evidence and amazingly continue to like you, makes you a very good boss, it must be said, with staff who are very loyal to you. But ultimately all you really need to do in the way of desk work is a little light auditing every so often.

” Lord Vetinari stepped up his pace and continued, “And what is it that we can take away from all this, I fail to hear you ask? Well, I shall tell you. What the wise man will take away is a certainty that any favour is worth doing for a good boss, and I, Mister Lipwig, am a most exemplary and forbearing employer. This is apparent from the circumstance that your head is still clearly resting on your shoulders despite the fact that it might possibly be in, oh, so many other places, as it were. ” The country of Llamedos prided itself on being sensibly dwarfish. In truth, there were as many humans as dwarfs who called Llamedos home but since most of them were miners, and, as a rule, were either small or almost permanently concussed, you really would have to look carefully to tell the species apart. Therefore, given that practically no one was bigger than anybody else, there was a general amiability in the area, especially since, although this wasn’t generally talked about, the Goddess of Love saw to it that her spell covered all alike. And because nobody talked about it, well, nobody talked about it, and so life moved on with the mining for gold—what little there was of it by now—iron ore, such zinc and arsenic as could be teased out of the unforgiving rock, and, of course, coal. All this was supplemented with fishing on the coast. The outside world was involved only occasionally, when something of real importance happened. That was yesterday. Today, it happened. The ship arrived at the dock in Pantygirdl, the largest town in Llamedos, just after lunch. The arrival of the grags on board, who had come to preach the truth of pure dwarfishness to the people of the town, would have been welcomed had they not come with delvers, the shock troops of the grags, who had never before been seen above ground. Until then, the people of Llamedos were quite happy that the grags were doing whatever it was they did in the realm of the spirit and the observances thereof, keeping things done properly so that everybody else could get on with the unimportant things like the mining and the fishing and the stonework up in the hills. But today it all went horribly wrong, because Blodwen Foot-cracker was getting married to Davy Counter, an excellent miner and fisherman and, importantly, a human, although the importance of this fact did not seem to most people locally to be, well, important. Just about everybody in Pantygirdl knew them both and considered them a sensible match, especially as they had known one another since they were toddlers. And while they were growing up people wondered, as people did, about the chances of a dwarf and a human conceiving a child and considered it a long shot to say the least, but then they satisfied themselves by telling one another that, after all, love was certainly there in abundance and, besides, whose business was it anyway? He and she were compatible and loving and, as the mines and the boats took their toll of miner and fisherman alike, there were always plenty of orphans anxious for a new home in their own country. And everybody in Pantygirdl agreed that the situation, while not as it might have been, was nevertheless satisfactory to the kind of people who minded their own business, and they wished the happy couple, who were, it must be said, very nearly the same size, all the very best. Alas, the grags and the delvers must have thought otherwise, and they broke down the doors of the chapel, and since people in Llamedos didn’t go armed to their weddings the grags had it all their own way. And it might have been a complete massacre were it not for old Fflergant sitting hitherto unnoticed in the corner, who, as everyone ran for shelter, threw off his cloak and turned out to be exactly the kind of dwarf who would take heavy weaponry to a wedding. He swung a heavy sword and axe together in a wonderful destructive unison, a whirlwind of fighting, and in the end there were only two casualties among the wedding party. Unfortunately one of those was Blodwen, killed by a grag whilst clinging on to her husband’s arm. Covered in blood, Fflergant looked around at the shocked wedding guests and said, “You all know me. I don’t like mixed marriages, but like you I can’t abide those bloody grags, the bastards! May the Gap take them!” Lord Vetinari’s coach spun through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, and Moist watched the traffic scatter around them until they reached the River Gate and were out of the city proper. The coach bowled quickly along the road as it followed the Ankh downstream, toward Harry King’s Industrial Estate, a world of smokes, steams, and, most of all, undesirable odors. Ankh-Morpork was cleaning up its act. It had been a good act, full of spices, plagues, floods, and other entertainments. But now the Ankh-Morpork dollar was rising high, and so was the price of property. Amazingly, a great many people wanted to live in Ankh-Morpork, as opposed to somewhere else (or quite possibly as opposed to being dead in Ankh-Morpork, which was always an optional extra). But, as everybody knew, the city was gripped in its ancient stone corsetry, and nobody wanted to be there, metaphorically speaking, when the stays burst. There was overspill, and my, how it was spilling. Farming land around the city state, always at a premium, was now full of speculative building. *19 It was a wonderful game, and Moist, in a previous life, would undoubtedly have joined in and made a fortune, several fortunes in fact. And indeed, while Lord Vetinari was looking out of the window, Moist listened to the sirens and their beguiling songs of money to be made by the right man in this right place and the entrancing vision hung in the air for a tantalizing moment. Ankh-Morpork was surrounded by clay, easily dug up, so if the cow shit ran out there was the material for your bricks, right there in front of you, with timber easily available from the dwarfs, delivered to your site by water. Soon you’d have a terrace of bright new homes available to the rising and aspirational population anxious to buy, and then all you needed was a shiny billboard and, most definitely, an exit strategy. The coach passed by many buildings of this sort, which would no doubt be little palaces to the occupants, who had escaped from Cockbill Street and Pigsty Hill and all the other neighborhoods where people still dreamed that they could “better themselves,” an achievement that might be attained, oh happy day, when they had “a little place of their own. ” It was an inspiring dream, if you didn’t look too deeply into words like mortgage and repayments and repossession and bankruptcy , and the lower middle classes of Ankh-Morpork, who saw themselves as being trodden on by the class above and illegally robbed by the one below, lined up with borrowed money to purchase, by instalments, their own little Oi Dong. *20 As the coach rumbled past the settlements, known together as New Ankh, Moist wondered whether this time Vetinari, in allowing all these lands to be colonized in such a way, had been very stupid or indeed very, very clever. He plumped for “clever. ” It was a good bet. Eventually they arrived at the first outpost of the complicated, stinking, but ultimately most profitable, wire-netting-fenced compound of Sir Harry King, sometime tosher and rag-and-bone man, now believed to be the richest man in the city. Moist liked Sir Harry, he liked him a lot, and occasionally they shared the wink of men who had made it the hard way. Harry King had indeed come up the hard way and those who got in his way went down the hard way too. Most of the area before them was full of the products of Harry King’s noisome profession, conveyor belts coming and going from who knows where, being loaded and unloaded and sorted by goblins and free golems. Horses and carts went past loaded with even more grist for that particular mill. At the far end of the compound was a collection of large sheds, and in front of them a stretch of surprisingly clear space.

Moist suddenly noticed the crowd outside the compound fence, pressing up against every inch of wire netting, and felt their expectancy. As the coach stopped, he smelled the acrid scent of coal smoke cutting through the general fetor, and heard what sounded like a dragon having difficulty sleeping, a kind of chuffing noise, very repetitive, and then suddenly there was a scream, as if the biggest kettle in the world had got very, very angry. Lord Vetinari tapped Moist on the shoulder and said, “Sir Harry tells me that the thing is quite docile if handled with care. Shall we go and have a look? You first, of course, Mister Lipwig. ” He pointed to the sheds, and as they got nearer the smell of coal smoke got thicker, and the almost liquid chuffing noise got louder. Moist thought, well it was a mechanism, that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Merely a thing like a clock, yes, just a mechanism, and so he straightened up and walked fearlessly, on the outside at least, toward the door where a young man with a greasy hat and an even more greasy overall was beckoning with a greasy grin like a fox looking speculatively at some chickens. It seemed they were expected. Harry came bustling out and said, “Greetings, my lord … Mister Lipwig. Please come and meet my new associate, Mister Dick Simnel. ” Behind them, inside the shed, was the shuddering metallic monster, and it was alive. It really was alive! The thought lodged instantly in Moist’s brain. He smelled its breath and heard its voice. Yes, life; strange life but nonetheless life of a sort. Every part of it was subtly shaking and moving, almost dancing by itself, a thing alive, and waiting. Behind the beast, in the shed, he saw wagons, presumably ready to be towed, and he thought, yes, it’s an iron horse. All around it were acolytes: men working on lathes, hammering on metal, running backward and forward with buckets of grease and cans of oil and occasionally pieces of wood which, right now, looked out of place amongst all the iron. And there was a strong sense of purpose that meant we want something done and we want it done fast. Dick Simnel smiled broadly from behind a mask of grease and said, “ ’ow do you do, sirs. Well, ’ere she is! Nowt to be afraid of! Her name, technically, is Number One, but I call ’er Iron Girder! She’s my machine. I made her, every little bit: nuts, bolts, flanges, and not to forget each and every rivet. Thousands of ’em! And all the glasswork too. Very important, your sight glasses and gauges. Had to design everything meself because no one has ever done it before. ” “And when you give her rails she’ll move more freight than a battalion of trolls, and get there much faster to boot,” said Sir Harry, standing behind Moist. And he added, “It’s true. I swear that young Simnel tinkers with Iron Girder all the time: tinker, tinker, tinker. An overhaul every day. ” He laughed and said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually got her to fly. ” Mr. Simnel wiped his hands on his greasy rag, causing them to get even more greasy, and then proffered one to Lord Vetinari, who gently waved it away, saying, “I would prefer it if you dealt with Mister Lipwig, Mister Simnel. If I decide to allow you your fascinating … experiment, it will be to him that you answer, in the first part. Personally, I treasure my ignorance of how machinery works, although I am well aware that this is something of great interest to some people,” he added, in a tone of voice that suggested he meant strange and secret people … busy people, excitable people, fiddling people, tinkering and volatile people. A kind, alas, who would say something as innocent as, let’s give it a try, it can’t hurt, surely? We can always hide under the coffee table. “ My interest,” continued Lord Vetinari, “lies in ways and means, opportunity, danger, and consequences, do you see? I am given to believe that your remarkable engine is propelled by steam, heated until the boiler almost, but doesn’t quite burst. Is that not the case?” Mr. Simnel gave the Patrician a cheerful smile and said, “That’s about it, gaffer, and I’ve blown up one or three in testing, I don’t mind telling thee! But now, sir, we’ve got it right, sir. Safety valves! That’s the ticket! Safety valves made out of lead, bungs that melt if the firebox gets too hot so the water comes down and extinguishes the fire before the boiler blows. ” Simnel carried on, “Live steam is very dangerous, of course, to them that don’t have the knowing of it, but to me, well, gaffer, it’s as playful as a puppy. Sir Harry has allowed me to build a demonstration track, sir,” and he gestured to the rails that led out of the shed and wound round the perimeter of the compound. “May I ask if you gentlemen would care to come for a little spin?” Moist turned to Vetinari and said, with a flat face, “Yes, how about it … gaffer?” And got a look like a stiletto. A look that said, We’ll have words about this later. Vetinari turned to Simnel and said, “Thank you, Mister Simnel. I think on this occasion I will give that honor to Mister Lipwig. And I dare say Drumknott will be eager to accompany him. ” This was said brightly, but Drumknott looked anything but delighted at the opportunity, and frankly neither was Moist overjoyed, remembering too late that he had put on an expensive new jacket. Moist asked, “Mister Simnel, why does your contraption need to run on rails, please?” Dick Simnel smiled the expansive smile of a man who really, really wants to talk about his wonderful pet project and is now keen to illuminate every bystander to the point of boredom, and in the worst cases suicide. Moist recognized the type; they were invariably useful and in themselves amiable and quite without malice of any sort, but nevertheless they were implicitly dangerous. And right now, Mr. Simnel, happy as a clam and greasy as a kebab, said, speaking earnestly, “Well, sir, steam likes it smooth, sir, and the countryside is full of ups and downs, and steam and iron are heavy, and so putting all this together back at Swine Town we found it much more sensible to lay down what we call t’ permanent way , it’s a kind of road wi’ tracks, or rails, just for the engine to run on, as it were. ” “ Railway ’ll do fine for the punters, though,” said Harry. “I keep telling the lad—short and snappy, that’s the kind of name people remember. Can’t expect them to ride on something they can’t spell. ” Simnel beamed, and suddenly his genial face seemed to fill the world. “Now then, Iron Girder is greased, in steam, and all fired up for you, gentlemen. Who’s ready for a little ride?” Drumknott had not uttered a word, and remained staring at the dribbling engine like a man looking at his doom. Moist, taking pity on the little clerk for once, half pulled him, half helped him up into the small open cabin of the metal beast, while Mr. Simnel fussed around, tapping mysterious brass and glass items, and the fire in the belly of the beast burned hotly, and filled the place with yet more smoke. And suddenly there was a shovel in Moist’s hand, put there by Simnel so fast that Moist couldn’t avoid it. The engineer smiled and said, “You can be t’stoker, Mister Lipwig. If she needs stoking you’ll need to open up t’firebox when I tell you. Ee, we’ll ’ave some fun. ” Simnel looked down at the stunned Drumknott and said, “Er, as for you, sir, well, I’ll tell you what. You, sir, you can blow t’whistle, by means of this chain here. And as you see, gentlemen, this is by way of being a working prototype, with not very much of the comforts of home, but ’old on and you’ll be fine, so long as you don’t stick your head too far out. We’ll be pulling a fair few ton today. Sir Harry were interested to see what she were made of, and so, er, Mister Drumknott, blow the whistle, if you please!” Speechlessly, Drumknott yanked on the chain, and shuddered as a banshee scream came from the engine.

And then, well, thought Moist, there was not very much, just one chuff, a jerk, another couple of chuffs, and another jerk, another chuff, and suddenly they were moving, not only moving but accelerating as if the end of Iron Girder was trying to be out in front. Through roiling clouds of steam Moist looked behind at the loads they were towing in the creaking carts, and he could feel the weight, and yet still the engine with its train was gathering speed and momentum. Mr. Simnel was placidly tapping his dials and shifting levers, and now here came a curve, and the train chuffed, and every truck followed the curve like ducklings following their dear old mum, rattling a little, certainly creaking, but nevertheless being one big moving thing. Moist had traveled fast before. Indeed, a golem horse, that rare creation, could have easily outpaced them. But this, well, this was machinery, handmade by men: wheels, bolts, brass knobs, dials, gauges, steam, and the grunting sizzling firebox, beside which Drumknott was standing now, hypnotized and pulling the chain that blew the whistle as if performing a holy duty, and everything shook and continued to shake like a red-hot madhouse. Lord Vetinari and Harry came into view as the train raced toward them on its first lap. And they disappeared behind Moist into the cloud of smoke and steam left hanging in the air. Then, as Iron Girder plunged on, it broke through into Moist’s consciousness that this wasn’t magic, neither was it brute strength, it was, in fact, ingenuity. Coal and metal and water and steam and smoke, in one glorious harmony. He stood in the fierce heat of the cabin, shovel in hand, watching and wondering about the future, as the train of carriages bumped round once more, screeching slightly on the second curve. Then, with the sound of tortured metal, it slid to a stop a few feet away from the watchers in front of Iron Girder’s shed. Now Mr. Simnel was all arms and business, shutting things down and turning things off as the wonderful engine died. Moist corrected himself: not died—she was sleeping but still dribbling water and hissing steam and, inexplicably, she was very much alive. Simnel dropped down from the cab onto a makeshift wooden platform and looked at his enormous stopwatch, glanced at the dial and said, “Not bad, but I couldn’t really open ’er up round here. On the test track over at Swine Town I got her going at almost seventeen miles an hour, and I can swear that she could go much faster if I could lay down a longer track! And she moved reet wonderfully, didn’t she, gentlemen? With all that load, tons of it. ” This was said to his fellow engineers. “Aye, what is it?” And this, in fact, was directed to a small wide-eyed urchin, who seemed to have miraculously appeared by the side of the track. Simnel looked on gravely as the urchin took out a very small notebook from his jacket pocket and meticulously wrote down the numeral 1 as if it were a command. And Moist, for some reason, couldn’t help himself from saying, “Well spotted, young man, and you know what? I rather feel that you’re going to need a much bigger book before long. ” And the certainty hit him that, although Lord Vetinari’s face was as impassive as ever, those of Harry King and some of the other onlookers were gleaming in the smoky light of the future to come. Given the numbers already lining the fence, straining to watch the train on its circuits of the compound, the news was out and flying. Harry King said, “Well, gents, is this iron horse not amazing? She seems to be able to move anything , I assure you. Now, there’s a nice lunch awaiting us in my boardroom, gentlemen. Shall we go up there? … There’s some cracking good beef. ” Lord Vetinari broke his silence. “Certainly, Sir Harry, and perhaps in the meantime someone could locate my secretary?” They turned to look at the engine, which had come to a stop in a kind of human way, not all at once, but settling down like an old lady making herself comfortable in a favorite armchair, except that at that moment Iron Girder blew out a hissing stream of shining water vapor, which does not normally happen with old ladies, at least not in public. Drumknott, up in the cabin, was still desperately pulling the chain for the next whistle, and he seemed to be weeping like a toddler bereft of a favorite toy as the sizzling got fainter. He caught their gaze, carefully relinquished the chain, climbed down from the footplate, and almost tiptoed through the sizzling steam and the occasional unexpected mechanical creak, as the metal cooled. He walked gingerly over to Dick Simnel and said hoarsely, “Could we do that again, please?” Moist watched the Patrician’s face. Vetinari seemed to be deep in thought, then he said breezily, “Very well done, Mister Simnel, an excellent demonstration! Am I to believe that many passengers and tons of freight could be carried by means of this … thing?” “Well, yes, sir, I see no reason why not, sir, although of course there would have to be some additional work, decent suspension, and properly upholstered seats. I’m sure we could outdo the stage coaches, which are a right pain in the arse, sir, and no mistake … if you would excuse my Klatchian. ” “Indeed I will, Mister Simnel. The state of our roads and therefore of our horse-drawn carriages leaves much to be desired. A journey to Uberwald is a penance without a cause and no amount of cushions seem to help. ” “Yes, my lord, and riding on sleek steel rails in a well-sprung carriage would be the height of comfort. So smooth!” said Moist. “Perhaps people could even sleep in a suitable carriage, if there was such a thing?” he added. He was surprised that he’d said this out loud, but, after all, he was a man who saw possibilities, and now he was seeing them in spades. And he saw the face of Lord Vetinari brighten considerably. Iron Girder had ridden her tracks much better than the post horses managed with the flints and potholes of the high roads. No horses, thought Moist, nothing to get tired, nothing that needs feeding, just coal and water, and Iron Girder had pulled tons of weight without a groan. And as Harry led the Patrician toward his office, Moist ran his hand over the warm living metal of Iron Girder. This is going to be the wonder of the age, he thought. I can smell it! Earth, air, fire, and water. All of the elements. Here is magic, without wizards! I must have done something good to be in this place, here today, at this time. Iron Girder gave a final hiss, and Moist hurried after the others heading for their lunch and the future of steam. In the plush comfort of Harry King’s boardroom, all mahogany and brass and extremely attentive waiters, Lord Vetinari said, “Tell me, Mister Simnel, could your engine go all the way to, let us say, somewhere like Uberwald?” Simnel appeared to cogitate for a moment and then said, “I don’t see why not, your worship. It might get tricky round about Skund and, of course, it gets a bit steeper further on, but I’d say the dwarfs know how to knock damn great ’oles in t’scenery when they want to. So, yes, sir, I’m certain it’s possible, in time, with a big enough engine. ” He beamed and said, “If we have t’coal and t’water, and t’tracks, a locomotive engine could take you anywhere you wanted. ” “And is it open to anyone to build an engine?” said Vetinari suspiciously. Simnel brightened up and said, “Oh, aye, sir, they can try, but they ain’t had none of my secrets, and we Simnels’ve been working on steam for years. We’ve learned by our mistakes. They can learn by theirs. ” The Patrician smiled faintly. “A man after my own heart, though laminating oneself to the roof of one’s workshop is such a finite lesson!” “Yes, I know, but if I might be so bold, sir,” Simnel continued, “I’d like to bid for t’Post Office work, right here and now. Strike while t’iron’s hot, that’s always been the Simnel motto. I know the clacks can send a message as fast as lightning, but it can’t do parcels and it can’t do people.

” Lord Vetinari’s face gave nothing away, and then he said, “Oh really? I strike when I like, but never mind, Mister Simnel. I will not stand in the way of your exploring possibilities with Mister Lipwig, but I suggest we must also consider the position of the coachmen and farriers in this time of change. ” Yes, Moist thought, there would be changes. You’d still find horses in town and Iron Girder couldn’t plough, although for a certainty Mr. Simnel could make her do so. “Some people will lose out and others will benefit, but hasn’t that been happening since the dawn of time?” he said out loud. “After all, at the beginning there was the man who could make stone tools, and then along came the man who made bronze and so the first man had to either learn to make bronze too, or get into a different line of work completely. And the man who could work bronze would be put out of work by the man who could work iron. And just as that man was congratulating himself for being a smarty-pants, along came the man who made steel. It’s like a sort of dance, where no one dares stop because if you did stop you’d be left behind. But isn’t that just the world in a nutshell?” Vetinari turned to Simnel. “Young man, I must ask you, what do you intend to do next?” “There’s that many people wanting to see Iron Girder up close like, I thought mebbe I’d hitch up t’wagons and put in some little seats, and offer them all the chance of a ride behind her. If Sir Harry’s agreeable, that is. ” “There is of course the question of public safety,” said Vetinari. “Did I hear you say earlier you have blown up … ‘one or three’ I think was the phrase?” “I made those explode a-purpose, to see exactly how it ’appened. That’s the way to get the knowledge, you see, sir. ” “You take your work very seriously, Mister Simnel. And have any other engineers evaluated your findings? What I’m asking, Mister Simnel, is what is the judgment of your peers?” Simnel brightened up. “Oh aye, sir, if you mean Lord Runcible, sir, he’s our landlord over at Sto Lat, but when I asked him, he laughed a lot and said it were amazing what people got up to and told me just not to run Iron Girder in the pheasant season while they were mating. ” “Indeed,” said Vetinari. “If I might rephrase my question, what is the verdict of other engineers who have seen your wonderful machine working?” “Oh, I don’t think anyone calling ’imself an engineer, except me and my lads, has ever seen Iron Girder, although I’ve heard that over in No Thingfjord a couple of lads’ve made a damn good steam pump for getting groundwater out of mines and suchlike. All very interesting, but not as interesting as Iron Girder herself. I’d like to go visit them for a pint and a chat one day, but as you can see I’m busy, busy, busy all the time. ” “Your lordship,” said Harry, “I respect Mister Simnel because I’ve seen that he’s one of those men who tuck their shirt into their trousers and that says dependable to me. Now, there’s a line of people out there who really want to whizz about behind the lad’s … er … locomotive. I reckon they’ll pay top dollar for taking a ride on the very first one of its kind. And the people of Ankh-Morpork are so thirsty for novelty that the whole city is, you might say, hurrying the future along for the sheer joy of watching its progress. So I’m thinking that every man and boy and possibly even their ladies would like to have a ride on this wonderful machine. ” “And should we count the risk, when simply to live in Ankh-Morpork is to shake hands with risk every day of the week?” murmured his lordship. “Mister Simnel, you have my goodwill, such as it is, and I can see a twinkle in the eye of Sir Harry, a man who, if I may say so, looks like someone who intends to be an investor, although, of course, that is entirely up to him and you. I am no tyrant …” There was a moment of hushed silence around the table and Lord Vetinari continued, “That is to say I am not a tyrant stupid enough to take a stand against the zeitgeist, but, as you know, I am the man who can steer it with care and consideration. That is why I intend to speak to the editor of the Times this very evening to leave him, as he would say, in the loop. He always likes to be consulted, it makes him feel important. ” His lordship smiled and said, “Amazing, how do we think up these things? I wonder, indeed, what will come next. ” The atrocity of the attack on the clacks tower at Sto Kerrig, which had so recently been a lifeline to the world for the people in the town, shocked everyone. As Adora Belle Dearheart looked at the wreckage in the gathering dusk, she was not surprised to see a very large and handsome wolf approaching at speed and, unlike most wolves, carrying a package between its jaws. The wolf disappeared behind a haystack, and shortly afterward out of the haystack came a handsome female, only marginally disheveled, wearing the uniform of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Captain Angua, the most notable werewolf in the Watch, said, “Oh my, they’ve certainly made a mess, haven’t they? And are you sure that only one of your people was hurt?” “Two goblins, captain, but they bounce well. Quick-witted, too. Can you imagine, they managed to send out a final message saying that their tower was under fire from dwarfs before they legged it. Very conscientious, the goblins, when it comes to machinery. They are always better on the night shift. Can I say, captain, when you find out who did this, I’ll press charges and press them very hard indeed, to a point when a police officer like yourself would have to look away for fear of seeing something they didn’t want to. ” “I wouldn’t worry about that, Miss Dearheart. His lordship takes the view that to interfere with the clacks is to interfere with the proper running of the world. Treason not only to one’s own state, but to all. ” “At the moment, my friend Shatter of the Icicle, the lead goblin on this tower, has a bit of a battered arm, but he’ll certainly assist in finding the dwarfs who did this. However, I don’t know where Shine on the Moon has got to. ” “I’ll prowl the area until my backup gets here. I’m expecting the cart and Igorina for the forensics,” said Angua. “If you hear something screaming it might be me, but don’t worry. Commander Vimes has no time for senseless saboteurs. ” There was a pause, and Adora Belle said gravely, “There’s something I think you ought to see. Look under this pile of timber: this dwarf looks very, very dead and horribly mutilated. I assume he probably tripped and fell when he was setting fire to the tower. What do you think, captain?” Carefully, Captain Angua looked at the corpse and said, “He’s lost an ear. ” Adora Belle said, “Well, apropos of nothing at all, I understand that when goblins get truly riled up they go all frisky and look for souvenirs. ” “But I’m quite certain, of course, that none of your clacks goblins would be getting up to anything like that, right?” Angua asked. Distantly, Adora Belle replied, “Yes, having been almost burned alive by dwarf extremists would be shrugged off as another day in the office and not something to get very excited about. ” She looked at the captain quizzically, who said, “Quite so. Undoubtedly any injuries were caused by the incompetence of the terrorists themselves. ” “Why, yes, indeed, yes,” said Adora Belle. “Wasn’t it amazing how one of them managed to chew his own ear off?” Angua observed. “So, can Shine on the Moon come out of hiding now?” “I’m sorry,” said Angua carefully, “I didn’t hear what you said over the cracking of the tower. ” The silence in Lord Vetinari’s study was absolute. Nevertheless, the tread of Drumknott’s approach contrived to make it even more silent as the secretary handed his lordship a little slip of paper and told him that a second clacks tower had been torched by people calling themselves, in translation, “The Only True Dwarfs.

” Drumknott waited while not a muscle moved in Lord Vetinari’s face before he said, “Let it be known that enemy action on the clacks system will be followed by the death of not only those who did it but also those who ordered it to be done, whoever they are. Send this to every embassy, consulate, and head of state. Action this night, please. ” Still speaking calmly, Lord Vetinari continued, “It is also time, I think, to let the dark clerks deal with the more unusual suspects. I’m sure your concludium has given you some clues, Drumknott, and of course we will assist in any way possible. The Low King must be … unhappy about this. Although the stricken clacks tower was ours, we know that the impact of this problem falls in the last event on the King himself. Therefore, send him a message on the black clacks and let him know that I myself and, undoubtedly, Lady Margolotta will support any new plan he chooses to make. The grags have once again broken a solemn accord and that , Drumknott, batters the pillars of the world and not inconsiderably. After all, if you can’t trust governments, whom can you trust?” There was a subtle cough from Drumknott and his smile at that point was more like a grimace. Before the secretary was released to his private office and its other intrigues, Lord Vetinari continued fishing in his own stream of consciousness, and said, “I seldom get angry, Drumknott, as you know, but I am angry now. I should be grateful if you would send for Commander Vimes in his other incarnation as Blackboard Monitor Vimes. I require his assistance and I don’t think he will be a happy man—which, from my point of view, has no downside in these circumstances. Please put the message out to Mister Trooper that this is not the time to be a nice person. ” He went on, “This isn’t war. This is a crime. There will be a punishment. ” Rhys Rhysson, Low King of the dwarfs, was a dwarf of keen intelligence, but he sometimes wondered why someone with that intelligence would go into dwarfish politics, let alone be King of the Dwarfs. Lord Vetinari had it so easy he must hardly know he was born! The King thought humans were, well, reasonably sensible, whereas there was an old dwarf proverb which, translated, said, “Any three dwarfs having a sensible conversation will always end up having four points of view. ” It wasn’t quite as bad as all that, but it was near enough these days, he told himself, as he looked over at the assembled members of his council in which, according to the rules, he was the first among equals. He had read somewhere in the scrolls that they owed him fealty, whatever that was. It sounded like a kind of porridge. When his secretary, Aeron, had returned from a recent visit to Ankh-Morpork, he had described a foot-the-ball game he witnessed, which had, at its center, a referee. Right now, Rhys was feeling something of what the referee had to go through since all the balls were kicked right at him. How could you be the Low King in a realm where even the factions had factions and those factions had microscopic factions? He envied, oh how he envied, Diamond King of Trolls who, apparently, gave instruction and advice to his myriad subjects. After which they said thank you , something that the Low King didn’t hear very often. Diamond King spoke for all trolls everywhere. The dwarfish race, however, had fractured now almost to the point of disarray and all of this ended up as a problem the Low King had to deal with. There was today, obviously, an agenda or, rather, a regrettably large number of agendas, one for every faction. Glumly, Rhys wondered what the word was for a large number of agendas, and decided that the term should be a living death of agendaritis. It was the deep-down grags that gave him nightmares because, well, there was something offensive about those thick leather clothes and conical hats. After all, he thought, we’re all dwarfs together, are we not? Tak never mentioned that dwarfs should cover their faces in the society of their friends. It struck Rhys that this practice was deliberately provocative and, of course, disdainful. Now, on the everlasting agenda, dwarfs from every mine were grumbling about the exodus of the young to the big cities. And, of course, they all had reasons for why this might be the case, all of them wrong. Anyone who wasn’t a dwarf who preferred to live in darkness, in every meaning of the word, knew that the reason the younger generation was now overwhelming Ankh-Morpork, for example, was simply down to those very same grumblers and their activities. On the other hand, those he thought of as progressive dwarfs, the type who would quite happily have a troll as a friend, were bearing down on him , the King, about their race’s tendency to drive itself into a kind of purdah. There was a great cloud of misunderstanding in the Low King’s hall, which on every side appeared almost willful, as if any dispute, however insignificant, had to be thrashed through to the bitter end. It was something in the dwarf psyche. We spend too much time indoors, Rhys thought. He sighed when he realized that Ardent, whose voice had become unbearably loud, now had the floor. Ardent was a dwarf that the King would have liked to see present at a mine disaster, preferably underneath it. However, Ardent had followers, stupid followers, and he also had powerful friends. And that was it. Politics. Politics was like those little wooden sliding-picture games for children: you had to move all of the pieces in the hope of finding a place where the whole picture slotted together. At the moment Ardent was insinuating that, in truth, the mining of fat in the Schmaltzberg fat mines was not truly dwarfish, a comment which led an elderly dwarf, whom the King recognized as Sulien Heddwyn, to get to his feet. Heddwyn put his hands on his axe and said, “My father was a fat miner. My grandfather was a fat miner. And so was my grandmother, she was a very fat miner and I was a miner when I was a minor. My mother gave me a tiny pick as soon as I was old enough to hold it. Every one of my relatives back to the dive of the Fifth Elephant was a fat miner and I’ll tell you, the export income from the Plains for our purest fats is what keeps this town running. So I won’t take an insult like this from a b’zugda-hiara *21 too afraid to look at the sunshine. ” The sound of metal on metal echoed around the hall, followed by silence, with everyone waiting to see what was going to happen next. And that meant Rhys Rhysson had to break that silence. After all, he was, was he not, the Low King, the Low King of all the dwarfs? He smiled, well aware that one wrong word from him would send shock waves around the cavern and the result, whatever it was, would be his fault. Such is the fate of those who work only for the propagation of peace over warfare, and the way of the conscientious facilitator is a path strewn with thorns. He looked at the angry councillors brandishing weapons around the huge table. It was as if being a dwarf meant that you lived in a permanent state that the term “grumpiness” simply couldn’t convey. A conference of dwarfs was, in their language, a confusion of dwarfs. His voice low, Rhys spoke. “For what purpose am I King? I will tell you. In a world where we formally recognize trolls, humans, and, these days, all manner of species, even goblins, unreconstructed elements of dwarfdom persist in their campaign to keep the grags auditing all that is dwarfish. ” He looked sternly at Ardent as he continued, “Dwarfs from every area where dwarfs live in sufficient numbers have tried to modernize, but to no avail apart from those in Ankh-Morpork, and the shame of it is that often those determined to keep dwarfkind in the darkness have somehow inculcated their flocks into believing that change of any sort is a blasphemy, no specific blasphemy, just a blasphemy all by itself, spinning through the cosmos as sour as an ocean of vinegar. This cannot be!” His voice rose and his fist crashed down on the table.

“I am here to tell you, my friends and, indeed, my smiling enemies, that if we do not band together against the forces that wish to keep us in darkness, dwarfkind will be diminished. We need to work together, talk to one another, deal properly with one another, and not spend all our time in one enormous grump that the world isn’t entirely ours anymore and, at the finish, ruin it for everyone. After all, who would deal with such as us in a world of new choices? In truth, we should act as sapient creatures should! If we don’t move with the future, the future will twist and roll right over us. ” Rhys paused to accommodate the inevitable outburst of Shame! and Not so! and all the other detritus of rotted debate, and then spoke again. “Yes, I recognize you, Albrecht Albrechtson. The floor is yours. ” The elderly dwarf, who had once been favorite to win the last election for Low King, said courteously, “Your majesty, you know I have no particular liking for the way that the world is going, nor some of your more modern ideas, but I have been shocked to discover that some of the more headstrong grags are still orchestrating attacks on the clacks system. ” The King said, “Are they mad?! We made it clear to this council and all dwarfs, after the message we received from Ankh-Morpork about their clacks being attacked, that this stupidity must cease at once. It’s even worse than the Nugganites, *22 who were, to be sensible about this, totally and absolutely bloody insane. ” Albrecht coughed and said, “Your majesty, in this instance I find myself standing shoulder to shoulder with you. I am appalled to see things go this far. What are we but creatures of communication, and communication accurately communicated is a benison to be cherished by all species everywhere. I never thought I would say this, but the news I am hearing lately, and am expected to delight in, makes me ashamed to call myself a dwarf. We have our differences and it’s right and proper that we should have them, and discourse and compromise are cornerstones in the proper world of politics, but here and now, your majesty, you have my full and unequivocal support. And as for those who stand in our way, I call down a murrain on them. I say, a murrain!” There are uproars and there are uproars, and this uproar stayed up for a very long time. Eventually Albrecht Albrechtson brought his axe down on to the table, splitting the wood from top to bottom, bringing terrified silence across the gathered dwarfs, and said, “I support my King. That is what a King is for. A murrain, I said. A murrain. And a Ginnungagap for those that say different. ” Rhys Rhysson bowed in the direction of the old dwarf. “I thank you, my old friend, for your support. You have my undying gratitude and you leave me in your debt. ” Then, to some onlookers, the Low King might have looked a little taller. Over the hubbub, and there is no hubbub as bubbling as a dwarf hubbub, the King felt strangely buoyant, lifted, like the strange gases found around the crater of the Fifth Elephant. It seemed to the King that some of his councillors were suddenly thinking, actually thinking, and they had listened, actually listened. And now they were trying to think creatively. Rhys continued, “Not for nothing is Ankh-Morpork the residence of even more dwarfs than live here in Uberwald; and we now know that quite a large number of our dwarfs are emigrating to the lands of Diamond King of Trolls. So it is that our traditional enemy is now a friend to the many fleeing from the agents of the grags. ” As he expected, the hubbub bubbled even more: willful bubbled hatred, bubbled misunderstanding, bubbled spitefulness. He said, “I tell you now that history will run straight over us squabbling dwarfs and I will not stand by and allow that history to end with our race brought down to the status of angry b’zugda-hiara ! I am the King, by right, duly elected with all the proper observances. I was anointed on the Scone of Stone in accordance with traditions going back to the time of B’hrian Bloodaxe and I will serve the sacred duty by all means necessary. I declare these grags and their puppets are d’hrarak and I will not suffer their pernicious doctrines anymore. I am the King, and I will be King!” The uproar returned, as it always did, but Rhys thought he could see some comfort in the faces around the table and then his gaze ran into Ardent and triumph wobbled a little and he thought softly: sooner or later, my friend Mr. Ardent, I will have to deal with you. Lord Vetinari’s expression did not alter as he read the headline in the Ankh-Morpork Times : “ LOCOMOTIVE PROJECT DANGEROUS FOR HEALTH ” followed in a much smaller font by “so it is claimed. ” And it wouldn’t alter until he had had a word with the editor. Of course, the Patrician knew that any change was an affront to somebody, and quite clearly the proposed locomotive undertaking couldn’t hope to be anything other than a target. “Apparently,” Vetinari remarked to Drumknott, “the pounding rhythm of the railway wagons will lead to immorality. This from a Mister Reginald Stibbings of Dolly Sisters. ” He signaled to one of the dark clerks. “Godfrey, what do we know about this Mister Stibbings? Does he have a particular expertise in immorality?” “The one at Loose Chippings, my lord? I am informed that he has a very young mistress, sir. A young lady formerly employed at the Pink PussyCat, and very highly thought of there, I believe. ” “Does he? An expert indeed, then. ” Vetinari sighed and continued, “Though of course I do not imagine it is in my remit to monitor the private doings of my people. ” “My lord,” interjected Drumknott. “As a tyrant that is, in fact, exactly what you do. ” Vetinari gave him a look that did not actually employ a raised eyebrow but which implied that one might be forthcoming if the recipient of the look pushed his luck. He shook the paper in front of him and continued. “A Missus Baskerville from Peach Pie Street says that young ladies traveling on the train might find any kind of gentlemen sitting next to them. ” He thought for a moment and said, “In this city, expecting to encounter any kind of gentleman seems somewhat optimistic. But perhaps she has a point. It might be prudent to have compartments for ladies only. I rather think that Effie King would approve that. ” “Excellent idea as always, sir. ” “And what do we have here? A Captain Slope is very concerned about noxious gases around the lines of the railway. ” Lord Vetinari snapped his paper shut and exclaimed, “The people of Ankh-Morpork are already at home to noxious gases. It’s their birthright. Not only are they at home with them, they quietly persist in making more. It seems that Captain Slope is one of those people who won’t like the railway at any price. Suggesting that sheep will miscarry and horses will run until they die of exhaustion … Indeed, it seems that Captain Slope thinks the railway will be the end of the world. Well, Drumknott, you know my motto: Vox populi, vox deorum. ” Curious, the Patrician thought, as Drumknott hurried away to dispatch a clacks to the editor of the Times , that people in Ankh-Morpork professed not to like change while at the same time fixating on every new entertainment and diversion that came their way. There was nothing the mob liked better than novelty. Lord Vetinari sighed again. Did they actually think? These days everybody used the clacks, even little old ladies who used it to send him clacks messages complaining about all these newfangled ideas, totally missing the irony. And in this doleful mood he ventured to wonder if they ever thought back to when things were just old-fangled or not fangled at all as against the modern day when fangled had reached its apogee. Fangling was indeed, he thought, here to stay.

Then he wondered: had anyone ever thought of themselves as a fangler? However, on the other hand, his lordship quite saw the point of the coach drivers and the others who even now, according to the Times , could see their business falling away if the railway were to be introduced, and he pondered, in such circumstances, what is the careful prince to do? He thought, how many lives had been saved by the clacks, and not just lives: marriages and reputations and possibly thrones? The clacks towers now spanned the continent this side of the Hub and Adora Belle Dearheart had provided evidence that the clacksmen had several times spotted nascent fires, and on one occasion, outside Quirm, a shipwreck a little way out to sea—when they had clacksed that information to the nearest harbor master, saving all hands. There was nothing for it but to follow the wave. New things, new ideas arrived and strutted their stuff and were vilified by some and then lo! that which had been a monster was suddenly totally important to the world. All the time the fanglers and artificers were coming up with even more useful things that hadn’t been foreseen and suddenly became essential. And the pillars of the world remained unshaken. As a responsible tyrant, Lord Vetinari regularly audited his actions fearsomely and without favor. Trolls in Ankh-Morpork were rarely talked about these days because, amazingly, people barely thought of them as trolls anymore, just as, well, large people. Much the same, although different. And then there was the position of the dwarfs, the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs. Dwarfish? Yes, but now on their own terms. The Low King was certainly aware that in Ankh-Morpork there was a large population of dwarfs that had taken a look at the future and decided to grab a slice of it. Tradition? they had thought. Well, if it suits us then every so often we’ll have a parade of all things dwarfish. Sons and daughters of our parents but, as it were, augmented. We have seen the city. The city where almost anything is plausible, if not possible, including, for the ladies, a better class of lingerie. Far away in a small mine at Copperhead, Maelog Cheerysson the cobbler put down his hammer and tacks. “Look here, my boy,” he said to his son, who was leaning on his workbench. “I’ve heard what you said about the grags being the salvation of dwarfs, and this morning I found this: it’s an iconograph of me in Koom Valley. The last time. Oh, yes, I was there, nearly everybody was there. We’d been told by the grags that the trolls were our enemies and I thought of them as nothing more than nasty big lumps of rock out to crush us! Well, we were all lined up facing the buggers, and then somebody shouted, ‘Trolls, put down your weapons! Dwarfs, put down your weapons! Humans, put down your weapons!’ “And there we stood and we could all hear other voices in different languages and right in front of me there was this bloody big troll, oh my! He had his great big hammer ready to pulverize me. That was not to say that my axe wasn’t about to take his bloody knees off at the same time, but the voices were so loud that everybody stopped and looked around and he looked at me and I looked at him and he said, ‘What’s happening here, mister?’ and I said, ‘I’m damned if I know!’ “But I could see the other side of the valley and there was a great big kerfuffle between the top brass, all screaming about dropping our weapons, and I looked at the troll and he looked at me, and he said, ‘Are we going to have a war, or what?’ and I said, ‘Oh, and I’m pleased to meet you, my name is Maelog Cheerysson,’ and he sort of grinned and said, ‘They call me Smack, and I’m pleased to meet you. ’ “And all around us people were wandering around and asking one another what the hell was going on and were we fighting or were we not fighting and if we were fighting what were we fighting for? So some of the lads sat down and lit a fire for a brew-up, while at the other end of the valley the flags were fluttering and everybody was walking around like it was a holiday or something. “And then a dwarf came up to us and said, ‘Good fortune, lads, you’re going to see something that no one else has seen for millions of years,’ and we did, I reckon. We were some way away from the front of the queue because trolls and humans and dwarfs were coming back out of the cavern, and every single one of them going past us looked as if he’d been hypnotized. “Now, I’ve told you about the miracle of Koom Valley before, my lad, but you haven’t seen this iconograph of me and Smack. It was took at the time just after we realized we weren’t going to be fighting that day and we all went in ones and twos into that cavern and saw the two kings: the king of the dwarfs and the king of the trolls, entombed in shining rock, playing Thud! And we saw it! And it was true! They’d been friends in death. And that gave us the signal that we needn’t be enemies in life. “And that was it until later Smack and me tried to find something both of us could drink. A lot of the people were doing the same thing, but the potion he gave me nearly blew my bloody head off. It certainly made my boots burn. Smack has got two kids now, you see, doing all right, working in Ankh-Morpork. Trolls ain’t all that good at writing, but I think of him and I think of Koom Valley every day. ” The old cobbler looked sideways at his son’s face and said, “You’re a smart boy. Smarter than your brother was … and I reckon you’ve got a question to ask me. ” The boy coughed and said, “If you saw them playing Thud, Dad, can you remember which one was about to win?” The old dwarf laughed. “I asked that when I met Commander Vimes, and he wouldn’t tell me. We reckoned he probably broke a few pieces off so no one knew who the winner would be so some curious little fellow like you wouldn’t go off and try to start the whole damn war again. ” “Commander Vimes? The Blackboard Monitor?” “Yes, it was him all right. Shook my hand. Shook both our hands. ” The boy’s tone was suddenly reverential. “You actually shook hands with the actual Commander Vimes!” “Oh, yes,” said his father nonchalantly, as if meeting the famed Blackboard Monitor was all in a day’s work. “I suspect you have another question, my lad. ” And the boy frowned. “So, Dad, what’s going to happen to my brother?” “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I sent a petition to Lord Vetinari, saying that Llevelys is a good lad who got into bad company. And I received a reply, and his lordship said that a young dwarf set fire to a clacks tower while people were working on it. And his punishment will be at his lordship’s leisure. And so I sent him another letter, saying that I had fought at Koom Valley. And I received another reply, and his lordship said that he understood that I didn’t fight at Koom Valley because fortunately nobody did, but he understood that I must do what I can for my eldest son, and as his lordship said, he will cogitate. ” The old dwarf sighed. “I’m still waiting, but as your mother says, while we’re not hearing anything, then he’s still alive. Now don’t tell me, my lad, that the grag extremists are on our side, because they ain’t. They’re the ones that’ll tell you that the dead kings have been made up in Ankh-Morpork and were dummies and so were we if we thought they were real. And, my boy, the dumb believe it! But I was there. What I touched I felt, and so did everybody else on that day and that’s why I get angry when the grags start preaching about the horrible humans and the terrible trolls. “They want us to be frightened of one another, thinking there must be an enemy, but the only enemy now is the grags and those poor fools like your brother, who set fire to a clacks tower and got badly burned for his trouble. They are the victims of the sneaking bastards in the darkness. ” Far away in the Oblong Office Drumknott put the midday edition of the Times in front of Lord Vetinari and looked down at Mr. Cheerysson’s latest frantic petition, saying, “They’ve torched two more clacks towers, my lord, but so far no one has died.

Except on their side, of course. Young dwarfs, badly advised. They should have known better. ” The silence enveloped Lord Vetinari. “Indeed,” said his lordship, “but it is easy to be an idiot when you are seventeen and I would warrant that the grags who put them up to it are much older. There is no sense in breaking the arrow if, by acting sensibly, you may capture the archer. I’ll leave the Cheerysson boy thinking about his fortune in the Tanty for a while and will make a note to have him brought over to talk to me in a month or two. If he’s clever, his parents won’t be grieving, and I’ll have a number of names and, above all, the goodwill of his parents. Always worth thinking about, don’t you agree, Drumknott?” “Damage to property,” said Drumknott speculatively. “Yes,” said Lord Vetinari. “That’s it. ” A few days later, Crossly quietly entered the master bedroom of the house in Scoone Avenue, nudged Moist, and, when that had no effect, finally pinched his ear in order to get his attention. He whispered, “Excuse me, sir, but his lordship requires your presence at the palace immediately , and I am sure that neither of us would like to see the mistress troubled at this time, yes?” At home and, for once, in bed at the same time as Moist, Adora Belle Dearheart was gently snoring, although she was certain that she did not. Moist groaned. It was the crack of seven and he was allergic to the concept of two seven o’clocks in one day. Nevertheless he dressed with a speed and silence trained by experience, walked noiselessly downstairs, left the house, and got a trolleybus to the palace. He ran up the steps to the Oblong Office, reflecting that, day or night, he had never seen it empty. This time Lord Vetinari was at his desk, looking, if the word could be applied to Lord Vetinari, chipper. “Good morning, good morning, Mister Lipwig! Rather speedier than last time, yes? I imagine you haven’t had time to look at your newspaper today? Something rather droll has happened. ” “Is it something interesting to do with the railway, perhaps, my lord?” Lord Vetinari looked puzzled for a moment and then said, “Well, there is something, yes, since you ask. ” He sniffed as if what he was dealing with was not in the great scheme of things all that important and continued, “I am being told that everybody is going to Harry King’s compound to see the marvel of the steaming train, which seems to have caught the public fancy. I understand that Sir Harry, with his usual business acumen, is already turning this into a commercial enterprise. “Of course, that is news, but when you do indeed get hold of a newspaper you might notice a small apology from the editor of the Times to the effect that the crossword has been removed, as the compiler is stepping down for a while owing to the pressures of keeping up the standard of achievable games that are nevertheless sufficiently taxing. Of course, as a rule I do not gloat, but I fear she has met her match. I shall ask Drumknott to arrange for a box of chocolates to be sent to her, from a secret admirer. After all, I am generous in victory!” Lord Vetinari cleared his throat again and said solemnly, “Alas, Drumknott has taken the morning off to go and have another look at the engine. A morning off. Whoever heard of such a thing? I have to say that I’m somewhat surprised, as the only other time he has ever requested time away from my service was to attend the paper clip, stapler, and desktop aids symposium three years ago. He got very excited about that one, too. One wonders what the attraction of this engine can be. Does it not seem rather strange to you?” Moist was a little nervous of the use of “strange” and “Drumknott” in the same sentence, and instead volunteered to visit the site of the train to escort Drumknott back to the palace. “Since you will be there, Mister Lipwig, I shall be pleased to hear your … impressions on the economic opportunities for my city. ” Aha, thought Moist, so that’s why he’s dragged me out of bed … again. Nothing to do with the crossword, nothing to do with Drumknott, but everything to do with his city getting an interest in the railway. His lordship gave Moist a brisk nod and waved the paper, suggesting that it was time for him to be on his way. * It took Moist a long time to push his way through the throng anxious to see the modern miracle of the age. Harry King’s business compound was at the very end of the queue that seemed to straggle halfway back to the city. There was no sign of Drumknott but Moist wasn’t surprised. When Drumknott was standing in front of you, he was so retiring as not to be there. There were guards on the gates all round the compound, Harry’s own and City Watch, watching like hawks as one by one the citizens queueing up parted with a whole dollar a time to ride behind the locomotive. And a dollar was a dollar, possibly a day’s food for a family, and yet, as far as Moist could ascertain, flying over the rails on the wonderful train was worth tightening your belt for. It was better than the circus, better than everything, to be speeding along with the wind in your face and black smuts that made the eyes water, but were, well, the badge of the train riders, who nevertheless didn’t seem to notice it, given the amount of unpleasantness that could slap, splat, spit, or fly into your face when you stepped into the street, or even when you walked into your own house, if you lived anywhere near the Shades. Moist was well versed in the people of Ankh-Morpork’s love of novelty, and, he had to admit it, Iron Girder, pulling her train like the queen she was, was novelty in the extreme. She came trundling around the corner with people in the carts behind screaming and waving to friends still waiting in the queue. And as a connoisseur of the madness of crowds he watched carefully, and noted that some passengers disembarked and scuttled away to the man who was handing out little tokens in exchange for another dollar, and then ran all the way to the back of the very, very long queue for another go. There was a click nearby and then a flash, and he turned to see the perennially cheerful face of Otto Chriek, lead iconographer of the Ankh-Morpork Times , who gave him a friendly wave. “Vell now, Mister Lipvig, surely you’re behind zis in your cheeky little vay?” Moist laughed and said, “No, not me, Otto, but it’s very popular, isn’t it!” And I want to be at the very center of it all, he said to himself. He noticed that periodically the man collecting the money hurried away carrying huge leather pouches, with a troll bodyguard fore and aft, and was instantly replaced with another showman ready for the moneys of the mob. And so Moist, as he told himself in his own cheeky vay, followed the money. He followed it in between the great noisome heaps and stinking lagoons of Harry’s empire until the man with the large pouches of coin walked into a large shed. He followed him inside and froze, because he was immediately surrounded by the kind of men who have their noses splashed against one side of their face, little in the way of conversation, and, he noticed now, very bad halitosis. Fortunately, the shed also contained Sir Harry, who was bright enough to wave a hand in the air and say, “Okay, boys, loosen those sphincters. It’s only Mister von Lipwig, my old chum and bank manager. He’s practically one of us, ain’t you, Moist?” Moist grinned, thankful that sphincters were, right now, not in play, and said, “Well now, Harry, you know, as your bank manager I of course make it my duty to look after your interests, and I gather that you’re looking after the interests of Mister Simnel too?” That hung in the air like a sickle, a sharp one at that, and he watched Harry’s face, which hadn’t moved one single muscle. And then, abruptly, Harry burst out laughing and said, “Oh my, Mister Lipwig, I always said you was a sharp card and, if it comes to that, a cardsharp!” He nodded to his bodyguards and said, “Go and have a little break, lads. Me and my old friend here’ll be having a little chinwag, such as old friends do.

Go on, bugger off, the lot of you. ” And indeed they did, all except one, the very largest, a troll who glittered strangely and was watching Moist most intently, but not as intently as Moist watched him. And, Moist thought, the troll was … a gentleman. He couldn’t think of him in any other way; he was well dressed, which was remarkable in itself as most trolls viewed clothes as optional. Somewhat embarrassed at this interest, Moist felt rude enough to say, “Okay, Harry, but there’s one bodyguard still here. D’you think I’m going to try anything?” Harry King guffawed. “That, Mister Lipwig, is my lawyer. His name is Mister Thunderbolt, got the letters after his name and everything, ain’t you, Thunderbolt?” Lawyer! Bingo! Harry was laughing all the way from his belly now and said, “Mister Lipwig, the look on your face! Don’t worry, though. Mister Thunderbolt takes everybody that way. That isn’t to say I ain’t glad to see you, but you could be of service to both me and our friend the engineer. Shall we go somewhere a bit more private? Coffee?” Harry waved at a clerk, who bustled away swiftly, and then ushered Moist and Thunderbolt up to his office overlooking the compound. Harry sat down and beckoned to Thunderbolt and Moist to do the same. “Now then, you know me, Mister Lipwig, like I know you. We’re a pair, eh? Not exactly crooks, not exactly, well, not now anyway, ’cos we’ve grown up and know how to do business properly, don’t we?” He concluded with a wink. “And we both know a once-in-a-lifetime deal when we see it, I’m sure. Tell me if I’m wrong, yes?” There was somebody who was a lawyer in the room, moreover a lawyer who could presumably kill you with one punch, and it was always worth thinking about anything that you were going to say in front of a lawyer because you never knew if you really could trust the weasels, but Moist nodded at Mr. Thunderbolt and said, with careful diction, “Sir Harry, Lord Vetinari has set me the task of assessing this wonderful new invention on behalf of the city. ” Harry King opened a box of big cigars, sniffed them, and chose one before proffering the box to Moist and Thunderbolt. The troll declined, of course, but Moist was never one to turn down one of Harry King’s finest cigars. They came from far-off places and were truly excellent. Harry puffed out a big cloud of smoke, leaving him for a moment looking just like Iron Girder, and it occurred to Moist that Harry, who knew that symbols were important, was definitely hoping to be the first railway baron. “Mister Lipwig, Iron Girder is peacefully, for want of a better word, transporting eager citizens around the track regular as clockwork. Round and round they go, happy as you like, you must agree? Mister Simnel says he built her as a proof of concept and he needs a lot of money to build a full-size version that can pull even more people and, above all, freight, because he reckons that’s where the money is to be made, although looking out of the window at all those smiling faces I’m not so sure of that. ” Sir Harry sent another plume of smoke into the air and looked smug, which, Moist considered, was probably the case, before adding, “Since I know you, Mister Lipwig, and I know that you can read me, yes, I’m prepared to bankroll the lad in exchange for a slice of the profits, a big and fair slice. I understand that he’s now all but skint, totally boracic, with the arse nearly out of his trousers, and if he’s ever going to get his ambition to run bigger trains to here, there, and bloody everywhere, then he needs a partner with experience of the world, and I have that experience from the bottom up, as it were. “But, you know how it is, gents … when a man gets older and he’s made his pile he starts caring a bit more about what people think about him, so I ain’t no dwarf, I won’t steal an advantage on a young man with prospects. That’s why I’m happy to say that with the help of Mister Thunderbolt here I’ve struck a fair deal with the young lad. Ain’t that so, Mister Thunderbolt?” The air seemed to glitter as the troll stood up, shimmering as he spoke. His voice appeared to come from twilight canyons far away. It wasn’t just sound, it had a presence in its own right. “Yes, that is so. Sir Harry, I suggest now that even though you have a handshake deal with Mister Simnel, there should be three shares in this enterprise, to avoid deadlock, with the third and very small share in the hands of the city, to wit, Lord Vetinari. The purpose of the arrangement is in case Mister Simnel and you, Sir Harry, are unable to agree on a matter connected with what we are all calling the ‘railway. ’ Lord Vetinari will have the casting vote to end that deadlock. But the city will not take any dividends; its income will come, as always, from straightforward taxation, which I am sure Lord Vetinari will consider an important part of this enterprise. “The small print will be a little more complicated, and of course if Mister Simnel’s locomotives catch on, there will be opportunities to sell extra shares in the future. If you both agree, gentlemen, I will deal with that aspect and you may be certain that in compliance with Sir Harry’s instructions Mister Simnel and his family will have a significant share in the business. ” As slowly as he had stood up, Mr. Thunderbolt sat down again, and Moist von Lipwig and Sir Harry King looked at one another. Harry, beaming, said, “I suppose I’d better get the lad in, then,” and nodded to Thunderbolt to open the door. A few minutes later Dick Simnel sat uncomfortably in his seat, trying not to make anything greasy, without much hope and even less success. Harry appeared not to notice and said cheerfully, “Now then, lad, it’s like this. You reckon that with enough money you could make engines larger and more powerful than Iron Girder, right? And with long enough, er, rails, you could get to all the other cities? Well, lad, I’ll bankroll you in this enterprise until you’re in a position to prove that this is possible. ” He stopped talking for a moment, looked at the ceiling, and said, “Tell me: how long d’you think that’ll be?” The engineer looked thoughtful and somewhat baffled and said, “I couldn’t rightly say, sir, but the more the money jingles, the faster the wheels’ll turn. I mean, if I can hire the best skilled workers and, well, sir, I’ve made my calculations, done a lot of testing, and I reckon I could have a new engine ready for …” Moist held his breath. “One thousand dollars. ” Moist glanced at the face of Harry King, who flicked the ash from his cigar and said, in a deadpan way, “A thousand dollars? And how soon can you have it on the rails, lad?” Simnel took his small sliding device out of his pocket, played with it for a minute or so, and said, “How about two months?” He fiddled with the device again and added, “Around teatime. ” Moist was fidgeting at this point, and he chimed in with, “Excuse me, I know you said that Simnels have been working on steam for years and that other people might have been too, but do you know if anybody else has anything like this? Might they steal a march on you even if they don’t have your secrets?” To his surprise Simnel said cheerfully, “Oh yes, sir, about four or five of them, but none of them have yet produced even a working concept like Iron Girder. They’re making all t’mistakes my dad did, and making a few others of their own an’ all, from what I hear. Superheated steam doesn’t give you a chance. Get it wrong and it’ll tek t’flesh off your bones. Now me, sir, well, I’m a stickler for measurements, tiny teeny weeny measurements. They ain’t very exciting but that’s the soul and center of being an engineering artificer. “Unfortunately, my granddad and my dad were a bit slapdash about them, seeing as they didn’t have the proper knowing of them, but measurements is your saving grace if you want to raise steam.

Me mum paid for me to get a better learning, being as ’er side of the family had money from …” he paused “…  fishing, and one of my uncles made theodolites and other delicate instruments, and I thought to meself, well, this is very helpful, especially when he taught me ’ow to blow glass, and what I need glass for is my own little secret …” Simnel looked anxious for a moment and said, “I’ll need a shedload of iron, especially for t’tracks themselves. And, of course, then there’s the question of laying t’tracks through people’s land … someone’ll have to talk to the landowners. I’m an engineer, always will be, and I’m not sure I know how to ’aggle with the big nobs. ” “Ah, as it happens we have a born haggler with us right now,” said Harry. “What do you say, Mister Lipwig? Do you want to be a part of it?” Moist opened his mouth to speak. “There you are, then, young Dick. We’ll use Mister Lipwig for any negotiations. He’s the kind of man who’d follow you into a revolving door and still come out in front. And he speaks posh, when necessary. Of course, he’s a bit of a scoundrel, but aren’t we all in this business?” “I don’t think I am, sir,” said Simnel cautiously, “but I know what you mean. If you don’t mind, I’d like to suggest that my first track is laid all the way back to Sto Lat. Well, not exactly Sto Lat, it’s a place on the outskirts called Swine Town, there being so many pigs in the area. That’s where the rest of my gear and machinery is stored. ” Simnel looked nervously at Sir Harry, who was pursing his lips. “It’s a long way, lad, must be twenty-five miles or more, and you’d be right out in the sticks there. ” Moist couldn’t hold his tongue. “Yes! But they wouldn’t be the sticks for long, would they? Try and get fresh milk in the city … it’s always bad cheese by the time it gets to you, and then there are things like strawberries, watercress, lettuce, you know, everything with a limited shelf life! The areas that have the railways’ll be more prosperous than those that don’t! It was the same at first with the clacks. Everybody said they didn’t want the towers, and now anybody who’s anybody wants one at the bottom of their garden. The Post Office’ll be on your side too, moving the mails faster and all that, and I can assure you that the Royal Bank will be right behind you, and indeed, Mister Simnel, I’ll invite you to join me in my office as soon as possible to discuss our special banking facilities …” Harry King slapped his thigh and said, “Mister Lipwig, didn’t I say it: you’re a man who sees an opportunity when it’s in front of him!” Moist smiled. “Well, Harry, I think it’s in front of all of us now. ” In fact, in his mind’s eye Moist could see lots of opportunities and plenty of room for problems, and here right in the middle of it all was Moist von Lipwig. It couldn’t get better than this! His smile widened, inside and out. It wasn’t about the money. It had never been about the money. Even when it was about the money, it wasn’t entirely about the money. Well, it was slightly about the money, but most of all it was about what the dwarfs called the craic. The sheer pleasure about what you were doing and where you were doing it. He could feel the future catching him up. He could see it beckoning. But, of course, sooner or later someone would try to kill him. That usually happened, but you had to take the chance. It seemed to be a necessary part of the whole thing, whatever the whole thing actually was. You always had to take the chance. Any chance. Harry gave Moist a sideways glance and said, over his shoulder, “Mister Simnel, if you’ve got a lot of your valuable stuff in a shed up there in Pig City or wherever, would you mind me sending a couple of my …” Harry paused, seeking for a genteel wording “…  my useful gentlemen to keep an eye on the place for you?” Simnel looked puzzled and said, “It’s really a quiet old place, sir. ” Harry moved into what might be called his avuncular persona and said, “That might very well be so, my lad, but I think that you and me are going to a place where there’ll be a lot of money, and where there’s a lot of money there are a lot of people trying to take it off you. I’d like to think that if anyone broke into your big shed to fossick around for any interesting bits of machinery or clues as to how you build your engines, they might find themselves having to explain their interest to Snatcher, Stiletto Dave, and Grinder Bob. They’re all good lads, kind to their old mums, and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Call it, well, call it … insurance. And if you can be good enough to let them have a key, I’ll send them up there right now. Mind you, if you can’t find a key I’m sure they’ll find their way in. They’re very versatile in that respect. ” Young Simnel smiled and said, “That’s very thoughtful of you, Sir Harry. Perhaps I should give them a message to take to my mother. She’ll show them where everything is. My dad said always put a few nasty little booby traps around the place before you lock up and then after that, owt they can steal from you they’re welcome to, if they’ve still got their arms to carry it away, that is. ” Harry laughed out loud and said, “Sounds to me like your old dad looked at things just the way I do. What’s mine is mine and what is mine is me own. ” When Moist and Mr. Thunderbolt stepped out into the compound, Moist saw that people were still queueing up for a ride on the train, which was waiting like a queen while Mr. Simnel’s lads filled her bunker full of coal, and oiled and greased everything again, including themselves. They tapped her wheels and polished everything that could be polished, once again including themselves, while just about every little boy in the city, and, amazingly, most of the girls, stared at her in awe, worshipping at her shrine. And then it came back to him: earth, air, fire, and water, the sum of everything! The goddess had found her worshippers. There was a sound like thunder, but it was only Mr. Thunderbolt clearing his throat to say, “Remarkable, isn’t it, Mister Lipwig? There appears to be what one can only call a presence of sorts, a hint, as it were, that life turns up in many different guises, perhaps? Just a passing thought. ” Moist had never heard such clear diction from a troll, and it must have shown, because Mr. Thunderbolt laughed, saying, “A touch of diamond does the trick, Mister Lipwig, and I will endeavor to draw up contracts that suit all parties, you need not worry. ” Just then Moist beheld Drumknott, greasy and cheerful and covered with smuts, stepping off the engine and regretfully handing a hat and a very grubby jacket to one of Mr. Simnel’s lads. Moist grabbed the little secretary by one arm. “Where did you get to, Mister Drumknott? I’ve been looking for you everywhere ,” he lied. “His lordship is expecting you back any time now. ” Moist wasn’t sure he liked Drumknott, but it wouldn’t do to have him as an enemy, being so close as he was to the engine that drove Ankh-Morpork, and so he cleaned up the little man as best he could and flagged a coach back into the city, noticing, as they traveled along the busy towpath, that the major traffic was still going the other way. Moist knew about the zeitgeist, he tasted it in the wind, and sometimes it allowed him to play with it. He understood it, and now it hinted at speed, escape, something wonderfully new, the very bones of the land awakening, and suddenly it seemed to cry out for motion, new horizons, faraway places, anywhere that is not here ! No doubt about it, the railway was going to turn coal into gold. “Excuse me, young man. ” Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs, who had taken it upon themselves to patrol the line of expectant sightseers queueing for a ride on the train, looked around uncertainly. It had been a long time since Sergeant Colon had been a young man, and as for Nobby Nobbs, although it was generally agreed that he was the younger of the two, there was some doubt about whether the term Homo sapiens could be applied to him; the jury of Ankh-Morpork was out.

Colon and Nobby were supposed to have been on the beat in the Shades, but Colon had delegated that task to a couple of new recruits. “Good experience for ’em, Nobby. And it’s likely to be a dangerous business, this streaming engine. Needs someone to have a look-see—a couple of experienced coppers, let’s say, prepared to put therselves in harm’s way for the public good. ” “Young man … excuse me,” came the voice again. The speaker was a harassed-looking lady with two boys at heel, who weren’t at all at heel and were expressing their frustration at having to wait for the promised ride on the train in the supremely annoying ways that only small children can manage. In a desperate attempt to distract them from their contest to inconvenience as many people in the queue in front of them as possible, their mother had seized on the first official-looking people who might be able to entertain her offspring with some interesting facts. “We were just wondering if you could tell us how this locomotive goes?” she asked. Fred Colon took a deep breath. “Well, missus, there’s the boiler, you see. It’s like a kettle. ” This was not enough for the smaller child, who said, “Mum’s got a kettle. That doesn’t go anywhere. ” His mother tried again. “And how does this ‘boiler’ work?” “Well, you see, it sends the hot water to the engine,” said Nobby hurriedly. “Right,” said the lady, “and then what happens?” “And then all the hot water goes into the wheels. ” The elder boy looked sceptical. “Really? How’s that done?” Nobby, cornered, said, “I think the sergeant can tell you that. ” A little bead of sweat appeared on Colon’s face and he was aware that the two children were looking at him as if he were some kind of exhibit. “Ah, well, the water is magnetic, right, because of all that spinning,” he said. The elder boy said, “I don’t think it works like that. ” But Colon was on a roll and ignored him. “The spinning causes the magnetism and that’s what makes the water stick in there. Lots of iron in train wheels, stands to reason. And that’s what keeps the train on the iron road, magnetism. ” The smaller boy changed tack. “Why does the engine go chuff ?” “That’s because it’s chuffed,” said Colon with a sudden flash of inspiration. “See, you’ve heard of ‘ chuffed. ’ That’s where it comes from. ” Nobby looked at his friend in admiration. “Is that why, sarge? I never thought of that!” “And when it’s had enough of a chuffing, there’s enough magnetism to hold the train on the iron road, see?” The last phrase was delivered in a rush in the hope that no more questions would be forthcoming. But it doesn’t work like that with children. The elder boy had had enough and decided to show off the knowledge gleaned from friends who had been there earlier in the day. “Isn’t it to do with reciprocating motions?” he said, with a glint in his eye. “Ah, well, yes,” blustered Colon helplessly. “You’ve got to have your recip-roca-tory motions to get the right kind of chuff. And when everything is chuffing and reciprocatoring, away we go. ” The smaller child was still puzzled, as well he might be. “I still don’t understand, mister. ” “Well, perhaps you’re too young to know,” said Colon, taking refuge in the excuse used by exasperated adults through the millennia. “Very technical stuff, your chuffing. Probably shouldn’t even be trying to explain it to children. ” “I don’t think I understand either,” said the mother. “You know clockwork?” said Nobby, coming to the rescue again. “It pretty much goes like clockwork, only bigger and faster. ” “How’s it wound up?” asked the boy. “Ah yes,” said Colon, “that chuffing noise, of course, is the winding up. And when it’s wound up, then off it chuffing goes. ” The smaller boy held up a clockwork engine and said, “He’s right, Mum, you wind them up and away they go. ” Bemused, the lady said, “Right … well, thank you, gentlemen, for a comprehensive little talk. I’m sure the boys were fascinated. ” And she handed Colon several coins. Colon and Nobby watched the happy family as they climbed onto the cart behind Iron Girder. And Nobby said, “It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it, sarge? Being helpful to people. ” Moist’s cab halted at the palace, and he helped an exhausted Drumknott up the stairs. Amazingly he was beginning to feel sorry for the little chap, who was looking like a lotus eater who had run out of lotuses. *23 Moist very carefully knocked on the door of the Patrician’s office, which was opened by one of the dark clerks. The clerk stared at Drumknott and looked askance at Moist, as Lord Vetinari himself stood up in surprise, leaving Moist impaled between two askances. So he saluted smartly and said, “I beg to report, sir, that Mister Drumknott very gallantly and fearlessly and at some personal cost has helped me form an opinion as to the practical aspects of the newfangled train, risking his life repeatedly in so doing, and for my part I have seen to it that your government has a suitable measure of control over the railways. Sir Harry King is funding further research and trials, but personally, my lord, I believe the new railway will be a winner. I’m convinced that this prototype can pull more stock than dozens of horses. Mister Simnel seems to be very thorough in his work, extremely meticulous, and, above all, the people appear to have taken the train to their hearts. ” Moist waited. Lord Vetinari could outstare a statue and make even a statue start to feel nervous and confess. Moist’s counter was a fetching grin, which he knew annoyed Vetinari beyond measure, and there was absolute silence in the Oblong Office while blank stare and cheery grin battled it out for supremacy in some other dimension, which ended when his lordship, still staring fixedly at Moist, said to the nearest dark clerk, “Mister Ward, please take Mister Drumknott to his rooms and clean him up, if you would be so kind. ” When they had departed, Lord Vetinari sat down and drummed his fingers on his desk. “So, Mister Lipwig, you believe in the train, do you? It certainly appears that my secretary is impressed. I have never seen him so excited by something that wasn’t written on paper, and the afternoon edition of the Times seems to be in agreement with him. ” Vetinari walked over to the window and stared down at the city in silence for a moment and continued, “What can a mere jobbing tyrant achieve in the face of the even greater, multiheaded tyrant of public opinion and a regrettably free press?” “Excuse me, sir, but if you wanted to you could shut down the papers, couldn’t you? And forbid the train and put anyone you like in prison, yes?” Still staring down at the city, Lord Vetinari said, “My dear Mister Lipwig, you are clever and certainly smart but you have yet to find the virtue of wisdom, and wisdom tells a powerful prince that firstly he shouldn’t put just anyone he likes in prison, because that is where he puts the people he doesn’t like, and secondly that mere unthinking dislike of something, someone, or some situation is no mandate for drastic action. Therefore, while I have given you permission to continue, the train does not have my wholehearted approval. Neither does it have my curse. ” The Patrician seemed to consider for a moment and added, “Yet. ” He walked up and down again for a second or two and then, as if the thought had only just struck him, said, “Mister Lipwig, do you think it a possibility that a train could in fact get all the way to, say, Uberwald? That journey is not only extremely slow, tedious, and uncomfortable by coach, but it is fraught with many … ah, perils … and traps for the unwary traveler. ” He paused and added, “And indeed the unlucky bandit. ” “Oh, yes, that’s where Lady Margolotta lives, isn’t it, sir?” said Moist breezily. “But it would mean negotiating the Wilinus Pass, sir. Very dangerous up there! Bandits have been known to knock out coaches by throwing down rocks from the crags. ” “But there is no other way without a very lengthy detour, Mister Lipwig, as you probably know.

” “In that case, my lord … I think it might be possible to construct such a thing as an armored train,” said Moist, inventing furiously. He was gratified to see that Lord Vetinari brightened when he heard that, repeating the words “armored train” once or twice more. Then his lordship said, “Can it really be possible?” And in the squirrel cage of Moist’s mind, he thought, Can it? Can it really? It must be more than twelve hundred miles! It takes well over two weeks by coach and that’s if you don’t get hijacked, but who was going to try to hijack an armored train? The engine would be wanting water frequently and is it possible that it could carry enough coal for the whole journey? The numbers rolled in his head. Stopping places, troughs for water, mountains, gorges, bridges, marshland … So many things, any one of which could scupper the project … But going to Uberwald would mean passing through so many other places on the way and all of them could be opportunities to make money. The demons of critical path analysis swarmed around his brain. There was always something that you had to do before you could do the thing you wanted to do and even then you might get it wrong. To Vetinari he said cheerily, “Well, sir, I don’t see why not. And, of course, for such a long journey it should be possible to sleep on the train and for heads of state to occupy a complete suite of carriages, if not the whole train. Surely that could be arranged?” Moist held his breath. After a few seconds his lordship said, “That would be appropriate, but, Mister Lipwig, I am not entirely bribed. The train must prove itself both financially and mechanically. However, I look forward to its success. It seems, Mister Lipwig, that you are using your extra-cheery voice and so once again you find yourself in your own chosen environment, that being the center of everything. But tell me: where do you think will be the destination of the first commercial train? Quirm?” “Actually, sir, that has been discussed and it looks as if it’s going to be Sto Lat, because that’s where Mister Simnel has his machine tools and a large stock of materials that he would need to transport to Ankh-Morpork. Besides, that place is a nexus for the Sto Plains, and nexus means—” Lord Vetinari raised a hand and said, “Thank you, Mister Lipwig. I do know what a nexus is. ” Moist smiled and headed for the door, showing his panic only on the inside, and as his hand reached the doorknob Vetinari’s voice behind him said, “Mister Lipwig, you surely realize that a thoughtful prince, a prince who wishes to keep his throne for some time and is shrewd in the ways of people, would not travel in a thrilling armored train … He would put somebody else on that train, somebody expendable, having himself traveled the previous day in a suitable disguise. After all, there are such things as very, very large boulders, and most definitely there are a great many spies. But I shall consider your idea. It has a beguiling ring to it. ” * Over the next few weeks more and more people heard about Iron Girder and even larger crowds passed through Ankh-Morpork to see the new marvel of the age, including delegates, ambassadors, and representatives from most of the towns across the Sto Plains. And, of course, there were the other artificers and freelance tinkerers, inspecting everything they could see and trying to find out everything they could about what it was they weren’t being allowed to see. Every night Iron Girder was driven along a set of rails into a locked shed on the compound where she would be safe from interference due to the presence of Harry’s most fearsome attack dogs and also two golems, brought in by Harry because, unlike dogs, they couldn’t be killed by a meal laced with poison poked under the door. They patrolled the huge shed, sometimes with members of the City Watch just for the look of the thing. Moist spent a lot of time in and around the compound in his not very official but somehow understood role as the grease in the outfit’s management, as essential as the buckets of the stuff that seemed to be required in everything to do with the railway. He had, after all, a stake in the railway’s fortunes as head of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork, where money was starting to go in and out faster than a revolving door as Harry wrote cheques for iron shipments, timber, and extra metalworkers, many of whom were from the company of Free Golems: every one of them his own man, albeit one made of clay. And grease was definitely needed here. There was a mountain of paperwork already being generated by the railway, which Moist skilfully passed along to Drumknott, whose passion for paperwork was not quite yet eclipsed by his new passion for the railway. The little pink man was in hog heaven. Surveyors had been called in to work on a route. They were everywhere with their little theodolites. They treated Dick Simnel as one of them, only different. Moist was pleased about that. Dick had friends now, and if they didn’t understand all of his language they did indeed recognize it as bona fide language somewhat similar to their own and therefore they gave him respect. After all, these other people, in a way, did what he did only in different shapes, stresses, curves, loads, tolerances, and substances, and thus where it counted were brothers under the skin. And like Dick, they worked by numbers and knew the absolute necessity of getting them right, and especially they knew the absolute requirement for precision. In the compound the sound of metal on metal filled the air, and on every flat surface in Harry King’s offices maps were laid out, and they were good maps. “Lads,” Dick Simnel had said to the theodolite men, “Harry King is a good gaffer who pays top dollar for a top-rate service. He’s chancing everything to get the locomotives running, so I want you to make it easier for him. Iron Girder can take some slopes, and by ’eck she’ll take more before I’m through, but for now, what I’m telling thee is to keep t’permanent way as level as possible. And I know that there are such things as tunnels and bridges, but they take a lot of time and are flippin’ expensive! Occasionally a little detour might save us a lot of money, which is to say your wages. But think on, and I know it’s obvious, but do not go anywhere near swamps and other shaky ground. A locomotive with its coal tenders, carriages, and crew is reet, reet ’eavy and the last thing we want to be learning is ’ow to pull a bogged-down locomotive out of t’quicksand. ” And off they’d gone. The men with clean shirts every day. The men of the sliding rule. Moist liked them because they were everything he wasn’t. But maybe he should teach them about being a scoundrel. Oh, not about taking money from widows and orphans, but about being aware that many people weren’t as straight as a theodolite. The surveyors proved only too happy to agree that the area around Sto Lat was the gateway to the Sto Plains, so now all they needed to do was get the people with, as it were, the keys to the gate to understand this, a job that everybody was extremely happy to turn over to Mr. Moist von Lipwig. As it turned out, there were a great many landowners between Ankh-Morpork and Sto Lat, and any number of tenants. Nobody minded a clacks tower nearby. Indeed, often these days they demanded one, but, well, a mechanical thing chuffing through your cornfields and cabbage plantations spewing out smoke and cinders, well, that was a different matter, which would be the kind of problem that could be settled only by the application of that wonderful lubricant known to every negotiator as warm specie. *24 The aristocrats, if such they could be called, generally hated the whole concept of the train on the basis that it would encourage the lower classes to move about and not always be available.

On the other hand, some were of a type that Moist recognized: shrewd old buffers who’d lead you to believe they were harmless and possibly slightly gaga and then, with a little twinkle in their eye—BANG!—squeeze more money out of you than a snake, twinkling all the way. Lord Underdale, one such gentleman, had plied Moist with an indecent amount of gin and brandy while naming his terms: “Now see here, young man— twinkle, twinkle —you can take your tracks across my land if we can agree a route and it won’t cost you a penny if you will firstly carry my freight for nothing and secondly put a loading station just where I want it so that I can also travel anywhere I want merely by flagging down one of your locomotives. Do you see, young man —twinkle, twinkle —I go free and my freight goes free. Do we have an accord?” Moist looked out of the wonderful mullioned windows at the smoke beyond the ancient trees and said, “What exactly is your freight, sir?” The old man, all beautiful long white hair and ditto beard, said, “Well, now, since you ask, it’s iron ore with a certain amount of lead and zinc. Oh dear, I see your glass is empty again. I must insist you have another brandy—it’s such a cold day, is it not? Twinkle, twinkle. ” Moist smiled and said, “Well, your lordship, you are a tough bargainer and no mistaking— twinkle, twinkle, TWINKLE. Since our project is very heavy when it comes to metals, we could perhaps do business? That is to say if our surveyors don’t come up with any problems, such as swampy ground and suchlike. ” “Well, Mister Moist, since you have drunk every last drop of brandy I have pressed on you without appearing to be the least bit intoxicated, I must consider you a man after my own heart— twinkle, twinkle. ” And here Moist definitely detected the subtle signs of intoxication as the old man said, “I have to tell you that yesterday I was contacted by a man who said he represented the up-and-coming Big Cabbage Railway Company. ” Moist knew about them, yes, they were a company all right, but they didn’t yet have a single engine or anybody as skilful as Simnel to tame the raw steam. He rather suspected that a lot of money would go their way from the gullible and then, when there was enough, the bright office would be empty and the gentlemen concerned, with different moustaches, would be legging it somewhere else to start up another railway company. Part of him longed to be one of them and then he thought, I am one of them, only this one has to work. “Apparently,” continued Lord Underdale, “they are going to build a far superior engine to the one being demonstrated in Ankh-Morpork. ” The old man laughed at Moist’s almost total lack of expression and said, “You told me that you represented a railway company, Mister Lipwig. Well, now your company has … company !” Moist belched forensically, very carefully choosing his time. “This may be the case, sir, but we have— hic! —a working engine, which is … the toast of Ankh-Morpork!” And here Moist allowed a certain slur to enter his voice and continued, “And now, why don’t we, as gentlemen, cut a deal and shake hands on it like gentlemen so we both know where we stand?” He stood up and stumbled a little, saw the extra twinkle in the old man’s face, and rejoiced. Later, in the stables, as he saddled up to go home, Moist audited his afternoon’s work. This was a game he knew all too well. He had seen the trap and had been prepared, and thus the side deal for iron-ore shipments and railway access was a sensible one but slightly more beneficial for the railway, in recognition of the fact that elderly gentlemen shouldn’t try to get impressionable young men drunk, especially when they own more land than any reasonable person could ever need. Yes, Moist thought, moral compass? He smiled. Before he mounted up, Moist carefully removed from about his person two hot-water bottles and a rubber pipe. He very carefully stowed both bottles in a large padded saddlebag, smiling as he did so. The old boy really shouldn’t have tried to make him drunk. It was so … unethical. When Moist eventually got back to the city, he went straight to the center of Harry King’s compound, ran up the stairs to Sir Harry’s great big office, and dropped yet another portfolio, prepared by Mr. Drumknott, of all the contacts he had dealt with, the rents, the routes agreed. “These are for your lads, Harry, and this is for you. ” He set down very carefully a large crate containing a number of bottles. Harry stared at him and said, “What the hell are these for!” Moist shrugged and tapped his nose. “Well, Harry, it’s like this. A lot of the people I have to deal with are elderly men who think they’re cunning and try to fill me with expensive alcohol in the belief that they can get the better of the deal and no mistake. Of course, I drink every drink put in front of me! No! Don’t look like that! I really can hold my drink. In fact I can hold a great deal of drink, and I’m pleased to report that rubber doesn’t detract from the taste of whisky, very fine brandy, or Jimkin Bearhugger’s best gin. ” “Well done, Mister Lipwig. I’ve always known you’re a man to watch extremely carefully and I do so like to see a master at … work. Now follow me, Mister Lipwig, and try not to slosh, will you?” In a few weeks the compound had changed beyond recognition: the big drop forges that used to thud behind Quarry Lane had been moved wholesale out of the center of the city and enormously augmented their rate of hammering with the rhythms of the railway factory. Harry seemed very proud of it, considering that if muck was brass, a thump of the hammer was pennies from heaven. As they walked through the cacophony he shouted, “Great lads, the golems! They’re always punctual, and they don’t get ill. Most of all, they just like working! And I like anyone who likes to work: goblins, golems, I don’t care what you are if you’re a good worker. ” He thought for a moment and added, “As long as you don’t dribble too much. Just look at the way those lads hammer things with their fists. I wish I could get more of them, but you know how it is. ” Moist looked around the fiery hellhole that was the ironworks. In the satanic air he could just about tell the golems from the human workers in their leather overalls, because the golems were the ones walking around holding pieces of red-hot iron in their bare hands. The furnaces illuminated the grey sky, and always and forever the clanging went on. And the pile of fresh new rails got bigger and bigger. He nodded, since normal speech was clearly out of the question among the clanging and the banging. Indeed, he knew how it was. In short, the citizens of Ankh-Morpork who might be expected to fill the heavy-lifting trades, such as the golems and the trolls, were increasingly realizing that just because they were big and tough did not mean they had to do a big tough job if they didn’t want to. This was, after all, Ankh-Morpork, where a man walked free even if he was not, strictly speaking, a man. The problem, if you could call it that, had been building up for some time. Moist had first noticed what was happening when Adora Belle said that her new hairstylist was a troll, Mr. Teasy-Weasy Fornacite, *25 and, as it turned out, a pretty good hairdresser, according to Adora Belle and her friends. And there it was: the new reality. If all sapient species were equal, that’s what you got: golem housekeepers and goblin maids and, he thought, troll lawyers. Harry King was rumbling on as they emerged back into the open: “It’s a bugger! Now they’re free, you can’t get the golems! Ask your missus! They’re all off doing landscape gardening and suchlike daisy rubbish, and I reckon I’m paying every human ironworker in the damn city double the odds, and only twenty-one of them heavy boys. It’s such a shame, such a shame. ” “I don’t know, Harry, you seem to be moving phenomenally fast.

” Harry nudged Moist and said, in a conspiratorial tone, “I’ll have you dumped in the river if you tell anybody this, but I’m loving it! I mean, most of my life has been, not to put too much of a fine point on it, shit, honest to goodness shit, not to mention of course piss, which has also been a very good friend to me, but you see all that is just moving stuff about, not actually making something. And it gets better because, you see, it’s something me and the Duchess can talk about in polite company. Oh, of course, I’ll still be maintaining the night-soil business and all of that … it is, after all, my bread and butter, so to speak, which, to tell you the truth, is more like steak and all the trimmings nowadays, but right now my heart is in the iron. And who can say that ain’t beautiful, Mister Lipwig? I mean, daffodils, well, I quite like them, but look at the sheen on the steel, the sweat on the men; the future being made one hammer blow at a time. Even the slag is beautiful in a way. ” Iron Girder passed by on her everlasting journey around the compound and Harry said, “What we need is the right class of poet. ” He flung out a hand toward the admirers with their notebooks and all the others who clung to the railings. “Look at them all! They’re looking for miracles. And you know what? They’ll get them. ” It started to rain, but the onlookers, especially the train spotters, with their very useful clothing, just stood there, watching Iron Girder kick up a mist into the air. It seemed to Moist that for a moment Harry King was somehow different, even more alive than usual, and Harry, it had to be said, was pretty vital in any case. And now Harry King, Cesspit Man, was metamorphosing into a National Treasure. Bedwyr Beddsson tried to get his boots off. After a night in the mines it was amazing what you found in your boots, some of it alive. When the boots were off, not without a struggle, he took the harness off Daisy the pit pony and watched her sniff the clean air and canter into the little field near the entrance to the mine. It did your heart good to see her. There were times when Bedwyr would have liked to do the same thing. His mother had told him, you can’t change your stars, meaning, presumably, this is your life and you have to live it. Now, as he stepped inside his living quarters, he wondered if Tak might let him try again. He loved Bleddyn, his wife of many years, and his children were doing just fine in the school in Lancre, but today he was troubled. The grags had called and were quite polite this time, although neither he nor Bleddyn really cared for politics. How could they mean anything when you’ve spent your life sweating down in the mines? His pony was now free, but he was at the end of his tether. He just wanted to provide for his family as best he could. What was a dwarf to do? Bedwyr wanted his children to do better than him, and it looked as though they would. His father had been annoyed about this. Bedwyr was sorry that the old boy was dead, but the world kept turning and the Turtle moved. New things were being done in new ways. And it wasn’t that the grags were holding hard to yesterday; they hadn’t even got as far as this century. Bleddyn had cooked a good rat supper and was upset when she saw his face and said, “Those damn grags again! Why don’t you tell them to put their nonsense where the light shines too much!” *26 Bleddyn didn’t usually swear, so that surprised him, and she continued, “They had a point once. They said that we were being swallowed up by the humans and the trolls, and you know it’s true, except that it’s the wrong kind of truth. The kids’ve got human friends and one or two trolls as well and nobody notices, nobody thinks about it. Everyone is just people. ” He looked at her face and said, “But we’re diminished, less important!” But Bleddyn was emphatic and said, “You silly old dwarf. Don’t you think the trolls consider themselves diminished too? People mingle and mingling is good! You’re a dwarf, with big dwarf hobnail boots and everything else it takes to be a dwarf. And remember, it wasn’t so long ago that dwarfs were very scarce outside of Uberwald. You must know your history? Nobody can take that away, and who knows, maybe some trolls are saying right now, ‘Oh dear, my little pebbles is being influenced by the dwarfs! It’s a sin!’ The Turtle moves for everybody all the time, and those grags schism so often that they consider everyone is a schism out there on their own. Look it up. I’ve cooked you a lovely rat—nice and tender—so why not eat it up and get out into the sunshine? I know it isn’t dwarfish, but it’s good for getting your clothes dried. ” When he laughed she smiled and said, “All that’s wrong in the world is that it’s spilling over us as if we’re stones in a stream, and it’ll leave us eventually. Remember your old granddad telling you about going to fight the trolls in Koom Valley, yes? And then you told your son how you went back to Koom Valley and found out the whole damn business was a misunderstanding. And because of all this, our Brynmor won’t even have to fight unless someone is extremely stupid. Say no to the grags. Really, they’re bogeymen. I’ve spoken to all the women round here and they say exactly the same thing. You’re a dwarf. You won’t stop being a dwarf until you die. And you could be a clever dwarf or you could be a stupid dwarf, like the ones who knock down clacks towers. ” Bedwyr very much enjoyed the rat, which had been nicely seasoned, and, as a wise husband does, he thought about things. Two days later, coming back from Blackglass, where he had gone to buy a load of candles, Bedwyr found two dark dwarfs setting fire to the base of a clacks tower. All he had on him were his tools and it was amazing how useful a simple miner’s tools could be. A number of clacksmen and goblins joined him hastily in putting out the fire, and they had to stop Bedwyr from using his heavy boots to show his disdain for those who resort to arson. He told them, “My brother’s daughter, our Berwyn, she works on the clacks down in Quirm … All this stuff you don’t notice until it’s on your doorstep, and now I think I’ve woken up. ” Bedwyr didn’t kill the delvers, he just, as it were, disabled them. But when he left hurriedly to go home, he noticed that the goblins were … busy. From the point of view of people working in an undefended clacks tower in the wilderness, the world was seen as black and white, and for these delvers it went black. * Railway fever, already red-hot, was becoming incandescent, at least across the Sto Plains. Would-be investors clamored for a stake in the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway. *27 There were swamps to drain, bridges to reinforce, and so theodolites twinkled in the sunshine. But even with Vetinari’s support and Harry’s millions, it was a slow business. Every piece of track had to be laid with care and tested before anything could be run along it—let alone a train. Moist had expected that Harry would want to get things done fast at any cost with little thought of safety all round. Oh yes, he shouted a bit when the surveyors took up too much time, but the grumble remained a grumble. The same picture kept coming back into Moist’s mind: Harry King already had the money, lots of it, but the railways were going to be his legacy. No more the King of the Midden. A Lord of the Smoke was better any day and so while he screamed that he was being sent to the poorhouse he nevertheless signed the paperwork promptly. To Effie, now definitely a Lady, *28 her husband the railway entrepreneur at last had a job that his wife liked to talk about. And Effie didn’t just like to talk about it, she got involved with it and increasingly often was to be found in Harry’s office. As it happened, it was Effie who came up with the idea of the moving gangs.

And so trail after trail of wagons were working their way through the countryside, in which working men and surveyors could sleep and take their meals anywhere the railway wanted them to go rather than wasting time going home at night. The tracklaying was now pressing hard at Moist’s heels as he dealt with the multiplicity of landowners along the route. And that was a painfully slow business too, every one of them exercised by the internal conundrum: if you held out for too much then there might just be somebody reasonably close by who would welcome the train for a pittance, if he was stupid enough, but then of course he might be clever and he would get his perishable produce to market before you could, and there you would be: with all the dust and all the noise and all the smoke and none of the money. In the interests of keeping things moving as quickly as possible, the Patrician had allowed Moist to requisition one of the city’s few golem horses. The horses were notable for their indefatigable galloping and also for turning your pelvis into jelly if you didn’t pad up extremely well, but even with all the multiple layers Moist was just about rattling when he got back to the city after weeks of negotiations. Exhausted, and in defiance of custom and practice, health and safety—but, on the other hand, with all the glory of the gods of style—to the dismay of the palace guards he rode the golem horse all the way up the steps to the door of the Oblong Office. There he was pleased to see Drumknott, who deftly opened the door and stepped backward so quickly that Moist, by ducking, managed to trot neatly to within a foot of Lord Vetinari’s desk. Unruffled, the Patrician lowered his coffee mug and said, “Mister Lipwig. It is customary to knock before entering my office. Even, and especially, when entering on horseback. You may thank the gods that Drumknott had the presence of mind to disable our … little alarm system. How many times must I tell you?” “Every time, sir, I’m sorry to say, because you see, sir,” said Moist, “if I’m to be of any use to you I have to be Moist von Lipwig, sir, and that means, I’m afraid, sir, that I have to find the edge of the envelope and put my stamp on it, sir, otherwise life wouldn’t be worth dying for. ” Moist could see Drumknott wincing at the concept of anyone stamping on any stationery whatsoever and continued, “It’s in my blood and frankly, sir, I’m fed up with dealing with old codgers who think they can get the better of Moist von Lipwig, and the cunning and the unpleasant and the stupid and the clever and the greedy … sometimes all wrapped up in one man. After all this, I think my soul needs a bit of a wash and brushup, sir. ” “Ah, soul!” said Lord Vetinari. “I didn’t think you had one, Mister Lipwig. Well, I live and learn. ” He steepled his fingers. “Mister Lipwig, Mister Simnel’s activities have drawn the eyes of the world. Of course one could not expect that every country, sizeable town, and great city would not start thinking about the railway. It is a weapon, Mister Lipwig, a mercantile weapon. You may not know this because you don’t live in my world. Young Mister Simnel came to Ankh-Morpork because this dirty old town, for all its faults, is the very place upon which this world spins, the place where history is changed, where because of an enlightened and caring government—which is to say me —every man, child, dwarf, troll, werewolf, vampire, and even zombie and, yes, goblin, can call themselves free; free of any master, save the law, which applies to everybody equally whatever their species and status in life: Civis Ankhmorporkianus sum! ” There was a thump as Lord Vetinari banged his fist on the table. “Ankh-Morpork, Mister Lipwig, is not to be outdone! Now, I know you have been spending a lot of your time these days in making sure that the first fully commercial and grown-up train will indeed have a railway upon which it can run, and when it does it will be the wonder of the world. But all things move on, and it is for us to keep our city in the forefront of that movement. “No doubt you, Mister Lipwig, Sir Harry, and Mister Simnel are already thinking ahead. May I suggest that a daily railway service to and from Quirm could only set the seal on the usefulness of the railways. While a more efficient way to get to Uberwald is eminently desirable, alas I fear it must wait. I am naturally being badgered by all the other governments to bring the railway to them, but Quirm is our neighbor and an important trading partner and”—he lowered his voice—“perhaps we could get our fresh seafood before it walks to Ankh-Morpork on its own. Agreed? “You may leave the final details of the negotiations for the line to Sto Lat to Drumknott,” Vetinari continued. “He has my permission to call upon the services of one of the dark clerks … The talents of Mister Smith would be eminently suitable for sorting out any … recalcitrant landowners, I think. ” Moist noticed that Drumknott’s eyes had an unusual gleam in them, although the little secretary said nothing. “You may go, Mister Lipwig, and may I counsel you that riding a golem horse in here again will be a very dangerous errand and may result in you having kittens. ” His lordship smiled nastily and continued, “Cedric is always waiting— twinkle, twinkle. ” *29 Leading the golem horse from the office, Moist thought, Twinkle, twinkle? Oh, gods, it’s catching. Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, was held up on his walk across the University’s Great Hall by Barnstable, one of the bledlows. The man touched the brim of his bowler hat in traditional salute, coughed politely, and said, “Mister Archchancellor, sir, there’s a … person who wants to see you, and he won’t take no for an answer. A very sorry-looking cove, sir, looks like he never had a decent meal in his life, sir. And personally, sir, I reckon he’s just after a handout. Bit of an undesirable, sir, and he’s wearing a kind of a dress. Shall I show him the door, sir?” The Archchancellor thought for a moment and said, “This man, does he smell like a badger?” “Oh yes, sir, you got it in one!” Ridcully smiled. “Mister Barnstable, the old man to whom you refer is a master of every martial art ever conceived. In fact he conceived most of them himself and he is the only known master of déjà fu. *30 He can throw a punch into the air and it’ll follow you home and smack you in the face when you open your own front door. He is known as Lu-Tze, a name that strikes fear in those who don’t know how to pronounce it, let alone spell it. My advice is to smile at him and, with great care, deliver him to my office. ” Lu-Tze looked carefully at the range of brandies on the Archchancellor’s heaving, creaking drinks trolley and sat back. Ridcully, his pipe smoking like the funnel of Iron Girder, said, “How nice to see you, my old friend. It’s all about the locomotion, yes?” “Of course, Mustrum—is there anything else to talk about? The Procrastinators are grinding and everybody in Oi Dong is fearful of the Ginnungagap … the darkness at the end of the world before the new world takes its place, hmm? Although personally, I think it’s a jolly good idea, what with this one being all battered about and unkempt and uncared for. The only problem I have yet to solve is how to get from the dying world into the new world. That is a bit of a puzzle. But even the Abbot is disturbed about the arrival of steam engines when it isn’t steam-engine time. ” Ridcully poked at his pipe with a pipe cleaner and said, “Ye-es, that is a conundrum. Surely the steam engine cannot happen before it is steam-engine time? If you saw a pig, you would, I think, say to yourself, well, here’s a pig, so it must be time for pigs. You wouldn’t question its right to be there, would you?” “Certainly not,” said Lu-Tze. “In any case, pork gives me the wind something dreadful. What we know is that the universe is a never-ending story that, happily, writes itself continuously.

The trouble with my brethren in Oi Dong is that they are fixated on the belief that the universe can be totally understood, in every particular jot and tittle. ” Ridcully burst out laughing. “Oh, my word! You know, my wonderful associate Mister Ponder Stibbons appears to have fallen into the same misapprehension. It seems that even the very wise have neglected to take notice of one rather important goddess … Pippina, the lady with the Apple of Discord. She knows that the universe, while it requires rules and stability, also needs just a tincture of chaos, the unexpected, the surprising. Otherwise it would be a mechanism—a wonderful mechanism, ticking away the centuries, but with nothing different happening. And so we may assume that the loss of balance will be allowed this time and the beneficent lady will decree that this mechanism might yield wonderful things, given a chance. ” “For my part, I would like to give it a chance,” said Lu-Tze. “Serendipity is no stranger to me. I know the monks have been carefully shepherding the world, but I rather think they don’t realize that the sheep sometimes have better ideas. Uncertainty is always uncertain, but the difficulty with people who rely on systems is that they begin to believe that nearly everything is in some way a system and therefore, sooner or later, they become bureaucrats. “And so, my friend, I think we say hail Pippina and the occasional discord. I’m sure the rest of the circle will be of the same mind, to judge by their activities. After all, it’s as clear as the nose on your face: here is a steam engine. Ergo, it is steam-engine time. ” “Hurrah!” said Ridcully. “I’ll drink to that. ” “Why, thank you. I’ll have a tincture of brandy with my tea, to keep out the cold, if you don’t mind,” said Lu-Tze. Moist sat at his desk, his mind churning over how best to introduce the matter of Quirm to Sir Harry. He blankly registered a … substantial … gentleman in front of him saying, “Mister Lipwig? I have a proposition to—” Moist laughed. “Sir, anybody who has a proposition for me these days will get a maximum of five minutes, one of which has already passed. What is it?” “I’m not just anybody, Mister Lipwig,” said the man, drawing himself up to his full height, which was in fact slightly less than his full girth. “I am a chef. Perhaps you’ve heard of me—All Jolson. I understand from certain sources *31 that any day now your wonderful locomotives will be going to and from Sto Lat. I wonder, have you thought about what the people on board will eat? I’d like to bid for the franchise to sell food on the trains and possibly in the waiting rooms as well. Small snacks, and more substantial servings for the long-distance passenger. There’s nothing like a pot of my slumpie to lift the spirits of a weary traveler. Or Primal Soup—very warming, that. I’ve been experimenting with serving it in cups, with little lids on, ’cos there are things in that soup that, to be honest, you wouldn’t want to spill on yourself. ” Moist caught the essential words like a trout catching a newborn mayfly. Food on the trains! Waiting rooms, yes! Places where people would want to spend their money. Once again he remembered that the railway was not just about the rails or the steam. And as Jolson handed over a slightly lard-stained calling card Moist let his mind fill with ancillary possibilities. Yes, you would definitely need a place to stay while you were waiting for your train, somewhere dry and warm with something to drink and even, heaven forfend, a sausage inna bun that actually had seen a pig. And yes, since Dick had said he’d be quite happy for a locomotive to travel at night, then at the destination there might be railway hotels, as swish as the railway carriages and sprightly, because people would be coming and going at all times of the day or night. It would seem as if the whole world were on the move. Restless himself, he went out into the compound and crossed to the great shed. Having thought that young Simnel was happily living every dream he had ever had, he was surprised to come across the engineer sitting beside the throbbing Iron Girder, alone and, there was no other word for it, glum. Moist automatically stepped into his position as the oil that greased the wheels of progress and said, “Something wrong, Dick?” As if beset by unseen demons, Simnel said somberly, “Well, it’s like this, Mister Lipwig. I were invited along to t’Guild of Cunning Artificers last week, to see Mister Pony, and do you know what? He told me I should get apprenticed to somebody! Me! The lads are coming on fine and should be my apprentices, but it turns out that I’m not a master and so ’ave to be indentured for four years to a real master and then I might just about make a journeyman after a little while. But I told them, I never had indentures, never ’ad a master, because, d’you know for why? I haven’t been an apprentice because there were no one to teach me all the stuff I know. I ’ad to work it out for meself! “And then I read about those old guys in Ephebe who once built a little steam engine which worked … and then exploded all over them, although nobody got ’urt, and any road, they were saved because their steam engine were a kind of boat and they all ended up in the water wi’ soggy togas. And then I thought to meself, well, those old guys must’ve known a trick or two and so I got another book about them from t’library in Sto Lat, and you know what, Mister Lipwig? All those old boys wi’ their togas and sandals, they also invented the sine and cosine, not to mention your tangent! All that mathematics, which I love. And then there’s your quaderatics. Can’t get anywhere without quaderatics, can you? “And any road, they looked like a bunch of old guys who you’d think would do nowt more than lie about arguing about philosophy and then it turns out that all along they knew just about everything about, well, everything and just wrote it all down. Can you believe it? They ’ad it in their ’ands. They could’ve built a proper steam engine, and steamboats that didn’t explode. That’s academics for you. All that knowing and they went back to discussing t’beauty and truth of numbers and missed the fact that they’d discovered summat reet important. Me? If I want beauty and truth I look at Iron Girder. ” Dick slapped his fist down on the metal carapace and said, “ There’s beauty. There’s truth, right there. And they had all that knowing ’iding away. Look at ’er! My machine! I built her! Me! And I’m not even good enough to be an apprentice. ” He paused for breath and continued, “Now don’t get me wrong, Mister Moist, I know it’s just words but, you see, it’s come home to me that, since I’ve never done me indentures, I can never be a master because there’s nobody who knows more about what I’m doing than, well, me. I’ve looked in all t’manuals and read all t’books and you can’t be a master until all the other masters say you are a master. ” Simnel looked even more haunted while Moist stood with his mouth metaphorically open and listened to the meticulous Mr. Simnel blaming himself for being a genius. He continued, “The lads, as I call ’em, could never ’ope to be masters neither because they won’t have been taught engineering by a master! It’s flaming ridiculous!” Moist burst out laughing and put his hands on Dick’s greasy forehead, carefully turning the lad’s head around to face the length of the compound and the huge ever-present queues for the train ride, and he said quietly, “ They all know you’re a master and Iron Girder is your masterpiece. What boy would not wish to be you, Mister Simnel, a man-made masterpiece yourself. Do you understand?” Simnel looked doubtful, possibly still hankering after letters after his name and a certificate for his old mother to hang on her wall. “Yes, but with all due respect, the people aren’t authorities on the taming of steam. I mean no offense, like, but what do they know?” Moist snapped and said, “Dick, in some respects down there somewhere is the soul of the world, and they know everything.

You’ll have heard of Leonard of Quirm. There are some masters who make themselves, and you have—you’ve made yourself an engineer and everybody knows it. ” Simnel brightened and said, “I don’t intend on starting me own guild, if that’s what you’re thinking, but if some young lad comes to see me and wants to learn the way of the sliding rule then I’ll do him right. I’ll make ’im an apprentice the old-fashioned way and his hands’ll never be clean again. And I’ll give him indentures until they’re coming out of his flaming teeth, all writ down on vellum, if I can find any. That’s how it should go, and he’ll work for me until I reckon he’s done enough to be a journeyman. That’s how you do it. That’s how you make your trade. “When I saw you first, Mister Lipwig, I reckoned you were all mouth and no trousers. And I’ve watched you running around hither and yon and being the grease for the engine of the railway. You ain’t so bad, Mister Lipwig, ain’t so bad at all, but you’d look better with a flatter cap. ” Iron Girder let out a sudden hiss of steam, and the two men, laughing, turned to look at her. There was something new about the engine. Hang on, Moist thought, her shape has changed, hasn’t it? She looks … bigger. I know she’s the prototype and Simnel is forever tweaking things, but somehow I don’t think I ever see the same engine twice. She’s always bigger, better, sleeker. As Moist was pondering the question he became aware of Simnel beside him shifting from foot to foot. At last Dick said hesitantly, “Mister Lipwig, you know that girl with the long blond hair and pretty smile who sometimes comes into the compound? Who is she? She acts as if she owns the place. ” “That,” said Moist, “is Emily, Harry King’s favorite niece, not married yet. ” “Oh,” said Simnel. “The other day she brought me out tea—and a bun!” Moist looked at the worried face of Dick Simnel, who was suddenly in a place where the sliding rule couldn’t go. No, this was a different kind of rule, and so he said, “Would you care to take a walk with her, Dick?” Simnel blushed, if a blush could actually be seen under all the grease. “Aye, I really would, but she’s all smart and dandy as a daisy and I’m—” “Stop right there!” said Moist. “If you’re going to say that you’re just a bloke in greasy dungarees I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that you own a very big slice of all the revenue the railway is ever going to make. So don’t go around saying ‘Oh dear me I’m too poor to even think about making advances to a nice young lady,’ because you’re the best catch that any young lady in Ankh-Morpork could ever find, and I imagine that even Harry, in the circumstances, wouldn’t throw you down the stairs as he did with the swains who were the suitors of his daughters. If you’d like to go walking out with Emily I’d say go to it and I’m sure her uncle and parents will be overjoyed. ” To himself, Moist thought: in fact, Harry would love it because it’d keep the money in the family. I know Harry King, oh, yes. “What’s more,” he added, “she’s a lawyer in the making: understands the legalities of running a business. You should get on like a house on fire. ” In the voice of a man encountering new territory, Dick said carefully, “Thank you for the information and advice, Mister Lipwig. Mebbe one day when I’ve got meself clean I might get meself the courage to knock on ’er door. ” “Well, don’t wait too long, Dick. There’s more to life than the sliding rule. ” The Grand Opening of the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway brought the international press out in droves. Dick Simnel had always intended that the first serious public railway journey would start from Sto Lat, putting the old town on the map as it were. Sir Harry was somewhat dismayed by this: *32 a true denizen of Ankh-Morpork, he tended to get a little disorientated when outside the city. Still, as Moist had pointed out, after an outward journey by road, the guests would find the return rail trip with refreshments all the more impressive. When their coaches eventually arrived at what the gold-edged invitation had described as the “Sto Lat terminus,” the journalists and other invited guests discovered that terminus apparently meant a work in progress: which is to say most of it wasn’t there yet (being full of workmen—human, troll, and goblin—laboring at cross-purposes just like on every big construction site anywhere) but nevertheless a sympathetic eye could arrive at the conclusion that something rather good was being built here. The guests were ushered onto a long raised platform, standing above gleaming steel rails that ran off into the distance, the track-sides crowded with onlookers. In the other direction the rails led to a very large barn, where Dick’s apprentices, recently scrubbed, were lined up on either side of the closed doors, along with a brass band that could hardly be heard above the noise of the workmen. Moist von Lipwig was, of course, master of ceremonies, there to welcome them with Harry King and Effie by his side. Lord Vetinari too was there, as holder of Ankh-Morpork’s guardian share in the railway, accompanied by Drumknott, who wouldn’t have missed the occasion for a big clock. And Queen Keli of Sto Lat *33 was present to give the occasion the royal seal of approval, with the Mayor by her side, looking stunned by the circus that appeared to have taken over his town. As always in these matters, everything had to wait until everything else was ready. That seemed to have been anticipated, judging by the door with a neat label WAITING ROOM , alongside the entrance to the platform. *34 And then the waiting was over. At Moist’s invitation Queen Keli stepped forward to drive in the golden spike, the last one on the line, signifying it was now open for business. The chuffing sound that was the signature tune of the railway got louder and more expansive, the crowd of bystanders thronging the sides of the track waved their colorful little flags and cheered with increased enthusiasm, and two apprentices opened the gates of the barn. To a metaphorical drum-roll Moist announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, Mister Dick Simnel and Iron Girder!” Leading the dream of steam, Dick Simnel, in pride of place on the footplate, beamed an unmissable look of I told thee so. Behind the engine ten carriages bumped along and, glory be, some of them even had a roof! The iconographers’ flashes popped and, very gently, Iron Girder moved along the track and stopped beside the platform. Moist waited until the applause faded away and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, you may safely climb aboard. There will be refreshments, but first may I invite you to inspect the carriages. ” Now Moist needed to be everywhere at once. Anything to do with steam and locomotives was news and news could be good news or news could be bad news, or occasionally news could be malicious news. Dick just loved talking about Iron Girder and everything else to do with locomotion, but he was a straightforward man and the press of the Sto Plains could eat up for lunch a straightforward man if he wasn’t careful. Moist, on the other hand, in the vicinity of the press, was as straightforward as a sackful of kaleidoscopes. While the chattering was going on, he did his best to hover around Dick Simnel like a wet nurse. The Ankh-Morpork Times wasn’t bad, and the Tanty Bugle was mostly interested in ’orrible murder and the more salacious aspects of the human condition, but Moist’s heart sank as he realized that Dick, temporarily off the reins, was now talking to Hardwick of the Pseudopolis Daily Press , who was adept at getting the wrong end of the stick very much on purpose and then hitting people over the head with it. And Pseudopolis disliked Ankh-Morpork with a sullen and jealous vengeance. As Moist executed the world’s fastest nonchalant walk, he heard Hardwick saying, “What do you say, Mister Simnel, to people who are upset because the noise and the smoke will cause their horses to bolt and their cows and sheep to miscarry?” “I don’t rightly know,” said Simnel.

“Never had a problem here on the Plains. When I were doing me tests the horses in the next field would try to outpace Iron Girder, racing her, as it were, and I reckoned they thought it was fun!” But Hardwick wasn’t to be thrown off. “You must admit, Mister Simnel, that the train is inherently dangerous? Some people have said that your face melts if you reach speeds greater than thirty miles an hour!” It seemed to Moist that everyone else who had been chattering away in the vicinity went silent to listen as one person, and he knew that if he intervened at this point things would get worse, and so all he could do was hold his breath, just like everybody else, to see what the solemn country boy would say. “Well now, Mister ’ardwick,” said Simnel, sticking his thumbs into his belt as he always did when broaching long sentences. “I think many things are inherently dangerous: such as wizards and trees. Dangerous things, trees, they could fall down and drop straight on your ’ead without you knowing it. And boats are dangerous an’ all, and other people might be dangerous and you, Mister ’ardwick, you’ve been talking to me for five minutes now, ’oping that a country lad like me might be tempted into saying summat I shouldn’t. “So I’ll tell you this: Iron Girder is my machine, I made her, every single bit of her. I tested her and every time I find a way to make her better and safer, I do it. But, oh aye, you , Mister ’ardwick, you might be dangerous! Power is dangerous, all power, yours included, Mister ’ardwick, and the difference is that the power of Iron Girder is controllable, whereas you can write whatever you damn well like. Do you think I don’t read? I’ve read the rubbish you spout in your paper and, Mister ’ardwick, a lot of what you write is flamin’ gristle, Mister ’ardwick, total stinking made-up gristle, meant to frighten people who don’t know owt about steam and power and the cosines and the quaderatics and tangents and even the sliding rule … but I hope you enjoy your journey anyway, Mister ’ardwick. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get in t’cab. Oh, and I’ve had Iron Girder up to more than thirty mile an hour and all I got were sunburn. Good day to you, Mister ’ardwick. Enjoy your ride. ” And then, reddening as he registered the hush all around him, Simnel said, “Apologies to all the ladies here for my straight language. I do beg your pardon. ” “No apologies necessary, Mister Simnel,” called out Sacharissa Cripslock, reporter for the Times. “I believe I speak for all the ladies present when I say that we appreciate your candor. ” And since Sacharissa was not only respectable in the same way that other people are religious, but was also invariably armed with highly sharpened pencils, the rest of the crowd suddenly found that they too had the greatest admiration for Mr. Simnel and his plain talking. On board, there were many marvels to show off, including the lavish lavatories, apparently another brainchild of Effie, which came as a surprise even to Moist. He wondered what the press would make of Effie’s gift to railway travel. Sometimes the art editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times could be quite creative. *35 “This is as good as those they have in the poshest hotels,” Moist said privately to Sir Harry, who emerged from the cubicle flushed with pride. Harry beamed. “You should look in the ladies, Mister Lipwig! Scent, cushions, and real cut flowers. It’s like a boudoir in there!” “I suppose the, er, waste can be dropped straight down onto the tracks, eh, Harry?” Harry looked shocked. “Oh, some people would do that, but not Harry King! Where there’s muck there’s money, lad, but don’t tell the Duchess. There’s a big cistern under one of the carriages. Waste not, want not …” Questions were coming thick and fast from all sides. For those people who hadn’t already taken a ride behind Iron Girder in Harry King’s compound, the matter of railway etiquette loomed: could you stick your head out of the window? Could you bring your pet swamp dragon if it sat on your knee? Could you go and talk to the driver? On this occasion, Moist was pleased to say yes; the editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times being selected for this accolade. The smile Mr. de Worde gave as he stepped from the platform onto the footplate cemented this moment onto the front page, assuming this journey was a success—although you had to be aware that it would also make the front page if the engine blew up. Journalism was, well, after all, journalism. The train pulled away with a whistle and a cloud of smoke and everything was moving along nicely, especially when the trolley with the refreshments rattled through the carriages. Harry and All Jolson were in complete agreement about what made a good meal—namely, calories—and had not stinted. There was enough butter on the slumpie to regrease Iron Girder from top to bottom. The scenery flew past, to the guests’ well-oiled admiration and gasps of awe, until the train approached the first bridge. Moist held his breath as the train slowed down almost to a halt. There was a troll and he waved a big red flag and cheerfully announced *36 that he and his gang had worked on this bridge and were so pleased to see it being used and thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen. There was laughter, assisted most certainly with alcohol, but nevertheless there was laughter and it was genuine. Moist let the breath go. He supposed few of the passengers could remember the days when to see a troll was to be frightened (or, if you were a dwarf, want to kick his ankles in). Now here they were, building the railway, quite at home. Moist looked across the first class carriage to where Lord Vetinari was seated. He had openly commended Effie on her part in the planning and design, and given his usual urbane, anodyne answers to journalists looking for a quote, but Moist couldn’t help but notice that the Patrician was smiling, like a granddad at a newborn grandchild. Moist caught his eye and thought he saw his lordship wink with the speed of a cyclone. Moist nodded and that was that, but he hoped that it might be at least one sin forgiven. Three deaths in one lifetime would definitely be overegging it. But it was a nice day, the sun was shining, and as Iron Girder raced along the track a couple of horses in the field alongside tried to catch up with her. So much for Mr. Hardwick, and poo to him again because Iron Girder chugged her way down through gentle slopes to the township of Upunder, where they stopped to allow the passengers to enjoy the very best of brassica hospitality. After that it was a short run down to Ankh-Morpork itself, which was beckoning with long smoky fingers. They crossed the new iron bridge over the Ankh and wheezed on to Harry King’s compound, where a brass band was playing the national anthem, “We Can Rule You Wholesale,” to the cheers of the waiting crowd. At the banquet that evening the rail travelers were joined by other Ankh-Morporkian and Sto Plains dignitaries. And in the peroration of his address Sir Harry announced that the next city to receive the magnificent railway would be Quirm, it was hoped very shortly. In the thunder of applause, Harry toasted the Quirmian ambassador, Monsieur Cravat, and this was followed by more toasts, including one to Iron Girder herself. Lord Vetinari opined that it had been a very helpful day; and the unknown quantity of sphincters that had been tightened once again relaxed somewhat. When the party broke up, some of the guests were walking sideways or hardly at all. Dick, seeing a familiar face swim into his happy world of colored lights, said, “Ee, that were champion, Mister Lipwig! All those tiny places in the distance all along t’track … I were thinking that the railway could be like a tree: you know, one big trunk and then all branches … You’d make ’em cheap and small but I reckon people’d like ’em … Make folks’ lives easier if they could get a train from anywhere— ” Moist, resolutely ignoring the beckoning possibilities, cut him short. “Steady on, Dick. First we have to get to Quirm.

” And then drive that express train route to Uberwald, he added to himself … His lordship was so very keen on international relations. Later that night, Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs proceeded in a policeman-like fashion around the railway compound. After all, they bore the Majesty of the Force and therefore had a right to be absolutely anywhere they liked, looking at anything they wanted to. And as their boots swung in unison, Fred Colon said, “I hear they’re taking the railway all the way to Quirm. My old woman’s always going on at me about us taking a holiday down there. You’ll know about that, Nobby, now you’re practically married and got responsibilities. But you know me, I’m allergic to all that avec, and I hear you can’t get a good pint there for love nor money. ” “Actually,” said Nobby, “it ain’t all that bad. When I was working the rota last week on the goods yard there were a load of cheeses that got broken open by accident, as it were. Of course, they couldn’t be sent back and it’s amazing what Shine of the Rainbow can do with cheese. It’s good stuff, especially with snails. ” Nobby realized he was talking treason and so hurriedly added, “Their beer is still like piss, though. ” Fred Colon nodded. All was what it should be. He glanced back at his friend and said, “If the railway works properly, things are going to be quite different. I hear telling the train’ll be going very fast and that means if a bloke does a robbery and then goes and catches the train, he could be away on his toes long before we could ever catch up with him. Maybe the railway will need policemen. You never know! It’s like old Stoneface said, Wherever you get people, you’ll get crime and then you’ll get policemen. ” Nobby Nobbs considered this information like a goat chewing the cud, and said, “Well, you go and tell old Vimesy that you want to be the first railway policeman, eh? I’d love to see his face!” * Billy Slick surveyed the very large person at the front of the queue and sighed. “Look,” he said, “you can’t all be train drivers. We’ve got lots of train drivers right now and it takes time to work your way up to being a driver. Ain’t there anything else you can do?” “Well,” said the crestfallen lad in front of him, “my mum says I’ll make a very good cook one day. ” Billy smiled and said, “Might have something for you then, we need cooks. ” He pointed out another recruiting table a bit further along and said, “Get yourself over to Mabel. She’s looking for catering staff and that sorta thing. ” The young man’s face lit up with excitement and he hurried off to a future which almost certainly included unsociable hours and hard labor in cramped conditions but, most importantly, unlimited free rides on the wonder of the age. “I’m a painter, mister,” said the next man in Billy’s line. “Excellent! Sure you don’t fancy being a train driver?” “No, not really. I’ve always been a good painter and I expect the locomotives need painting. ” “Great!” said Billy. “You’re hired. Next!” When Billy looked up from his clipboard he found the craggy figure of a young troll looming over him. “Man said der’s a job wiv a shovel and tons of coal. Could do dat,” the troll said, adding a hopeful “Please?” “A stoker?” Billy guessed. “Blimey, you’re a bit big for the footplate, but we could use you around the place and no mistake. Put your mark here. ” The table shook as the troll’s thumb hit the form and cracked his clipboard. “Good man—I mean, troll,” Billy said. “Nuffin’ to worry about. Get dat all der time. ” The troll rumbled away in the direction of the coal store and his place in front of Billy was taken by a smartly dressed young lady with an air of authority. “Sir, I think the railway is going to need a translator. I know every language and dialect on the Disc. ” Her voice was firm but there was a glint of excitement in her eyes as she looked at Iron Girder and the other engines in the compound and Billy knew she was hooked. He also knew that “translator” was not on his list of vacancies and sent her off to Sir Harry’s office, while he returned to his search for shunters, tappers, and other workers. And so the line moved on again. It seemed everybody wanted to be part of the railway. It felt to Moist, bumping in the saddle as the golem horse bore him back toward Ankh-Morpork, that he had been talking for years with greedy landowners who were asking for enormous rents even if it was achingly obvious that the railway would benefit the whole area, and this time, to reach Quirm, there was going to be more than eight times the length of route to cover. And when he wasn’t talking to landowners, he was talking again to the surveyors, who were not greedy but were definitely horribly precise. They rejected proposed routes as too steep, too waterlogged, crumbling, or occasionally flooded and, in one case, full of zombies. Acceptable routes might just as well have been drawn by a snake snaking around the landscape from suitable ground to suitable ground. And everybody wanted the railway close, oh yes please, but not so close that they could hear it or smell it. And that was the Sto Plains in a nutshell, or, if you like, a cabbage bucket. Everybody everywhere wanted the benefits of steam but not the drawbacks. And no city on the Plains wanted the Big Wahoonie to get more than its fair share. It took the diplomatic genius of the Patrician to set the record straight, reminding them that although the railway was being built initially in Ankh-Morpork, if other cities and towns wanted to partake of its usefulness, well, yes, in a sense it would be theirs because what goes down on the up line must go up on the down line. Politics? Vetinari loved it. This was the ocean in which he swam. But assuredly you never crowed, just showed the world the tired visage of a conscientious civil servant, doing things cheaply and with the minimum of fuss. He had long ago perfected the art of giving way with a smile when engaged in complex negotiations, but Lord Vetinari’s smile was that of a man who knows that his opponents have yet to find, metaphorically speaking, and despite their cleverness, that their underpants are now down around their ankles and their backside on show for all to see. Ankh-Morpork to Sto Lat was becoming a regular journey, and it was working now. Moist had written the slogan “ You don’t have to live in Ankh-Morpork to work in Ankh-Morpork ” and properties in Sto Lat were becoming quite sought after. The idea of a little place in the country away from the big city, but with acceptable communications to Ankh-Morpork, suddenly looked very inviting. The hours of travel on the golem horse were proving altogether conducive to creative thought. His mind was filling up with the world of locomotive possibilities at the speed of a hamster really at odds with its treadmill. Another synapse in Moist’s head flashed; the trains were just the start! The railway now, he knew, was something in the ether, floating over the whole world. An idée fixe, if he would excuse his own Quirmian. Nevertheless, the engines remained important. Dick Simnel’s workshops at Swine Town had been turning out many marvels, carefully placed on wagons behind the never-tiring Iron Girder. She now shared the big shed with two newcomers that Simnel had called the Flyers, which made the regular run to Sto Lat and back, while Iron Girder herself had gone back to giving rides around the Ankh-Morpork compound, extended with a short loop along the river to show off the new bridge. The small but growing band of patient train spotters had written down a number two in their little books, then a number three. Within minutes of his arriving back in Ankh-Morpork, Moist was borne off by an ebullient Harry to see the latest development. Dodging sparks, they arrived at the doorway of the monstrous engine shed guarded by one of Harry’s heavies, who glared even at his employer. He looked human, or at least humanoid, and Harry introduced him merely as “Trouble.

” Trouble, glaring at Moist, moved away from the door so that Moist and Sir Harry could go inside. Moist could feel Trouble’s glare on the back of his neck as he walked through, and asked, “Harry, does Trouble have an official Watch record?” Harry King stared for a moment at Moist and said, “Of course he’s got a Watch record! He’s a security guard ! And I need him. People have been hanging around, trying to break in, especially at night, and the official security—the Watch, the golems, and guard dogs—generates a whole lot of paperwork whereas Trouble deals with trouble. Don’t trouble Trouble and Trouble won’t trouble you, as my granny always said. ” Harry chuckled and added, “Don’t you worry, Mister Lipwig, I’ve expressly told him not to kill you … today. ” Moist took this under advisement and turned for a last brief look at Trouble, who made up a new scowl just for him, a reminder that there were oh so many painful things you could do to a person without actually killing them. Harry nodded to the giant, who began to pull at a large tarpaulin in the middle of the floor—and clearly when Trouble pulled something, it definitely remained pulled—to reveal an engine much larger than Iron Girder or any of Simnel’s creations Moist had so far seen. Harry slapped Moist on the back and said, “Well now, Mister Lipwig, while you’ve been wining and dining with the nobs and diddling them out of their fortunes, I, and of course Mister Simnel, have been very busy boys, oh yes indeedy! The lad is up finishing off in the drawing office right now, but this new engine is the bee’s knees, I don’t mind telling you. ” “It’s not exactly fun, what I’ve been doing—” began Moist indignantly, but Harry cut in. “Yes, I know, we’re all doing our bit toward Vetinari’s dash for Quirm, although personally I don’t have much time for the lobsters; but I can see it’s showing the flag of Ankh-Morpork and all that, and of course, if we can get really fresh fish and seafood into the city, then we’ll be on the hog’s back or, as they’d say, ‘the snail’s shell. ’ And Dick says this new baby”—he slapped the gleaming sides of the new engine as though it were a prize racehorse—“will haul more freight and get there more quickly than any of the others!” Moist thought about this and said, “You know what, I bet you that as soon as our boy Simnel finishes this new Flyer he’ll make sure that Iron Girder goes just that little bit faster. Harry, he’s not going to let her be eclipsed even if it means constant tinkering until she’s up to scratch. There’s so many workers on the job these days, he spends most of his time on her in any case. She’s the prototype of all of them, and he keeps changing the prototype. ” “And he wants to walk out with our Emily! Well, he’s a smart lad and she’ll always know where he is. ” The thought flitted across Moist’s mind: I wonder what Iron Girder thinks about that. And even as he dismissed the ridiculous notion he fancied he could hear a slight hiss. Harry was still admiring the latest locomotive. “I reckon the lobsters will be like chiens with deux tails to be the first real foreigners to have the famous railway. And our Emily tells me that the Quirmian for ‘railway’ means ‘card game’ so that would be right up your ruelle , yes? Make sure you keep an ace up your manche , Mister Lipwig, okay?” “ Manche? ” “Effie is learning me to talk lobster, she thinks it’s a lovely and romantic language. ” Moist was moved to point out that he had hardly seen his own wife in the last month and had completed over fifty complex negotiations just to get to the border with Quirm. “Capital, so you’ve really got your eye in now, yes? Anyway, Quirm ain’t so far away and you’ll enjoy the sunshine when you get there. And I tell you what! Before you go you can have a day off in lieu! And I don’t say that to many people. ” Moist cleared his throat. “Actually, er, Harry, you don’t in fact employ me. The city does. ” “Does that mean I can’t sack you?” “I’m afraid so, Harry. ” Harry snorted with laughter. “I hate having people around I can’t sack. It’s unnatural. ” It had been a long day after some long weeks and even longer months and that evening Moist was grateful to step into his own house, looking forward to his big four-poster bed which had a mattress that wasn’t stuffed with straw, and pillows—actual pillows! Very few of the hostelries that Moist had stayed at during his travels considered pillows necessary or useful. Right now, metaphorically singing, he let himself in before Crossly could get there, and went not into the main part of the house but into the little corridor that led to Adora Belle’s study, where his beloved was talking to Of the Twilight the Darkness. The clacks was an equal opportunities employer, especially when it came to people who could swarm their way up the skeletal ribs of a clacks tower and once at the top sit down in a little chair and code like a demon, without actually being one, despite their appearance. Adora Belle was going through clacks reports with a suspicious eye while the goblin crouched like a nightmare on the end of her desk. She waved her fingers to indicate that she couldn’t afford to let go her concentration, then rolled up a script, handed it to the goblin, and snapped, “Get that out now, please, to tower ninety-seven. Someone there isn’t coding accurately. Might be a trainee. I want to know, okay?” The goblin snatched the scroll in a claw, sprang off the desk like a frog, headed for a little door near the floor, and disappeared through it. Moist could hear rattling all the way up the wall as the goblin clambered up the paneling and scuttled to the private clacks tower on the roof. He shuddered, but before he could say anything Adora Belle looked up and said, “Look, he’s punctual, fast, reliable, and codes more accurately even than me and all he wants from us is to be allowed to live with his family on the roof. Now don’t you give me all that again about being traumatized by seeing the picture of a grinning goblin in that children’s book when you were little, okay? Get over it, Moist. The goblins are the best thing that has happened to the clacks since, well, you know—us! They love running it and, what’s more, with them around the place we don’t have those nasty rat and mouse infestations that we used to have. ” Adora Belle stood up, walked around the desk to Moist and gave him a big kiss, and said, “How was your latest marathon, mister? I got reports of your progress throughout, of course, as you may imagine. ” Moist took a step back. “Reports? How?” Adora Belle laughed. “What is a clacks tower but an enormous watchtower? And every clacksman has a very expensive pair of Herr Fleiss’s binoculars, made using the very best in Uberwald technology. There are lots of towers, so I made certain they kept a friendly eye on you—well, a lot of friendly eyes on you. After all, every clacksman knows your face and even the top of your head, and I thought it was my duty as a wife …” “What, spying on your husband! Supposing I was messing about with other women?” “That’s all right, I know you weren’t and if you had been, I’d have had you killed—no offense meant—but you didn’t and so I didn’t and so everything is all right, yes? Missus Crossly is doing a wonderful beef and oyster pie. See? Aren’t you glad I knew exactly when you were coming home?” Moist smiled, and then the smile broadened as he realized what it was he had been told, and he added thoughtfully, “Are you telling me, my love, that you could spot and follow anybody ?” “Oh yes, probably, if they walk around a lot. The lads and lasses often peek when they have some downtime. They just do it, there’s no harm in it. The other day when you were heading home I was at the Grand Trunk office and was privileged to get a report of you bobbing up and down on your golem horse … very fetching, they said.

” Adora Belle stared at her husband and added, “Do you know that when you’ve found out something amazingly interesting and useful your eyes light up like a Hogswatch decoration? So stop glittering right now and go and smarten yourself up before we sit down to a proper dinner. ” It was a rule of Moist and Adora Belle’s household that the evening meal, if at all possible, was sacrosanct. No eating at their desks, no rush, but candles, and silverware, as if it were always a special occasion. And a special occasion it was: the only time they could sit down face-to-face and just, well, be at least moderately married to each other. However, Adora Belle couldn’t conceal her dismay about losing her husband again for yet another prolonged absence in a foreign country. “Quirm isn’t that far away,” Moist soothed. “And once I get the local lads on side it won’t be too bad. ” Adora Belle cleared her throat. “Garçons. If they’re lobsters, your lads will be known as garçons. ” “What?” “Garçons. It’s Quirmian, but don’t worry, most of them speak Morporkian. And you know why? Because none of us can be bothered to learn Quirmian. ” “Well, no matter what they’re called. Once the railway line’s built I’ll probably be able to come home more often. ” He paused to take another mouthful of pie. “By the way, Harry’s just had a clacks from the King of Lancre asking if we could eventually run a line all the way to his kingdom so that, and I quote, ‘Lancre can take its rightful place on the world stage. ’ ” “Don’t underestimate that place,” said Adora Belle. “They’ve got witches up there. They fly up to the clacks towers and scrounge coffee off the lads—well, at least one of them does, especially when the lads are young and the goblins aren’t on shift. And then there are all the dwarf mines up at Copperhead. I’m sure they could find a use for the railway. ” Moist made a face. “The lads say no way. It’s too steep, and anyway, the Lancre bridge wouldn’t take the weight of the engine. Sorry. But I suppose we could tell his majesty that we’ll send surveyors to take a look once the Quirm line’s complete. ” Moist put down his fork. “But here we are, and it looks like for the first time in ages we have an evening free. What shall we do? Perhaps it might be a good idea to give the staff the rest of the evening off …” And Adora Belle replied with a smile, “Yes … What shall we do?” “It’s simply mechanical,” said Ponder Stibbons over tea in the Uncommon Room at Unseen University. “It just looks magical. ” “Shouldn’t be allowed, then,” said the Senior Wrangler, spearing a whole pie with his fork. “Looking magical is our business. ” “Well,” said Mustrum Ridcully, pointedly ignoring him, “you can’t stand in the way of progress, so why don’t you hitch a ride on it? Does anyone else want a train ride? It gets so stuffy in here and I’m sure we don’t want people thinking of us as being stick-in-the-muds. ” “But we are stick-in-the-muds,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “I treasure the fact. ” “Nevertheless, it’s time we looked the railway in the face. Mister Stibbons will lead the way. ” The wizards left the University in a small fleet of coaches which caused quite a stir when they appeared at the Ankh-Morpork terminus. Stibbons, knowing his fellow wizards, had made arrangements beforehand and a special train had been laid on for the occasion, with particularly well-cushioned seats. “You will of course travel first class, gentlemen,” said the stationmaster, who had been well primed by Stibbons. “But if you wish, some of you might be able to ride on the footplate. ” He hesitated and said, “Although I’m not sure those robes would be safe. ” The Archchancellor burst out laughing. “Young man, a wizard’s robe is impervious to fire. Good grief, if they weren’t we’d be burned alive every day before elevenses!” Stibbons, who had already had several rides with Iron Girder over the previous weeks, followed by some intense conversations with Dick Simnel, had got the hang of the business and took some pleasure in seeing the best minds in the University coming to terms with their first railway ride. It was a short journey to Upunder and back, including a dinner at the halfway mark which lasted longer than the train ride itself. On the homeward stretch, the Chair of Indefinite Studies was allowed to operate the emergency brake to the envy of the rest of the wizards, and there was a certain amount of waving of flags, blowing of whistles, and slamming of doors at each stop for the wizards to try their hands at. Iron Girder was in full steam and the fireproof wizards taking their turn on the footplate stared into the firebox and approved. *37 Replete and tired on their way back to Ankh-Morpork, they considered this new form of locomotion as a phenomenon. The Senior Wrangler thought about objecting again, but was too full. “Amazing, people waving at you as you go past,” said Ridcully. “I’ve never seen that before. Who’d have thought it? Machinery making people smile. What are you writing down, Mister Stibbons?” Blushing, Stibbons said, “I like to spot an occasional train, you know … I’m just interested in them … It’s like watching the future go past. ” The Archchancellor smiled and said, “Then perhaps we should be the ones who are minding the doors, not to mention the gap, because the future is coming down the track fast. And who knows what is going to arrive next. ” It was a wonderful sunny day. Skylarks sang in the deep blue sky. It was a great day to be alive. Moist, needing a change of air, walked away from the compound with a spring in his step, a little way along the railway track. And right there on this perfect day … yes, there out of sight of anyone excepting, of course, the ambling Moist himself, on the rail that Iron Girder would have to travel along as soon as she came around the bend onto the little incline leading to the station, were two small … creatures. Rabbits, his common sense tried to tell him, plenty of them around here … even the compound was riddled with them. And, for a moment, the whole world stopped right in his face, leaving him spinning slowly in a little world of his own, looking out on to the real one. There were the main engine sheds, over there was the crowd queueing for their rides, and there on the track was the future of the railway. It was one perfect moment where time stretched out, and Moist the only witness to this terrible tableau. It was like a strange game of high-speed chess unfolding before his eyes. And then, suddenly, his legs took off from under him and he ran and ran, too breathless to shout, toward the two children who had hunkered down with their ears pressed against the rails, giggling because the vibrations were at times funny and bouncy and loud and … RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW! And … gone … Moist woke up, which could be interpreted as a good thing. First time round, Iron Girder was over him and he was dead, but his next careful waking was in a white room that smelled of camphorwood and other disinfectants, sharp and reassuring smells: tangible proof that he had a nose at least, because he couldn’t really feel anything else. After a while subtle little noises grew into louder ones, coming closer and forming words, loudly reassuring and somewhat hearty words that crystallized into an individual in a white coat saying, “Well, madam, he keeps going up and down, but with fewer downs and a welcoming parade of ups. He’s getting more stable all the time and nothing’s broken, although he’s ruined a decent pair of boots—and, may I say, madam, that even here in the hospital there are already people organizing a whip-round to replace them. ” Moist made a mighty heave, fought his way out of unconsciousness, and arrived back in the here and now—a place where everything hurt. On the plus side, Adora Belle was looking at him, while looming behind her, in a white coat, was a large and expansive man of a sort that had played many rough competitive games when he was younger and wished he could do so now, if only the belly were smaller and the limbs willing.

Moist’s wife was regarding her husband carefully, as if checking that all the bits were there in their rightful places, at which point the doctor grabbed his hand and boomed, “Somebody up there must be watching over you, Mister Lipwig. How do you feel? As your physician I must tell you that jumping in front of railway trains is not recommended by medical practitioners, but acts of mindlessly idiotic bravery most certainly are, and can be applauded!” Dr. Lawn looked carefully down at Moist and said, “You don’t know what you did, do you, Mister Lipwig? Just you come along and we’ll see if you can walk. ” Moist could walk and wished he couldn’t. The whole of him felt as if it had been smacked very hard, but the nurses helped him upright and led him carefully to the ward next door, which contained, as it turned out, among the noise, two families; and there were small children and parents weeping. Bits of the past slammed into place in Moist’s memory and got bigger and more horrible as once again he felt the breath of the engine as it sailed over the top of him, a toddler under each arm. No, it couldn’t have happened like that—could it? But clamoring voices were telling him otherwise, with women trying to kiss him and holding up their offspring to do likewise, their husbands at the same time trying to shake his hand. Bafflement filled him up like smoke and now in front of him Adora Belle was looking at him with a funny little smile, such as only husbands know of. When they were at last able to disembogue themselves of the crowd of happy parents and somewhat sticky children, Adora Belle still had her faint smile. “Well now, my dear, didn’t you once say that a life without danger is a life not worth living?” Moist patted her hand and said, “Well, Spike, I married you, didn’t I?” “You couldn’t resist it, could you? It’s like a drug. You’re not happy unless someone is trying to kill you, or you’re in the center of some other kind of drama, out of which, of course, the famous Moist von Lipwig will jump to safety at the very last moment. Is it a disease? Some kind of syndrome?” Moist put on his meek face as only husbands and puppies can do and said, “Would you like me to stop? I will if you say so. ” There was silence until Adora Belle said, “You bastard, you know I can’t do that. If you stopped all of that you wouldn’t be Moist von Lipwig!” He opened his mouth to protest just as the door opened and in came the press: William de Worde, editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times , followed by a porter and the ubiquitous Otto Chriek, the iconographer. And, because Moist would never stop being Moist von Lipwig until he died, he smiled for the iconograph. He reminded himself that this was only the start. All the rest would be along soon … but no matter, he had danced this fandango many times before, and so he maintained his best boy scout face and smiled at Mr. de Worde, who started off by saying, “It appears that you are a hero again , Mister Lipwig. The driver and the stoker say that you ran faster than they could brake the train, picked up the children, and jumped to safety just in time. Safety, at that precise moment, being under your Iron Girder. It was a miracle that you were there, wasn’t it?” And so the dance began. “Not at all. We make a point of keeping an eye on the visitors at all times, of course. The children were outside the compound and, strictly speaking, the responsibility of their parents, but we’ll be putting up barriers along that stretch of the line immediately. You have to understand, people are flocking here. They seem to be irresistibly drawn by the novelty of live steam and speed. ” “And a very dangerous novelty, would you not say, Mister Lipwig?” “Well now, Mister de Worde, everything old was once new and until explored was unfamiliar and dangerous, and then, as sure as night follows day they become just part of the scenery. Believe me, sir, that’ll happen here with the railway, too. ” Moist watched the journalist painstakingly taking down his words and was ready when the man said, “I’ve heard from elderly people all across the Sto Plains who’re frightened of the noise and speed. And the trains leave smoke and cinders … Surely that’s dangerous for our fine city?” Moist flashed his grin once more, thinking, here we go again. “This place you choose to call ‘our fine city’ is almost all smoke and cinders, and a lot else besides. The trials of Iron Girder have impressed everybody with her ability to carry heavy loads safely and at speed. Let’s not forget that speed is essential when dealing with certain goods: your newspaper for one—no one wants to get their news late—and there’s my Post Office parcels for another. We can get your first printing on the breakfast tables at Sto Lat. And as for scaring the elderly, well, one old lady recently told me that we should have waited until all the old people were dead before starting up with the railway, and I think you’d agree that that might be a very long time!” Moist saw the journalist’s face break into a smile, and knew he had a result. He continued, “People often use the excuse that old people won’t understand something when, in fact, they simply don’t want it or understand it themselves. Actually, old people can be quite gung ho about risk, and very proud of it. ” And here, for dramatic effect, he looked serious. “Regrettably, prototype work cannot provide guaranteed safety; it’s hard to make things safe until you know they’re dangerous. Do you understand? I’m absolutely certain that one day the train will save many, many lives. In fact, I guarantee it. ” * As soon as the excited press had got its quotes and pictures of the hero of the hour, and Moist had submitted to a final check by Dr. Lawn, he said good-bye to Adora Belle and caught a cab to the compound. Once there, he barged into Harry King’s office without even knocking. “There should have been someone else on duty, Harry!” he shouted, banging a fist on the desk. “If you have any sense, you’ll put proper guards around the track close to the compound to keep an eye on people when the trains are running! I pulled your chestnuts out of the fire this time!” he screamed. “But I’ll tell you this, Harry. A couple of dead toddlers in a front-page story would’ve shut the railway down before we’ve hardly got started! Vetinari would do it, believe me. You know his distrust of mechanisms, and I doubt he’d lose much in the way of popularity if he told Mister Simnel to put his toys back in the box. It’d be a great shame, but people mustn’t die just because of a bloody engine!” Moist stopped. He was panting and out of breath, and Sir Harry King, whose expression had hardly changed during the diatribe, now had a face of flaming red. In the silence Moist thought he heard a curious sizzle, like the sound made by Iron Girder when she was relaxing after a heavy day on the straight and curves. You could perhaps call it a kind of metal purring, but it had now gone, leaving doubts that it had ever been there. Harry looked Moist up and down and said gravely, “They said you flew under the train, holding two little kiddies in your arms. Did you?” “You know, I have absolutely no idea. I did see the kids with their heads on the tracks, listening to the funny noises on the rails, and I distinctly remember myself saying Oh bugger! Then something whacked me on the side of the head and I don’t remember a thing until I woke up in the Lady Sybil, on a bed, and that’s the truth. I am a liar for the purposes of amusement, publicity, trivial one-upmanship, personal profit, and the gaiety of nations, but I’m not lying to you now. ” There was silence, broken when Harry said hoarsely, “You know I’m a granddad, don’t you? A little boy and a little girl, courtesy of my eldest, and I don’t often shiver, my friend, but I’m shivering now. ” Harry stood up, with eyes running tears, and said, “You’re the man for this, Mister Lipwig, so you tell me what I should do, please. ” Moist hadn’t expected this, but he managed to catch the metaphorical ball. “Clean up your act, Harry,” he said.

“Engineers and suchlike know all about hot steel, high speeds, and wheels spinning fast, right! For most people, exhilarating speed is a runaway horse. Many people get hurt in this city every year when dear old Dobbin the dray horse suddenly feels his oats and heads for pastures new down the middle of the road. “My advice is to shut down the Iron Girder rides for a week, for ‘maintenance. ’ Tidy up, keep all the sharp stuff out of the way, stick up some barriers, and have a few lads wandering around in uniform looking like they mean business. You know the kind of thing. Make a show of being safe. ” And now Moist heard the little sizzle again, and it seemed to sizzle in his soul, filling him with ideas, and in the theater of his head he sat up in the gods, watching the stage of his imagination, agog to see what he came up with next. “It’s not just around the compound that there could be incidents like this, Harry—we need to keep an eye on the whole line. Someone to spot if there are kids on the track, or cows, or a train going the wrong way. ” He saw Harry blanch at the thought of all the things that could go wrong, but he was in full flow now. “They’ll need a good view—some kind of watchtower would do the trick, with a clacks attached to signal to the drivers … Ask Dick—that brain of his is coming up with new designs faster than his hand can get them down on paper. “And here’s a tip: do something about those greasy old cattle wagons you’re running behind Iron Girder. They’re okay for a circus ride, maybe, but all of your rolling stock should be as good as the special ones we’re using on the Sto Lat line. ” Sizzle. “Yes! More posh carriages for the nobs, and …” Here Moist saw the money smile and continued, “Here’s a thought, for those who aren’t quite nobs but aspire to be like them, well, why not give them carriages that are not quite so plush, but visibly better than the very cheapest coaches which are, perhaps, open to the weather. That would give them something else to yearn for, and you’ll have made yet another money pump. ” Moist now found himself caught in the glare of one of Harry King’s most dangerous expressions. “Mister Lipwig, damn me if you ain’t a most dangerous man, yes indeed! You’re inciting people to have ideas above their station, and that sort of thing makes people suspicious and anxious and, above all, very, very nervous. ” To Harry’s surprise, Moist almost sprang into the air, spinning. “Yes! Yes! That’s the way! Lord Vetinari’s way, too. He believes that people should strive to be better in every respect. I can see it now, Harry. Picture a young man taking his young lady on the train and hazarding an extra sixpence to go in the better-class seats. Well, he’s no end of a swell, and he’ll look around him and think, This suits me down to the ground and no mistake, I could do with more of this. “And when he goes back to work he’ll strive, yes, strive, to become a better, that’s to say, richer person to the benefit of both his employer and himself, and not, of course, neglecting to thank the owner of the railway, to wit, your good self, who allowed him to have ideas above his railway station. Everybody wins, nobody loses. Please, please, Harry, allow people to aspire. I mean who knows, they might have been in the wrong class all this time. Your railway, my friend, will allow them to dream, and once you have a dream you’ve got somewhere closer to a reality. ” Throughout all this Harry stared at Moist as if he’d just seen a giant tarantula, but he managed to say, “Mister Lipwig, a little while ago you were under a railway engine with fifty tons of rolling stock going past your ears and now you spring up like a jack-in-the-box, full of vim and vigor and schemes! What is it you’ve got? And how can I get some of it?” “I don’t know, Harry, it’s just me being normal. You just keep going, whatever happens, and you never stop. It works for me. And remember: clean up your act—our act—to make sure that the public don’t get caught up in the mechanisms. ” The sister state of Quirm comprised, like Ankh-Morpork, a major city; several theoretically autonomous satellites each vying with all the others for advancement; any number of squabbling townships, all bloated with self-importance; and a vast number of homesteads, parishes, farms, vineries, mines, hamlets, bends in the road that someone had named after their dog, and so on, and indeed, so on again. Around the edges of the Ankh-Morpork hegemony *38 it was quite possible these days for a small farmer on the hypothetical outskirts of all that could be called Ankh-Morpork to lean over his own hedge and chat with a Quirmian farmer who was most definitely in Quirm at the time, without in any way considering that this was a political matter. The conversation would generally be about the weather, the abundance or otherwise of water, and the uselessness of the government, never mind which kind, and then happily they would shake hands, or give a little nod, and one would go home to drink a pint of homemade beer after such a busy day, while the other would do likewise with a decent homemade wine. Occasionally the son of one farmer would go to the hedge and see the daughter of the other one, and vice versa and that was why, in a few—but very interesting—places along the boundary, there were people who spoke in both tongues. This sort of thing is something that governments really hate, which is a very good thing. Technically speaking, Quirm and Ankh-Morpork were bosom friends, after centuries of conflict mostly about things that turned out to be inessential, inconsequential, untrue, or downright lies. Yes, you used to need a passport to travel in either direction, but since Lord Vetinari had taken office nobody really looked at them anymore. Moist had been there many times in his younger days and in different guises and under different names and, on one very memorable occasion, a different sex. *39 Moist mused for a moment as that triumph came back to him. It had been one of the all-time great scams, and, although there had been a large number of other fruitful escapades, he had never dared try it again. The nuns would have got him for sure. But now, as the coach to Quirm finally reached the border, the only obstacle was a gate, theoretically locked and manned by a couple of officers, one on each side. However, such was the nature of interstate relations that they were quite often asleep or, if not sleeping, were happily cultivating their little gardens on either side of the border. Some might ask what was the point? Everybody smuggled and, after all, the smuggling went both ways, and so a pragmatic approach was floating in the zeitgeist. And today Moist had a list of people to see, oh yes, he always had a list. He knew that Quirm itself desperately needed the railway as it had lots of produce to sell or be left with heaps of stinking fish, and so Moist was expecting a happy week dealing with the lobsters, *40 but right now he was dealing with people far from the coast who considered their tiny patches of ground to be sacred. Yes, they wanted the railway, but if it went across their land they wouldn’t have any land left that wasn’t railway. Moist was assisted in his negotiations in Quirm by Acting Captain Haddock of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, presently seconded to the Quirmian force, who had learned the lingo, in an Ankh-Morpork kind of way. Acting Captain Haddock explained the dilemma created by Quirmian traditions of landownership over a pint of very weak beer. “It’s all to do with something they call le patrimony. It means that all the kids have to get something when mum and dad pass over. A big farm might have to be split into two or even three or more so everyone can get their share. Even the government knows this is stupid, but no one in Quirm takes any notice of what the government says. So it’s up to you, Mister Lipwig, to get them to understand, but that’s it, I’m afraid.

” Well, Moist tried, he really did, and after a frustrating fortnight haggling over every handkerchief-sized plot, he was ready to give up and head back to Ankh-Morpork. Harry wasn’t going to like this, he thought, and, worse still, neither was Vetinari, but he could probably talk his way out of it, possibly. His gloomy mood was lightened when he reached a small but prosperous estate belonging to the Marquis des Aix en Pains, a well-known wine grower. The Marquis was one of the last landowners on Moist’s list. He had married a girl from Ankh-Morpork and was apparently extremely keen to have his very fine wines conveyed to customers as soon as possible with a minimum of jolting, which had a deleterious effect on the wine. Currently the coach journey, littered with potholes, required the wines to lie down in a dark cool cellar to settle for months afterward. The Marquis had invited Moist for lunch, which turned out to be something he called fusion cuisine , with pâté devoid of avec, a main course of lobster and mash, followed by a most excellent spotted dick, a combination of dishes that you would expect to live long in the annals of gastronomic infamy but which wasn’t too bad, especially when consumed in conjunction with the remarkably good house wines. The Marquis was young and forward-looking and clearly taken with the idea of the railway, not only for the wine trade but also as a means of bringing people together. He winked at his wife as he said so, with the definite implication that getting people together was something very close to his heart; and he believed that the more people knew about one another, the better they got along. His views on Quirm’s curious and slightly bucolic attitude to the division of wealth after the death of the parents were of great interest to Moist. “Everyone wants to sell their wine and cheese and fish to Ankh-Morpork, zat is certain, but nobody wants to lose land. We all like our slice of Quirm: it’s real real estate, something you can pick up and crumble in your fingers, something zat you can fight for. It’s old-fashioned, I know, and of course its continued existence leaves the government exasperated, which, as a true son of Quirm, I consider perfectly acceptable. “However, for you, my friend, zis is difficult because we don’t sell our birthright unless, that is, the price is extremely ’igh. And, when the news gets out about the railway the price will be extremely ’igh: you will, as my wife says, ’ave to pay ‘ dans le nez. ’ I think, my friend, you will ’ave to find another route from here to Quirm City if you want to get ze job done before les poules auront des dents. ” He hesitated for a moment and said, “Come with me to ze library. I want to show you some maps. ” In a large and ornate room, filled with the heads of many stuffed animals—or at least probably stuffed—and a stench of old formaldehyde, Moist pored over a large map which the Marquis had pulled out of an old chest. Pointing to what seemed to be a rather empty part of the map, the Marquis said, “Most country ’ere is worthless land, maquis all the way, nothing to mine except ochre, and precious little of zat too. It’s more or less a wasteland, covered in scrub zat would tear your boots off and with nothing to induce people to be zere. Badlands, you might say, ’ome to rogues on the run, highwaymen, bandits, and occasionally smugglers, all of them extremely nasty and armed to ze teeth. Oh, the government makes a play of getting rid of them every so often, but that isn’t all. There are goblins and zey know nothing about land rights. ” “We’ve now come to terms with goblins in Ankh-Morpork,” said Moist quickly. “It’s a matter of finding something for them to do that they really like doing and are good at and, of course, after that it’s just a case of remembering their names and refraining from kicking them. They can be extremely helpful if unkicked, although not necessarily likeable. ” “I wish we could get on decent terms with zem,” said the Marquis wistfully, “but these, you must understand, are Quirm goblins, and therefore extremely argumentative and intractable and on top of it, often drunk. They brew their own wine, for ’eavens’ sake. ” He thought for a moment and then corrected himself, “Or, rather, a winelike substance. ” “That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?” said Moist. “Really? They brew ze wine from snails. From the fruit of the wall, as you call it in Ankh-Morpork. It makes zem extremely rowdy, but zey would probably be okay if it wasn’t for the bandits, who ’unt them for fun. ” “So do the bandits own the maquis?” said Moist. The Marquis hesitated. “No, it is indeed no-man’s-land. I suppose if we talk to lawyers, they will say it’s owned literally by ze state of Quirm in its entirety. ” “Well, sir, since it appears that the state of Quirm is gagging to have the railway, even if the landowners aren’t, and if you can assure me of the land rights issue, I’ll be very happy to do them a favor. ” The Marquis grimaced. “Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as zat. We are not difficult people, but the government drags its feet when it comes to cleaning out ze bandits, because, as you understand, bandits and governments ’ave so much in common that they might be interchangeable anywhere in the world … I see you smiling, Mister Lipwig. Is something amusing?” “Many bandits?” “A considerable amount. This whole area is rather spoiled by them—unpleasant bandits who would cheerfully commit murder if and when zey think zey can get away with it. I ’ave to tell you that if you are in a ’urry to clear the maquis of bandits, I’m afraid, Mister Ankh-Morpork, you might ’ave to do it yourself. And I see you are still smiling! Will you be so good as to share ze joke? The well-known so-called Ankh-Morpork sense of ’umor does not translate very well here, I’m afraid. ” “Don’t be,” said Moist. “When the humors were handed out, Ankh-Morpork got the one for joking and Quirm had to make do with their expertise in fine dining and lovemaking. ” He held a beat and said, “Would you fancy a trade?” The Marquise giggled into her wine, smiled at Moist, and winked, while her husband grinned and said solemnly, “I think, monsieur, we prefer the status quo. ” And Moist, who had almost but not totally embarrassed himself, said, “Sir, apart from the goblins, do any decent people live in those badlands?” The Marquis shook his head. “No, certainly not, they’re as dry as dust. ” Moist looked thoughtful for a while, then stood up, bowed to both of them, kissed the hand of the Marquise, and said, “Thank you so much for your hospitality and your help and information. I should get away now if I’m to make the overnight coach back to Ankh-Morpork, but I have a funny feeling that happier circumstances will soon prevail. In fact, I can feel them just floating in the air. ” Ankh-Morpork was full of dwarf bars, big and small, accommodating all comers. The gloom of the Dirty Rat was particularly popular with those who preferred a traditional style of establishment and a definite lack of umbrellas in their drinks. “Knocking down clacks towers. What good does that do us? My old granny lives under a clacks tower and the lads let her send clackses for nothing. ” In the shadows somebody said, “You shouldn’t allow her to do that. The clacks is for humans. ” And then the quarrel began. “You’ve got to admit the clacks is useful sometimes. It’d save a ship at sea, I heard. And anyway it helps you keep in touch with your friends. ” The voice from the dark corner said again, “Don’t touch the clacks towers, then. There are other ways. I’ve seen the locomotives. It should be easy enough to turn one over on the rails. ” “Oh yeah? And why d’you want to do that?” “It’ll show that us dwarfs are not to be trifled with and anyway, I’m hearing that dwarfs aren’t being allowed to work on the railway. ” “I hadn’t heard that. That’s discrimination. ” “No, that’s because silly buggers have been chopping up clacks towers, isn’t it? It’s what you get if you go around doing things like that. No wonder at all.

” “That’s as may be, but the railway employs lots of trolls and even goblins … I mean, goblins! Filth! We’re being pushed aside. The Low King has sold his soul to bloody Vetinari and the next thing you know they’ll have built a railway line to Uberwald and all our mines will be full of stinking goblins … unless we stand up for ourselves now!” “Yeah! Bloody goblins. All over the place!” The conversation was punctuated by the sound of much quaffing and the subsequent cleaning of the tables. “Not that a true dwarf would want to work on the railway, mind you,” said the soft voice that hadn’t yet identified itself. “No! You’re right. I’d never work on the railway. It’s an abomination! It should be stopped!” “They’re laying tracks to Quirm from Ankh-Morpork. It would make a statement if we got in the way,” the voice from the shadows continued. Someone thumped a hand on the bar and said, “We must show them that dwarfs are not going to be pushed around any longer!” “We could smash up those bloody water towers and steal the coal,” another suggested. “That wouldn’t hurt anyone but it would mean they’d have to walk. ” “That’s not big enough. They’d just rebuild and carry on, like they’ve done with the clacks. We’d need to do something really big. Something that would make people pay attention. ” There was the sound of people thinking who didn’t think very much. Somebody said, “You mean killing people?” “Well, you know, you have to make a stand. And later on, when people find out, we’ll be the heroes. ” And then the barman, who had been keeping an eye on the group, said pointedly, “It’s closing time, gentlemen, ain’t you got no holes to go to?” And shooed them out onto the street. Ardent walked confidently away. After all, there was another dwarf bar a few streets away and the poison could drip so gently. Amazing how simple people could be manipulated by the right voice at the right time. And after that they did it for themselves with vocabulary like “stands to reason” and “they’re up to something,” little caltrops on the road to interspecies misunderstanding. When Moist finally arrived back in Ankh-Morpork around breakfast time, he hurried to Harry King’s house. It was unusual to see Harry being, as it were, just Harry King, family man. He was even wearing carpet slippers. Effie fussed about with the servants for more coffee while Moist made his report to her husband. “Sir, we have a little problem down in Quirm. To put it bluntly, some unpleasant gentlemen are getting in the way of the success of our railway. ” Moist explained the land-rights situation to Harry and proposed that since the rolling acres of maquis didn’t belong to anybody, it belonged to everybody and he could put the railway line straight through. There was just the little matter of the bandits to be dealt with. The look on Harry’s face would have warmed the cockles of any heart, especially if it was the heart of a shark, and really Moist didn’t need to say much more, but did so anyway. “It would be very helpful, Harry, if I could go back there one night soon with some of your golems and possibly some of your … security men, your specialist technicians , as it were. The kind of gentlemen who are adept at resolving conflict. Of course, I’ll need to commandeer a coach. ” The expression on Harry’s face changed like a kaleidoscope until at last he said, “Do you mind if I come too?” And Effie shrieked, “Harry King! At your age you’re going to be doing nothing more than stopping home!” “Oh, come on, my love, the man said these are bandits. It’s my duty as an honest citizen. After all, I’m Harry King, the man who does business, and this , well, this is my business and I’m going to take care of it. ” “Harry, please! Remember your position in life!” “A man makes his own position in life, Duchess, and this is business and I’m going to sort it and it will be the last time, okay?” “Oh, all right … but you mind and take notice, Mister Lipwig. And Harry, you do what Mister Lipwig tells you, he’s a very sensible young man,” said Effie. “And there’s to be no alcohol and, Mister Lipwig, make certain he’s wrapped up nice and warm because of his bladder, er, thing, you know. He’s not as young as he thinks he is. ” And Harry roared. “Yes, Effie! But right now I reckon I’m ready for anything. I’ll get the word out to my lads and my golems, Mister Lipwig, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning. Seven o’clock sharp. ” At home, Adora Belle said, “It’s a harebrained idea, of course, otherwise you wouldn’t have had it, would you?” “Actually, my sweetness, the raid was Harry’s idea,” Moist lied. “I think he thinks of it as his last grand hurrah, but he really had to twist my arm, I promise you, or my name isn’t Moist Lipwig. You should have seen the look on his face!” “Yes, you are Moist von Lipwig and you are really looking forward to this, aren’t you? You have that look about you. ” “Not exactly,” said Moist. “But it’ll be a moonless night, and it might be instructive to see Harry and his chums having one of their little parties. Of course, you don’t know anything about this, okay?” Adora Belle’s face went delightfully blank. “This what? But just you remember, Moist, if it’s going to be a mêlée do try to come back with all your bits in their rightful place. ” The following morning, two large coaches were waiting outside Harry King’s house with a crew of Harry’s chums on board. Moist wondered how Harry could gather them together so quickly and then thought about all the things Harry used to do back in the bad old days that he now fondly remembered as being so good. Actually, it was no surprise that the man could assemble an army to settle a little dispute about who owned the streets. They were all on their best behavior now and almost all of them didn’t spit and there was no cursing, because the Duchess was looking out of the window, ready to wave them off. Before the coaches departed, Harry addressed his team. “It’s like this, lads: this isn’t exactly a killing job, unless they tries to kill you first. These ain’t our streets, but they’re bandits all the same. You could say we’re making the world better for decent people, like what we are, and we’re cleaning up the mess like we’ve always done. ” Moist looked at the faces of Harry’s associates. Some had gold teeth and some had no teeth, but all of them had the surreptitious look of gentlemen who mostly go abroad after dark. And if you looked with an experienced eye, bits of them bulged, indeed one of them was holding a toolbox and an eager expression, clearly a man who wasn’t for half measures. Harry had made it clear that there was to be no alcohol, at least until the homeward stage, and so it was a subdued journey through the day. By midafternoon they came to the edge of the maquis. The country that lay before them was clearly no place for coaches, with the road petering out into a vague track amid the scrub. Harry ordered the drivers to halt at a spot that offered some grazing and water for the horses, where the coaches would be screened from view, and sent his associates to scout the maquis ahead. Moist had never before traveled with such silent men; they seemed to absorb all noise and as they jumped down from the coaches with flannel feet they melted instantly into the landscape. Content to leave this part to the specialists, Harry and Moist settled back to wait. It was a black night, and the whole party had made its stealthy way to the edge of the bandits’ camp. They were now in the depths of the wretched wilderness of the Quirmian maquis, a nightmare of dense blackthorn that could strip the skin from your bone. It was a garden from hell, especially in the darkness. They could see the fitful flames of the cooking fires and hear the unmistakable sound of alcohol-assisted snoring. These outlaws ought to be ashamed, Moist thought, not one single lookout! With his associates strategically deployed around the perimeter, Harry made his way quietly into the center of the camp.

“Good morning, gentlemen! We are the Goblin Preservation Society and all of yous has got two minutes to get up and be out of here. Got it? Nice and smart, chums!” A bandit stumbled out of his tent and sneered, “We don’t care who you are, and you can shove all of that right up your jacksie, monsieur. ” And Harry said, “Good! We like shoving it anywhere! Go on, lads, but no goblins get hurt, okay?” Moist took a careful step backward and watched. Harry had stipulated that murdering people wasn’t really on the cards tonight, but most of the bandits were either lying on the ground or running away within a couple of minutes of Harry’s chums being unleashed. It was gang warfare, but one gang had no sense of strategy. Harry’s men were surgical and methodical and very, very professional, even somewhat somber. This was a job of work and they did it with care and precision. It was what you did, didn’t you, and they were flattering themselves that for once they were the good guys, an experience, Moist thought, that they seldom ever had. Harry took a look around the battleground to assure himself that nothing more than a little concussion and the occasional broken leg had been achieved and was satisfied on all points. “What do you plan to do with them?” Moist asked. “Deliver them to the local justice, like the honest citizens we are. I suppose that’ll be your Marquis. ” “Very good, but can I suggest we leave one or two behind, to make sure the rest of the bandit population get to hear what happens if they make honest citizens upset?” “Suppose so,” Harry grunted. “But I’ll get the lads to do a few further … excursions in the area first, see if we can’t mop up some more of ’em. Actions speak louder than words, Mister Lipwig. ” At the château later that night the Marquis emerged in his dressing gown to receive them, accompanied by two servants. “Monsieur Lipwig, mon ami , what an unexpected pleasure to see you again so soon. And with companions. ” Harry stepped forward before Moist could speak and said, “We’ve a parcel of miscreants here we’ve brought to you, my lord, since I reckoned you were the closest figure of authority in these parts. ” The Marquis cast a bright eye over the prisoners. “I see at least two appear to ’ave ’ ’ ARRY KING ’ stamped across the temples. Can it be I ’ave the ’onor to address Sir ’arry King in person? Don’t be surprised. My wife has told me much about ze King of ze Golden River, including his famous rings. You are most welcome, monsieur, and I ’ope we will be doing much business together. May I offer you some refreshment?” “ ’scuse me, sir, but what d’you want done with this lot?” said the toolbox-holding associate. “Put them in the oubliette, if you would be so kind—we’ll fish them out sooner or later. ” “What’s an oubliette, sir? Is it like a privy?” “Yes,” the Marquis laughed, “I suppose it is in this instance! These garçons ’ave been a thorn in our side for quite a while, but I don’t think we’ll be getting any further trouble from them. ” When Moist, Harry, and associates reboarded the coaches in the small hours and started on the long journey home, this time the crates of beer were brought out for the victors. “Well done, lads,” Harry boomed as he cracked the top off a bottle. “You did all I expected and more, gentlemen. And you know Harry King is a generous man and so I look forward to working with you again soon. You can rely upon it. ” He lay back on the seat and starting smoking one of his cigars, every so often chatting to one or other of his chums about the escapades they had had long ago when the Watch was a laughingstock. Adora Belle eventually woke Moist with a cup of tea around about four o’clock in the afternoon. As he sipped the tea, his wife puffed up his pillows and said, “Come on, then, tell me, how did it go? I wasn’t woken by any big bangs last night, which I consider a result, don’t you?” “Well, it wasn’t a massacre and it wasn’t a lot of smacked bottoms, as far as I could tell, but the good guys won, well, to a given value of good guy. Harry King’s cronies are very sprightly for old guys, and devious as well. ” Placing a tray of food on his knees she said, “I suppose breakfast in bed just can’t present the same frisson for Mister A Life Without Danger Is a Life Not Worth Living, yes?” Puncturing a sausage, Moist said, “How well you know me, Spike. Now listen, it seems there are a lot of goblins in the maquis and the people of Quirm haven’t found out yet how useful they can be even though they apparently do a good line in wine made from snails. ” Moist grimaced and continued, “Do you mind if I take Of the Twilight the Darkness to Quirm with me?” His wife looked astonished. “I didn’t think you liked him. ” “Well, he grows on you, you know, like a fungus, and there’s going to be a lot of puzzled goblins around now so they might like to see a friendly face. ” He hesitated. “If you can call it that. ” In darkness far from Moist in just about every sense that could be imagined, including the metaphysical, deliberations were taking place in a cavern that was paradoxically glittering and dark when tested by a different eye. It was illuminated, insofar as there was illumination, by one solitary candle, whose light was, as the saying goes, just there to show you the darkness. Nevertheless, its trembling little light was refracted in a veritable hoard of gems, the like of which, if you added up the sad little glimmerings, gave off entirely less light than could be delivered by a humble tallow candle. It was, in short, a light that hid from light, and it had a reason to hide. Just as the unfortunate dwarf now sitting uncomfortably in the center of the cavern had reason to wish to be elsewhere. Elsewhere, he thought, was the operative word; anywhere would surely be a better place than here. On the other hand, he was under a religious obligation. He had first heard it on his father’s knee, or possibly his mother’s, because he had never seen or heard either of them clearly and their voices were always muffled, because silence was as much of a virtue as darkness among the grags, and as he recalled the undeniable fact, he almost tried to cut and run, stopping himself in a nanosecond because there was nowhere to hide. He was in it too high! *41 Never a good place to be for a dwarf, and the grags had the measure of him. It was said that they had many ways of killing in the darkness and even had ways of moving from darkness to darkness without being apprehended by the intervening light. Oh, so much was said of them, although generally it was whispered. And he had done so many bad things, like eating beef and buying his wife colorful earrings and, worst of all, he had become friends with Rocky Debris who was, horror of horrors, a troll, and also quite a decent bloke, who he quite often sat next to when they were going to work and who, like him, was a supporter of Dolly Sisters United and generally went with him when there was a match on, and surely anyone who cheered for your side was a friend, wasn’t he? And yes, he was, but down in the base of his brain was the bogeyman of his childhood, and subtle whisperings, curdled fragments of old songs sung on special occasions, little observances made holy by repetition with the right people sitting at the same fireside, in those cosy days when you were not really old enough to understand and didn’t have your wretched brain stuffed full of ideas that part of you thought you shouldn’t ever obey, like not shaking hands with a troll and now he had been seen and now they had him and now they stood between him and his chances of a new life after death. They held the keys to the next world and, on a whim, could have him floating in the ultimate darkness of the Ginnungagap where there were … things, tormentors, creatures of indefinite invention and patience. He shifted because of the cramp in his legs, and said, “Please, I know I’ve got into bad ways and I’ve strayed from the path and indeed may be unworthy to call myself a dwarf, but if you allow me I can make recompense.

Please, I’m begging you, remove my shackles and I promise to do whatever you ask. ” The silence in the room grew thicker, more dense, as if it was pulling itself together. How long had he been in here now? It might as well have been years, or merely seconds … That was the difficulty about darkness; it encompassed everything, turning it into an amorphous substance in which everything got twisted, and remembered and then lost. “Very well,” said the voice. “We have looked into your wretched soul and are minded to give you one last chance. Be aware there will be no other. ” The voice softened a little and said, “Tak is watching you. Now you can eat your meal, which is right in front of you, and go from this place and be assured that Tak will be with you. Remember, for those who turn away there is no redemption. And when Tak needs you, you will be contacted again. ” After a rare, well-earned evening with his wife, Moist set off the next day on the golem horse with Of the Twilight the Darkness clinging on behind him. As they galloped along, there was something about the golem horse that was troubling Moist von Lipwig. A golem horse was incredibly useful if you needed to get somewhere fast, that is if you liked a ride where you spent a lot of the time finding that stirrups just didn’t do the job. You merely hung on until you got there, it was as simple as that. No need to steer, NagNav did the trick: if you told it where you wanted to go it took you there. The creature made no sound, required no water or oats, and simply stood patiently when it wasn’t in use. And then it dawned on Moist what the problem was. It was all give and no take. Generally speaking, he didn’t have much to do with the concept of karma, but he had heard of it and felt that a ton of it was dropping on him right now. The horse was all give and he was all take … But that was nuts, he told himself. A spoon doesn’t want you to say please and thank you, does it? Ah yes, he thought, but a spoon is a piece of metal and the golem horse is a horse. He hesitated, pondering. And thought, I wonder … Shortly before the border crossing they reached the head of the finished railway track. He and the goblin thankfully slid off the horse and a sudden impulse prompted Moist to ask the creature a question. “Can you speak?” he asked, feeling more than faintly ridiculous. And the answer came back out of the air rather than from the horse’s mouth, as it were. “Yes, if we want to. ” The goblin sniggered. Moist ignored him and pressed on with his line of inquiry. “Ah, we’re getting somewhere. Would you like to run around in meadows and generally cavort in pastures and so on?” Out of nowhere came, “Yes, if you wish. ” Moist said, “But what do you wish?” “I don’t understand the concept. ” Moist breathed in and said, “I saw a little stream not far back, and some green pastures and, for the sake of my soul, I would like you to go over there and gallop in the meadows and enjoy yourself. ” “Yes, enjoy myself, if you want me to. ” “For heavens’ sake, this is manumission we’re talking about here!” “That would be horseumission, sir. And I must point out that I don’t need to enjoy myself. ” “Well, do so for my sake, will you, please? Roll around on the flowers and neigh a bit and gallop about and have some kind of fun. If not for your own pleasure, then for my sanity, please. ” He watched the horse disappear into the meadow. Behind him Of the Twilight the Darkness cackled. “What a piece of work you are, Mister Slightly Damp, freeing the slaves and all. What you think his lordship will say about that?” Moist shrugged. “He might be acerbic, but a little acerbic isn’t all that bad. He’s quite a one for freedom is Vetinari, though not necessarily mine. ” Turning his attention to the railway, Moist was pleased to see that the work gangs, under the tutelage of Mr. Simnel’s young men, were evidently making steady progress laying down the next stage of track toward Quirm. To travel onward, Moist and Of the Twilight the Darkness hitched a ride on a handcar operated with gusto by two young railway workers, a curiously amusing contraption whose wheels ran along the newly laid rails still waiting to be fully bedded in. They passed the border with only a brief stop to deal with the formalities which were, in fact, nothing more than nodding at the guards and saying, “Is it okay if we cross, lads?” Whereupon they briefly stopped digging their respective allotments and waved him through. Where the handcar ran out of track, they found an old man with a horse and cart waiting, as arranged, to take them the rest of the distance to the château. He was clearly very sniffy about having a goblin in his nice clean vehicle, even though it was only a cart. The Marquis was waiting for them at the château and beamed at Moist. His nose wrinkled at the sight of Moist’s companion. “Who is this?” he asked in a tone a society lady might take upon finding half of something bristling in her soup. “This is Of the Twilight the Darkness. ” Of the Twilight the Darkness gave the Marquis a smart salute. “Of the Twilight the Darkness, Mister Mar-keee. Nice place you got here. Veeery nice. Don’t worry about smell. I’ll get used to it. ” After an awkward silence, the Marquis said, “ Mon dieu. ” “Not a god, Mister Mar-keee,” said Of the Twilight the Darkness, “just goblin, best there is, oh yes. Very useful, you know. ” The goblin continued in ringing sarcasm, “And not only that, Mister Mar-keee, I’m real. If you cut me, do I not bleed? And if you do, I bleeding well cuts you too, no offense meant. ” The Marquis’s laughter bounced off the scenery. There was no doubt about it. The goblin knew how to break the ice. Even an iceberg. The Marquis held out a hand and said, “ Enchanté , Monsieur Of the Twilight the Darkness. Do you drink wine?” The goblin hesitated. “Are there snails in it?” As they climbed the wide stone steps up to the terrace, the Marquis said, “Regrettably we don’t include snail. I know your people like snail wine but I’m afraid I ’ave none to offer you. ” “Never mind, squire, will have it as it comes, please. And for record, Mister Mar-keee, they ain’t my people, they your people. I’m an Ankh-Morpork lad. Have seen the big horse *42 and all that stuff. ” The view in the late afternoon sun over the maquis from the terrace was wonderful. “You have many goblins in Ankh-Morpork, Mister Lipwig?” the Marquis asked as he poured Moist a glass of chilled wine. “I’ve ’eard, of course, of Milord Vetinari’s famous melting pot. And yet I am informed zat many people in Ankh-Morpork still feel very unsure about them and think that getting involved with goblins shows that ze owner is dirty! So much for the prejudices of your countrymen who are, one ’as to say, a fairly dirty lot in any case. Whereas ’ere in Quirm notre logique points out that we are cleaner. After all, Quirm is the ’ome of Monsieur Bidet! Yet another apparatus for keeping clean and yet you in Ankh-Morpork sneer at us for being dirty. ” “Yes, I know, it’s deplorable,” said Moist. “I did meet Monsieur Bidet, although regrettably I didn’t shake him by the hand. Excuse me? Is something wrong?” The Marquis suddenly looked preoccupied. “Someone was watching us from the tree over zere. I must ’ave spoken too loudly because ’oever it is has made ’aste to get down to the cover of the ground. He’s small, but larger than a goblin; you ’ardly ever see zem in ze trees. ” There was a movement in the air as Of the Twilight the Darkness vaulted over the parapet and disappeared into the landscape below. He reappeared almost as quickly, saying, “Dwarf bugger. Have it away on toes. I spit me of him!” The Marquis topped up Moist’s glass and said, “A dwarf? Something to do with you, Mister Lipwig? Industrial espionage? One would expect the dwarfs to be keen on something like a railway … they are, after all, metalworkers and traders in ore. ” “I don’t think so,” said Moist.

“The clacks saw a bit of trouble a few months ago with extremist factions knocking down some of their towers, but that seems to have died down now. And there don’t seem to be many dwarfs interested in working on the railway. Something to do with the grags, I expect. The grags don’t seem to like anybody of importance in Ankh-Morpork. ” “Oh, yes,” said the Marquis. “The famous Koom Valley Accord and all zat business. I believed it to be sorted out. ” “So did everybody else. You must know how it is. Can’t please absolutely everybody. And you certainly can’t please the grags, however hard you try. ” Fully refreshed, Moist and Of the Twilight the Darkness set off into the maquis to find the goblin denizens, who even if they did not, strictly speaking, own the land through which the railway would go, needed to be informed and consulted. As squatters on unclaimed land, Moist thought, they surely must have some claim to it. As they made their way into the scrubby and thorny landscape, Moist pondered the significance of the dwarf who had been spying on him , right here in Quirm, where you didn’t normally see dwarfs. This meant he had been followed, and that almost surely meant more than one person. During his misspent youth and, not to put too fine a point on it, his largely misspent early middle age, he’d reckoned to be conversant with the methodology of spying, and one person alone couldn’t ensure reasonable tracking of the target. What was the dwarf doing there? Where had he come from? And, more important, where did he go? His reverie was interrupted when Of the Twilight the Darkness stopped suddenly by a rocky outcrop which, as far as Moist could tell, was indistinguishable from several other similar outcrops they had passed already. It was hot. Very hot. “Wait here,” said the goblin. “Will be back in a shake. ” In fact it was another sweaty hour and the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon before the goblin came back along the track, trailed by a large crowd of Quirmian goblins, their numbers swelling all the time as even more of them emerged from the undergrowth. When it came to looks the Quirm goblins seemed exactly the same as the ones over the border in Ankh-Morpork. However, unlike the Ankh-Morpork goblins, the Quirmian goblins were dressed in a way that could only be called snazzy. They had a certain panache unavailable to their Ankh-Morpork brethren, and a whiff about them of what was probably eau de snail. *43 Admittedly, the materials on show were effectively the same—bits of animal skin or indeed the animals themselves, birds, feathers—all embellished with sparkling stones. It was as if goblins had discovered taxidermy, but hadn’t quite got the important, nay, essential point of scooping out the messy bits first. But trust Quirm goblins to make their own haute couture. Moist smiled. He could see that somehow the goblin lads here in Quirm were trying to do it better , possibly because they had a better class of shaky swagger and a certain cheerful up yours look in their eyes. Nevertheless, they looked like a people who had been hammered hard on the anvil of fate and had been laminated with a natural bravado, which did not entirely hide their wounds. Moist was glad he had Of the Twilight the Darkness on his side, because the goblins of this part of the maquis clearly had no liking for humanity. Of the Twilight the Darkness now sidled up to him in his bandy-legged and sneery little way and said, “These people hurting oh-so bad it is. People gone. Little ones gone. Pots gone. Gone. But put big faces on it, yes. Can no more be truly goblin. Hurt. Hurt. Hurt. Now I give speech. ” Of the Twilight the Darkness turned out to be the goblin equivalent of Moist himself. Moist wasn’t fluent in goblin, but you didn’t need to know what was being said as you watched the faces and the way Of the Twilight the Darkness waved his hands. He was, in fact, doing a number. Moist couldn’t make out the words, but assumed it was something like, “New life in Ankh-Morpork with all the rats you want and wages. ” For there they were, ideas and promises curving through the air. And so certain was Moist that he had picked up what was going on that he leaned down and said, “Don’t forget to say that in Ankh-Morpork goblins are now citizens with rights. ” Moist was extremely pleased to see the goblin pause and look at him. “How you know I was talking of Ankh-Morpork, Mister Lipwig?” “Takes one to know one. ” While Of the Twilight the Darkness delivered his speech, the goblins stared at Moist. As stares went, their eyes were not baleful or angry, they were just … hopeful, in the grudging way of people who had had to learn pessimism as a survival tactic. One of the goblins then stepped forward and beckoned, clearly wanting to show him something. Of the Twilight the Darkness was also nudging him to follow. As Moist gingerly threaded his way through the network of almost invisible paths in the wasteland of thorns, pools of poisonous water, and occasional blockages caused by old rock falls, he noticed a crackling underfoot. Bones, he realized—mostly small bones—and in his ear were the words of Of the Twilight the Darkness: “Young goblins! Veeeeery tasty! A lot of good eating. Bandits thought so. But we hang, Mister Lipwig, we hang. We hang on. ” The horror tripped its way icily over Moist’s backbone. Of the Twilight the Darkness continued. “Those bandits was hungry. Small goblins. Easy to catch. ” “Are you saying they were eating the goblins?” The vehemence of Moist’s cry was picked up by Of the Twilight the Darkness immediately. “Sure. Easy meat. The bandit men eat anything they can catch. Rats. Moles. Shrews. Birds. Even stinky bird like raven. Eat it up. Yum. Yum. Shit out nasty poisonous stuff. Goblin meat like chicken. Miracle of nature maybe not, but no use to goblin when bandits around. They don’t want much, mister, and good job, ’cos they don’t get, but like me will do any job in free air. Place to live not being killed. Yes! Hunky-dory. And no need food in Ankh-Morpork. Big Wahoonie! Rats everywhere !” “Okay, Mister Twilight, where do we go from here?” The goblin gave Moist a cynical look, something which is very easy to do when you’re a goblin, because you learn cynicism early and you learn it fast. “You give me half name, Mister Damp. I forgive, have mercy. This time. I ask you. Don’t do again. Is very important. Half name is shame. Challenge to fight. Know you hasty. No understanding. Will forgive you. Will forgive once, Mister Lipwig ! This by way of friendly information. No charge incurred. ” Whatever Moist von Lipwig was, he knew the use of the right word at the right time. “Mister Of the Twilight the Darkness, thank you for your forbearance. ” It was beginning to rain. Sticky, lazy rain but the goblins seemed to be oblivious to it. These people are the world’s most stoical of stoics, Moist thought, albeit with a sting in their tail. I wonder what they are like when they decide, and they will decide, not to take everything on their greasy chins. Of the Twilight the Darkness grinned at Moist again and declared, “Hey you, mister big hero, mighty warrior, except, hah, these dumb buggers really think you is bee’s bollocks, think sun percolate out your arse. ” Moist realized that Of the Twilight the Darkness’s presentation to the goblins of the delights of Ankh-Morpork and his status in the city might have been somewhat exaggerated. “What did you say to make them think that?” “These goblins need hope, Mister Lipwig. You ain’t genuine good guy, but you can pretend like no bees’ nest. I have already explained to them that you are great citizen of Ankh-Morpork and dreadful fighter. ” “Well,” said Moist, “at least you got one bit right. But the bandits have surely been scared off now. The goblins can stay here, can’t they? There’ll be jobs on the railway when it comes through here. They’d like that, wouldn’t they?” “Bandit men come back in time. Always is bandits. These goblins can’t fly, Mister Soggy.

Long way back to Ankh-Morpork line! Looks for you to get them out of here. Me? I ain’t just fallen off Hogswatch tree. You don’t carry knife, and now it nighttime and you are still in maquis. Worse here than just bandits! Bad worse! Everything bad end up in the maquis and you still with no weapon. What are your orders, Mister Big Man?!” Moist hesitated. He had a feel for this sort of thing, he was sure, and it hardly ever let him down. “Okay. We’ll take them with us. But first you must get us out of here. ” “No, Marvellous von Lipwig is going to take the people out. Plucky goblin sidekick just bring up the rear. ” “Really? Okay, then. Just point me in the right direction. ” There was a track of sorts, and myriad little pathways in every direction. Moist and his unhappy but hopeful band were shepherded surreptitiously from behind by Of the Twilight the Darkness, who was becoming a great lieutenant, despite the fact that he brazenly considered Moist to be a bit of a tit. But a useful tit all the same. As they struggled back to what, in a fair wind, might have been called a proper track, Moist told himself that while it was true that Commander Vimes was the man who had been most prominent in the manumission of the goblins, he, Moist, could at least give them a job; you couldn’t have a profession as goblin , now could you? It just made no sense. And yet if there were such a thing as a professional goblin, then it was definitely Of the Twilight the Darkness, who was so goblin that you could imagine that other goblins would tap one another on the shoulder and say, “Blimey! Look at that goblin! Doesn’t he look like a goblin to you?” But jobs got things going, got people going, and raised their self-esteem. After all, goblins, quite apart from now being ubiquitous in the clacks industry, were also doing very well and picking up serious folding money in the ceramics business. Goblin pots were beautiful, extremely fine and as iridescent as a butterfly’s wing. *44 Moist’s reverie was broken by Of the Twilight the Darkness. “These poor herberts behind us think you need to know that dwarfs been asking after you, like sneaky one up tree I saw off. My, can’t the greedy buggers shift when need. Don’t like good flint edge! But still are some around. Reckon they waiting until we get to railway. Right place for ambush. ” Moist had devoted considerable energies to being a noncombatant, words being his weapon of choice, but when words weren’t enough, in extremis he could deliver telling blows with his fists and feet. Right now he was wondering whether to surreptitiously drag said feet a little so that he would be surrounded by the band of goblins if there was an attack. After all, they all had stone weapons, didn’t they? And he didn’t, did he? Goblins acquired a fighting spirit with their mothers’ milk, if indeed their mothers had milk. *45 They continued cautiously into the ever-deepening dusk, now moving as silently as they could manage. Even the goblin toddlers were quiet as they walked toward the promised land. They skirted the grounds of the château and moved on through the woods in the direction of the railhead. A while later there came a crushed-gravel whisper at Moist’s elbow from Of the Twilight the Darkness. “I sending out some of swifter lads to scout ahead. Something not right at railhead. Couldn’t get close enough to see but says at least dozen dwarfs in the woods up there, maybe more. Could hear the buggers clanging. They trying to be surreptitious, but dwarfs has not first idea of surreptition. It’s all been hammer and tongues to dwarfs. Could try go round ’em—but the buggers might try go round us same time. Best, I say, to deal with bogeys today, right? No worry, some these lobster lads know how to fight and they proud you leading them … ain’t you!” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. Moist was horribly aware of the whole refugee group clustered around him, their unprepossessing faces full of expectation and miscellaneous fragments of food. There were little ones, some no more than babes in arms. Moist could feel the pressure of their hope which, alas, he knew was unfounded and probably misplaced. He was no leader. Not like Commander Vimes. But what would Of the Twilight the Darkness do if he just ran away? He could outrun any dwarf, make it back to the château … but could he outrun a goblin …? He shivered and shoved that thought to the very back of his mind just as a small goblin woman came up to him. “Go into battle with nice cuppa tea!” she said. “Special goblin tea! Very good for you! Boiled in sheep bladder! Excellent when always having to run! Got herbs! You drink! You drink now ! Ain’t nothing like a nice cuppa tea. Medicinal, it is!” Of the Twilight the Darkness handed Moist a large goblin club. “Many, many ways to die today,” he said, with devastating humor. “Trust elderly goblin, this one very much the best, hang! We hang together. ” Moist understood that last rather unfortunate suggestion. It was the traditional goblin-to-goblin greeting, as in, hang together or hang separately. He swigged the cold tea, which had a harmless accent of hazelnuts with a soupçon of wool, expecting at any moment either to be poisoned or to throw up. In fact, it was … pleasant and it also felt quite nourishing. If there were snails in it, like the wine, then, well, vive l’escargot ! Although the secret ingredient, he was quite sure, was likely to be avec. The potion appeared to work because a few moments later he felt ready for anything , full of beans, or possibly full of avec. Why, in the face of all the gods, had he been so apprehensive when there was absolutely nothing to be frightened of, oh dear no! This cheerful state of mind continued right up until the moment they spotted the red lights of the railhead shining out like a beacon through the surrounding woodlands. Leaving the most elderly goblins with the twigs *46 hiding in the undergrowth as only goblins could hide, Moist and the rest crept forward. The young men in the traveling work gang had crafted themselves cosy little shacks covered with oilskin. These were extremely portable and always a place where a friendly face could be certain of a hot drink, stirred with a spanner, of course. And if no gamekeepers were known to be about, a wild avec and rabbit stew might also be available for an al fresco meal. Indeed, the pot of stew still bubbling over the embers of the campfire smelled as good as any Moist remembered. He had expected to see the young lads he had met only that morning, cheerfully tucking in after a hard day’s work. He had not expected to see corpses … but corpses were what he found. By the glow of the fire and the pale light of the lanterns, he could see that the workers had many things that could usefully have been employed as a weapon, but they had evidently been taken unawares. It had been a terrible encounter and most certainly they had lost. A quick assay of body parts indicated that there had been nine of them, cut down while having their meal outside their makeshift bothy. Of the Twilight the Darkness was instantly on the case, sniffing the corpses and the ground. “The damn dwarfs have been here, oh yes, can smell the naaaasty buggers! But some of them still here,” he added quickly, pointing to a small piece of woodland in the distance and dropping his voice to a whisper. “Hiding in the wood”— sniff —“over there”— sniff —“several, one injured. ” His beady goblin eye was glittering and Moist … Moist had a sudden sensation of being on fire. “Please,” he managed to say, “please, tell me, what is the goblin for ‘Charge!’?” Much, much later, Moist remembered that he had heard the goblin say at least the beginning of the word and then the whole world was a crimson haze full of shouting and the dark fog of war.

He felt his arms and legs going about their terrible business, especially his arms, and he was aware of noises, unpleasant noises, cracking noises, splatting noises, but they came as a kind of incoherent memory, as did the screams … Little parcels of recollection bobbing up and down like the bubbles in a bottle of homemade ginger beer, coming and going and never staying long enough to mean anything. But the bubbles were gradually drifting away now and, when he came to what was left of his senses, he was lying with his back up against a tree. The railhead campfire had been relit and to Moist’s bemused amazement there were the signs of dawn on the horizon—but hadn’t they been in this place for only a couple of minutes? Of the Twilight the Darkness was sitting on a lump of wood nearby, smoking a pipe and occasionally blowing smoke rings into the early blue sky. It was a sight that a painter would love to paint, were it not necessary to paint it in various shades of blood, and, to do justice to the scene, with several tubes of gore and a splash of whatever color you needed for guts. Moist’s memory of the night before was now strewn with corpses. “Well now, ain’t you a dark horse, Mister Dripping!” grinned the goblin. “Whoever would thought it? Tell you this: you ain’t half going to be sore later. You done a man’s job! Almost goblin job! Three! Count ’em! Well, count bits of ’em and work it out, but three dwarf crack fighters smash down like skittles. Two of ’em wearing first-class micromail armor, assassin grade, worth mint. Pillage. Here, take this as souvenir to show Miss Adora Belle. Good on mantelpiece!” The goblin threw over what Moist had thought was a lump of wood and which he could now see was the head of a dwarf, still inside its helmet. “That’s right! Get it out of system! Throw it up, throw it up, and throw it up again. Very good for tubes, does world of good. Better out than in. ” Moist staggered to his feet and said, through the winding mists, “I couldn’t have killed three dwarfs! I’m no fighter! Never! It plays havoc with your shoes. ” “Reckon dwarfs would disagree. Mind you, I show the one over there bit of goblin disapproval, as you may say! Especially when I got him on ground. Most time, everybody keep out of your way, just in case. You was getting a bit … indiscriminate , oh yeees. Still, no harms done. ” “No harm done?” Moist wailed. “I just killed three dwarfs! Wouldn’t you say that counts as a little harm?” “Was fair fight, Mister Slightly Damp. One against many, like in best anecdote. Tell you already, most us lads climbing trees to get away from you. And you not a fighter. You said this, we all hear. ” “It was that drink! That’s what it was! You’ve filled me full of goblin rotgut! Who knows what it’s done to me!” “Me?” said Of the Twilight the Darkness, trying to look hurt. “I keep you alive so you will see your very nice lady, who is always kind to goblins. Take from me, Mister Sopping, that drink just open up what’s there already. ” “And what was here, may I ask?” “Rage, Mister Dripping. You let something off leash. Now you can help us clean bloody mess and get us out of here. ” Moist looked at what remained of the railway workers who had just been doing their job, being no threat to anybody. Simple men who knew nothing whatsoever about politics and had wives and children and were now lying dead for a quarrel they had nothing to do with, and the rage swelled up again, almost lifting him off the ground. They hadn’t deserved it, nor had those goblins whose fallen corpses he now saw here and there across the battlefield. Of the Twilight the Darkness was staring at him and said, “Amazing, what things we learn, that goblins can be people and you, Mister Damp, has a heart and crying because of death of men you don’t know. World is full of miracle. Maybe I will see you singing in choir. ” In the misty light of morning Moist stared at the grinning goblin: as evil-looking as anything in a picture book that was designed to give the little kiddies all the nightmares they would ever need, and yet reading him a lecture on morality. “What are you?” he asked. “I’ve been listening to you for days, and you look like a goblin, no doubt about that, but every so often you come out with something I wouldn’t expect to hear from a goblin. No offense meant, but you are a smart one. ” The goblin relit his pipe, which made him somehow more human, and said carefully, “Are you saying goblins not ever clever, Mister Lipwig? Goblins not ever brave? Goblins not ever learn? Me, finest learner. All things to all men and all goblins. ” Moist looked at the little pile of micromail armor. It was treasure and a half. Light and strong. And easy to carry. And worth a fortune, lying there on the damp grass. He looked into the goblin’s eyes. “All yours, Mister Lipwig. To the victor the spoils,” Of the Twilight the Darkness said cheerfully. “No. They can have it,” said Moist, indicating the Quirmian goblins. “Don’t need it,” said the goblin. “Take your spoils, Mister Lipwig. You never know when useful. ” Moist looked at what remained of the dwarf fighters and thought, where’s Mr. Chriek when you need him? And that thought prompted another: a reliable witness was essential. He asked Of the Twilight the Darkness to fetch the Marquis or any of his workers from the château, with an iconograph if they had one. “We need people to know about this. ” After the Marquis, trailed by goggling servants, had inspected the scene, exclaimed his horror, organized the taking of iconographs, and departed back to the château, promising to send the news by clacks at once, the decencies could be attended to. The corpses of the railway workers and goblins who had fallen in the battle were carefully, even reverentially, placed on the handcar. A few of the goblins disappeared into the scenery and returned with wildflowers to put on the bodies. It was one of those little observations that subtly turned Moist’s universe around. Goblins believing that those who fell in battle had paid their dues. After the solemn ceremony was over, the goblins took turns at pumping the lever of the handcar as Moist, the goblin band, and their sad cargo headed back slowly along the track to the border, where they stopped to send out their own clacks. Moist arranged with the border guard for the bodies to be shrouded and put in a cold place until someone was sent to pick them up. One of the guards took umbrage that the dead goblins were being left alongside the bodies of what he called “real people. ” And so Moist had a rather pointed little chat with him, after which the man was much better informed, although bleeding slightly from his nose. The memory of oh so many little bones hadn’t had enough time to be forgotten. And perhaps some of the potion was still alive inside Moist. It was that kind of day. That done, Moist looked at the ribbon of goblins trailing behind him and then looked up at the sign beside the Quirm turnpike which told the world that it was the well-known Fat Marie’s. There could be no mistake about how the proprietor got her name, and like so many roadside eateries she sold hot food quickly and served reasonable coffee to travelers and that was that. Her clientele hadn’t even heard of cuisine, they just needed surety of carbohydrate and grease. However, she proved somewhat dubious about feeding goblins, and said, “I might lose my regulars if I let them lot in. ” And once again Moist had to explain the facts of life, making it clear that refusing to serve goblins would very soon lead to her not feeding anyone else at all once Lord Vetinari had been informed. Fat Marie’s was on Ankh-Morpork land and Vetinari was strict. “After all,” Moist said, “they’ll sit outside, they really don’t like rooms, and I’m paying, okay?” Suitably chastened, Fat Marie shoveled out rather bad fish and chips and a fried slice to every goblin and was amazed at how fast they ate, especially the fried slice. That was one thing about the goblins, they weren’t fussy.

After their meal, Moist arranged for the goblins to travel on to Harry’s compound in the freight trucks of the utility engine that serviced the railhead, went to find the golem horse, still obediently rolling and galloping in the meadow, and headed back toward the city. Harry King was close to incandescent at the best of times, but the state of mind he was in when he heard the news of the massacre could only be described as volcanic: one of those slumbering volcanoes that suddenly go off pop and the calm sea is instantly awash with dirty pumice and surprised people in togas. Moist tried to calm him down, but that was like trying to put a cap on a geyser, and you can’t do that, especially not to a geezer like Harry King. Then the explosion became tears, the bubbling and sticky tears of a hard man who would never want anybody to see him cry. Learning that Moist himself had got rid of a few of the dwarfs responsible helped, but even so Harry continued to dribble snot onto a very expensive tie while calling down the wrath of the gods onto the remains of the culprits, with a footnote that the gods had better get to them before Harry’s curses did. Moist offered to tell the workers’ next of kin, but Harry declared that he would do the job himself. He set off on this doleful task immediately, leaving Moist with nothing to do but collect Of the Twilight the Darkness and the band of Quirmian goblins who had meanwhile arrived at the compound and were being entertained by Billy Slick and his grandmother. When he arrived home in Scoone Avenue, Adora Belle opened the door herself. Moist, as ever, was impressed by her sangfroid as she surveyed the motley group of Quirmian goblins he had in his wake. “So good to see you again, Spike,” he said. “I’ve brought you some little presents. Say it with goblins, as you might say. ” “How many are there, do you think?” she enquired. “Two hundred or more,” said Moist. “I haven’t really been counting. ” “I suggest that Of the Twilight the Darkness takes them over to the Tump Tower, where there’s enough room in the basement for them to sleep. ” “You don’t mind?” “Of course not. Quite a lot of my best goblins are taking holidays to the Shires and elsewhere. We’re very short. Well done, you!” As soon as Moist had seen the goblins on their way, the Ankh-Morpork Watch metaphorically felt his collar. As collars go, Moist’s was expensive, but a little the worse for wear after the fight with the dwarfs. In this case, the hand doing the feeling belonged to Captain Angua, who asked him to accompany her to the Yard in tones that did not allow for an argument. Once ensconced in an interview room, she took down his statement about the massacre in a deliberately methodical way, asking pointed questions, which was to say pointed at Moist. “So you, Mister von Lipwig, took down a bunch of dwarf terrorists with the help of a number of goblins, yes? You must like goblins, then?” “Yes, and so does Commander Vimes, captain,” Moist snapped. “Tell me, where is Chuckles today?” It was worth it to see the captain grimace; if you looked carefully you could see the outline of the fangs. It was a risky move, but he had a reputation to live down and cheeking the Watch was a pastime he cherished and was very good at. They were altogether too stuffy and Captain Angua, try as she might, looked stunning in her uniform, especially when she was angry. “With the Patrician,” she growled. “An attack on the railway is an attack on Ankh-Morpork. With delvers involved there is a possible connection with the attacks on the clacks. All of this needs to be investigated and it would have been helpful if one of the perpetrators had been left alive and available for interrogation. ” Moist almost choked, saying, “Captain, when a lot of unpleasant people are trying to kill you, it’s hard to remember that leaving one of them alive might be a spiffy idea. You have other things on your mind such as, maybe, not dying yourself. If it’s any help, I think you’ll find that the Marquis des Aix en Pains will by now have sent iconographs of the dwarfs who did this. The Marquis is a decent bloke and generally helpful and keen to have the railway, so I’m certain that you’ll get your evidence. ” And as he thought that, mischief rose in Moist’s mind and he said, “And I know that you yourself can travel very fast, captain. They might still be fresh if you hurry. ” This time it was not a black look that Moist got. It was a look that said patience was about to crack. Fortunately, the door opened just at the right time and Commander Vimes entered, his expression grim. “Ah, Mister Lipwig, please follow me to my office, if you’d be so good. I always know when you’re in the building. ” He nodded at the simmering Angua and said, “I’ll deal with Mister von Lipwig, captain. ” Moist was unsure about how much Commander Vimes actually disliked him. After all, the man was so straight that you could use him as a pencil, whilst Moist, on the other hand, despite the success of the Post Office and the Royal Bank and even the wonderful new Mint, was still seen by Vimes and many others as bent as an old spoon and most certainly up to no good. “Would you like some coffee?” Commander Vimes asked as they entered his office. “The pot downstairs is always on and it doesn’t always taste of mud. ” He opened the door again and shouted down, “Two coffees up here, please, Cheery, one black, and you can empty the sugar bowl into mine. ” Moist was somewhat disorientated, because Vimes was acting in a way that, if looked at forensically, might even have been somewhere within the circumference of friendly, rather like, he supposed, an alligator yawning. The commander was now back in his chair, and, yes, smiling. The truth was that between Moist von Lipwig and Commander Vimes there was a certain … what they politely called a difference of opinion. Sam Vimes did not live in the same world as Moist von Lipwig. Did the man ever laugh? he wondered—the commander must have done something funny at some time. Probably he’d laughed at somebody falling over a cliff or suchlike. At which point, to his surprise, Commander Vimes cleared his throat and said slowly, like a man essaying something unfamiliar, “Mister von Lipwig, it may be the case in recent years that I’ve given you the opinion that I consider you a cheat and a fraud and no better than a worm. However, the fact that you threw yourself in front of that train to save two kiddies suggests to me that the leopard can change his shorts. “Theoretically, I’ll be dressing you down for sorting out the murderous dwarfs involved in this latest atrocity and telling you that you should leave that sort of thing to the damn Watch. But I’m not stupid and I’m prepared to give credit where credit is due. The delvers are a vicious lot, a type of vermin that I’d very much have liked to see dance to Mister Trooper’s tune just to show them how justice should be done. But knowing that at least some of the buggers are out of the way must suffice for now. So, on a personal note, which I’ll certainly deny if you repeat this to anyone : well done. ” And at this Vimes waggled, yes, waggled a finger, and in tones of a funeral bell and much louder said, “ Don’t do it again! That was an official reprimand, you understand, Mister Lipwig? And this is my hand. ” To Moist’s amazement Vimes walked around the table and gave him the hardest handshake he had ever had. It was like shaking hands with a boxing glove full of walnuts. Nothing actually broke and there was no blood and Vimes hadn’t even tried to squeeze, so it appeared to Moist that what had just been perpetrated must be Commander Vimes’s everyday handshake. He decided it was probably the commander being a man who didn’t believe in half measures. And now the commander looked somber, saying, “If I were you, Mister von Lipwig, I’d make certain that my wife spent a lot of time out of the way in clacks towers for a while and I’d ask the Watch to keep an eye on my property.

Those wretched delvers will stop at nothing, and I mean no offense when I say I’m surprised that you managed to take the bastards down. ” He lowered his voice, almost to a whisper, and said, “What did it feel like, son?” There was an expression in Vimes’s eyes that told Moist that now, if ever, it was time for the truth and so he too lowered his voice and said, “To tell you the truth, commander, I had some unexpected backup. You wouldn’t believe it. ” And amazingly, Vimes’s smile broadened and he said, “Actually, Mister Lipwig, I just might. I know a little something of fighting dirty in the dark, don’t I just. It was under Koom Valley a few years back and I had some backup too, and I don’t think I want to know where it came from. Just be careful now. The grags clearly have your number. You’d better go and see Vetinari, but I’m very glad we’ve had this little chat. ” “Why d’you think I’m going to see Vetinari next?” “I know , because I’ve just come from the palace. He was sending for you and I asked his lordship if I could get a crack at you first. ” Moist walked to the door, turned round and said simply, “Thank you, commander. ” Outside on Lower Broadway, Moist hailed a one-troll trolleybus *47 and he was not pleased when a dwarf jumped into the pannier beside him. He braced himself for a blow, but the dwarf just smiled at him. “Mister Lipwig, how pleased I am to see you. I’d appreciate a moment of your time. ” “Look,” said Moist, “I’m a very busy man with a great deal to do, and I’m expected at the palace. ” “The palace? Allow me. ” And the dwarf flipped the correct fare to said troll and gave him the destination in the troll’s own language, much to the amazement of the troll. Oh my, thought Moist. Ankh-Morpork, the melting pot of the world, which occasionally runs foul of lumps that don’t melt. Moist looked down at the dwarf which was, of course, inevitable. He seemed to be more, well, streamlined than your traditional dwarf, although smiling in a confrontational sort of way: not unpleasantly, but with a kind of inner dedication to the smile. He realized that the dwarf reminded him of something … oh dear, what was its name? Oh, yes, a gyroscope, which he’d seen demonstrated in Unseen University’s High Energy Magic building. In short, and of course this person was a dwarf, he did have the feel of a gyroscope about him, something spinning around an undeclared center. The insight built itself in a matter of seconds, at the end of which, instead of insisting that his unwanted fellow passenger got out, Moist was paying a lot of attention to the smart little figure. “Who are you?” he asked. “I am merely a messenger,” replied the dwarf. “I am here to tell you something that you cannot ignore. In a sacred place near Koom Valley your name is on the list of people to be summarily executed, but do not fret unduly, because—” “Er, you mean I should just simply fret in a duly kind of way, then? So what the hell is that supposed to mean?” The annoyingly grave face of the dwarf, with its curious essence of smile, was irking Moist, and the dwarf said, “Well, Mister Lipwig, you are in a queue behind Lord Vetinari and Commander Vimes and, of course, so are a very large number of dwarfs considered to be un-dwarfish. It is a tiny war at the moment, it’s burning underground like an abandoned coal measure, waiting to break out in unexpected places and soon, I suspect, to a place containing yourself. ” “Look,” said Moist, “it may have escaped your notice, but I am not and never have been a dwarf, okay? I don’t have a beard and I can’t walk under a table. Human, you see?” The composure of the dwarf was unshakeable, just like his smile, which now broadened a little as he said, “You may not be a dwarf, my friend, but you are considered a vector, a symbol of all that is opposed to real dwarfishness, a carrier, if you like, and also a central figure in a city that some dwarfs would love to see burned to the ground. The clacks were just the start. Your railway will not succeed in tempting dwarfs from the true path of Tak. The commander and Lord Vetinari are surrounded by people who carry a large variety of useful weapons. You don’t, though, do you, Mister Lipwig? You are not a warrior, you are a target, admittedly a remarkable and ingenious one. I suggest you remember how Albert Spangler watched his back and, above all, do not go into dark places. ” The dwarf shook his head and added, “You have been warned, sir. I understand you have been known to say that a life without danger is a life not worth living, and frankly all I can say is, good luck with that. Tak does not require that you think of him, but he does require that you think, and I suspect that Tak will be requiring your services in the near future. There are things happening, political things, that you know nothing of, but Tak knows where to find you when Tak needs you. ” And with that the dwarf smiled, jumped out of the pannier, and ran off at speed before Moist could react. Taken by surprise, Moist continued the journey to the palace with his head in a whirl. Until the massacre at the railhead, he hadn’t been doing anything wrong ! Just trying to help everybody! And now he was apparently a target because he represented the wicked ways of Ankh-Morpork … which was not only unfair, but also untrue. Well, probably untrue, well, at least a bit. He assumed that the grags were hurt about the fact that he had just killed some of their number, even though it had been a fair fight. Well, probably fair and, anyway, they’d got what they deserved. Moist had hardly done anything actually truly wicked in his life *48 and now his new cleaned-up, hardworking, upstanding citizen persona was at risk. Moist was seething by the time he arrived at the Oblong Office. “It seems I’m a damn target,” he began, “and you knew it, sir!” In the following silence Lord Vetinari’s head did not move until he folded his newspaper. “I assume the grags found you, yes, Mister Lipwig? I thought you knew that, along with myself, Drumknott, Commander Vimes, and many others, you are on what I believe is called a hit list drawn up by radical grags. But if I were you I wouldn’t worry. After all, a life without danger is a life not worth living, eh, Mister Lipwig?” And Moist said, “Well, yes, but what about Adora Belle?” “Oh yes, Mister Lipwig, I told her last week. ” “What! She didn’t tell me!” “I believe she wanted to surprise you, Mister Lipwig. She knows how much you like surprises and you do enjoy a quantum of frisson, she told me. ” Moist almost squealed, “But you know I’m no fighter!” “Really, Mister Lipwig? But I already have reports that say otherwise: thrilling tales of derring-do and, believe me, nothing was said about derring-don’t. ” Moist, a long-time student of Vetinari and his moods, knew that you could never be sure of what he was thinking. But now the Patrician seemed carved out of stone, like a statue. “Mister Lipwig, you know what they say about dwarfs?” Moist looked blank. “Very small people?” “ ‘Two dwarfs is an argument, three dwarfs is a war,’ Mister Lipwig. It’s squabble, squabble, squabble. It’s built into their culture. And in the squabbling, the grags hide and poison. “The Koom Valley Accord, which I helped to broker with the Low King and Diamond King of Trolls, was hailed around the world as a fresh hope for the future. But now some of the senior dwarfs appear to be in thrall to a faction of the grags who are bent on destruction. Differences of opinion are one thing, but this sort of atrocity cannot be borne. Diamond King of Trolls and I are putting pressure on the Low King and we have every expectation he will deal with the matter. “It has gone too far, Mister Lipwig. Once upon a time the grags were bold dwarfs who checked the mines for firedamp, hence the heavy clothing. Of course that gave them status but, in truth, they were just plucky miners … expert at mining, perhaps, but certainly not skilled in politics and thinking. After all, you don’t negotiate with a lump of rock. With people, you negotiate all the time.