‘Thirtytwo men injured, sir. And another twenty probable desertions,’ said Captain Wrangle. ‘And Big Mary is firewood, of course.’
‘Oh gods…’
‘Do you want to hear the rest, sir?’
‘There’s more?’
‘I’in afraid there is, sir. Before the remains of Big Mary left Heroes Street, sir, she smashed twenty shop windows and various carts, doing damage estimated at-‘
‘Fortunes of war, captain. We can’t help that!’
‘No, sir.’ The captain coughed. ‘Do you want to know what happened next, sir?’
‘Next? There was a next?’ said the major, beginning to panic.
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‘Um… yes, sir. Quite a lot of next, actually, sir. Um. The three gates through which most of the agricultural produce comes into the city are picketed, sir, on your orders, so the carters and drovers are trying to bring their stuff along Short Street, sir.
Fortunately not too many animals at this time of night, sir, but there were six millers’ wagons, one wagon of, er, dried fruits and spices, four dairymen’s wagons and three hegglers’ carts. All wrecked, sir. Those oxen really were very feisty, sir.’
‘Hegglers? What the hell are hegglers?’ said the major, bewildered.
‘Egg marketers, sir. They travel around the farms, pick up the eggs-‘
‘Yes, all right! And what are we supposed to do?’
‘We could make an enormous cake, sir.’
‘Tom!’
‘Sorry, sir. But the city doesn’t stop, you see. It’s not like a battlefield. The best place for urban fighting is right out in the countryside, sir, where there’s nothing else in the way.’
‘It’s a bloody big barricade, Tom. Too well defended. We can’t even set fire to the damn thing, it’ll take the city up with it!’
‘Yes, sir. And the point is, sir, that they’re not actually doing anything, sir. Except being there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re even putting old grannies up on the barricades, shouting down to the lads. Poor Sergeant Franklin, sir, his granny saw him and said that if he didn’t turn it up she’d tell everyone what he did when he was eleven, sir.’
‘The men are armed, aren’t they?’ said the major, wiping his forehead.
‘Oh, yes. But we’ve kind of advised them not to shoot
unarmed old ladies, sir. We don’t want another Dolly Sisters, do
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we, sir?’
The major stared at the map. There was a solution, he felt.
‘Well, what did Sergeant Franklin do when he was-‘ he said absentmindedly.
‘She didn’t say, sir.’
A sudden feeling of relief stole over the major. ‘Captain, you know what this is now?’
‘I’in sure you’ll tell me, sir.’
‘I will, Tom, I will. This is political, Tom. We’re soldiers.
Political goes higher up.’
‘You’re right, sir. Well done, sir!’
‘Dig out a lieutenant who has been a bit slack lately and send him up to tell their lordships,’ said the major.
‘Isn’t that a bit cruel, sir?’
‘Of course it is. This is politics now.’
Lord Albert Selachii didn’t much like parties. There was too much politics. And he particularly didn’t like this one because it meant he was in the same room as Lord Winder, a man who, deep down, he believed to be A Bad Sort. In his personal vocabulary, there was no greater condemnation. What made it worse was that, while seeking to avoid him, he also had to try at the same time to avoid Lord Venturi. Their families cordially detested one another. Lord Albert wasn’t sure, now, what event in history had caused the rift, but it must have been important, obviously, otherwise it would be silly to go on like this. Had the Selachii and the Venturi been hill clans, they would have been afeudin’ and afightin’; since they were two of the city’s leading families they were chillingly, viciously, icily polite to each other whenever social fate forced them together. And right now his careful orbit of the less dangerously political areas of the damn party had brought him face to face with Lord Charles Venturi. It was bad enough having to campaign with the feller, he thought,
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without being forced to talk to him over some rather inferior wine, but currently the party’s tides offered no way of escape without being impolite. And, curiously, upperclass etiquette in Ankh-Morpork held that, while you could snub your friends any time you felt like it, it was the height of bad form to be impolite to your worst enemy.
‘Venturi,’ he said, raising his glass a carefully calculated fraction of an inch.
‘Selachii,’ said Lord Venturi, doing the same thing.
‘This is a party,’ said Albert.
‘Indeed. I see you are standing upright.’
‘Indeed. So are you, I see.’
‘Indeed. Indeed. On that subject, I notice many others are doing the same thing.’
‘Which is not to say that the horizontal position does not have its merits when it comes to, for example, sleeping,’ said Albert.
‘Quite so. Obviously that would not be done here.’
‘Oh, indeed. Indeed.’*
* The Selachii and the Venturi made a point, on occasions like this, to talk only about things on which there was no possibility of disagreement. Given the history of the two families, this had become a very small number of things.
A brisk lady in a magnificent purple dress advanced across the ballroom floor, her smile travelling in front of her.
‘Lord Selachii?’ she said, proffering a hand. ‘I hear you have been doing sterling work defending us from the mob!’
His lordship, on social automatic pilot, bowed stiffly. He wasn’t used to forward women, and this one was all forward.
However, all safe topics of conversation with a Venturi had been exhausted.
‘I fear you have the advantage of me, madam…’ he murmured.
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‘I certainly expect so!’ said Madam, giving him such a radiant smile that he didn’t analyse her actual words. ‘And who is this imposing military gentleman? A comrade in arms?’
Lord Selachii floundered. He’d been brought up knowing that you always introduced men to women, and this smiling lady hadn’t told him her-
‘Lady Roberta Meserole,’ she said. ‘Most people who know me call me Madam. But my friends call me Bobbi.’
Lord Venturi clicked his heels. He was quicker on the uptake than his ‘comrade in arms’ and his wife told him more of the current gossip.
‘Ah, you must be the lady from Genua,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘I have heard so much about you.’
‘Anything good?’ said Madam.
His lordship glanced across the room. His wife appeared to be deep in conversation. He knew to his cost that her wifely radar could fry an egg half a mile away. But the champagne had been good.
‘Mostly expensive,’ he said, which didn’t sound quite as witty as he intended. She laughed anyway. Perhaps I was witty, he thought. I say, this champagne really is excellent…
‘A woman has to make her way in the world as best she can,’
she said.
‘May I make so bold as to ask if there is a Lord Meserole?’ he said.
‘So early in the evening?’ said Madam, and laughed again.
Lord Venturi found himself laughing with her. My word, he told himself, this wit is a lot easier than I thought!
‘No, of course I meant-‘ he began.
‘I’in sure you did,’ said Madam, tapping him lightly with her fan. ‘Now, I mustn’t monopolize you, but I really must drag both of you away to talk to some of my friends
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She took Lord Venturi by the unresisting arm and piloted him across the floor. Selachii followed morosely, being of the opinion that when respectable women called themselves Bobbi the world was about to end, and ought to.
‘Mr Carter has extensive interests in copper and Mr Jones is very interested in rubber,’ she whispered.
There were about six men in the group, talking in low voices.
As their lordships approached they caught’and at a time like this one really must ask oneself where one’s true loyalties lie… oh, good evening, Madam.’
On her apparently random walk to the buffet table Madam happened to meet several other gentlemen and, like a good hostess, piloted them in the direction of other small groups.
Probably only someone lying on the huge beams that spanned the hall high above would spot any pattern, and even then they’d have to know the code. If they had been in a position to put a red spot on the heads of those people who were not friends of the Patrician, and a white spot on those who were his cronies, and a pink spot on those who were perennial waverers, then they would have seen something like a dance taking place.
There were not many whites.
They would have seen that there were several groups of reds, and white spots were being introduced into them in ones, or twos if the number of reds in the group was large enough. If a white left a group, he or she was effortlessly scooped up and shunted into another conversation which might contain one or two pinks but was largely red.