needed to scrub your skin even on the inside, but no one was perfect, were they?
Peachy leaned forward. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I reckon he could be here
already. In disguise! Laughing at us! Wel , if he’s in here laughing at us-‘ He cracked
his knuckles.
Medium Dave Lilywhite, the last of the five, looked around. There were indeed a
number of solitary figures in the low, dark room. Most of them wore cloaks with big
hoods. They sat alone, in corners, hidden by the hoods. None of them looked very
friendly.
‘Don’t be daft, Peachy,’ Catseye murmured.
‘That’s the sort of thing they do,’ Peachy insisted. ‘They’re masters of disguise!’
‘With that eye of his?’
‘That guy sitting by the fire has got an eye patch,’ said Medium Dave. Medium Dave
didn’t speak much. He watched a lot.
The others turned to stare.
‘He’l wait til we’re off our guard then go ahahaha,’ said Peachy.
‘They can’t kil you unless it’s for money,’ said Catseye. But now there was a
soupcon of doubt in his voice.
They kept their eyes on the hooded man. He kept his eye on them.
If asked to describe what they did for a living, the five men around the table would
have said something like ‘This and that’ or ‘The best I can’, although in Banjo’s case
he’d have probably said ‘Dur?’ They were, by the standards of an uncaring society,
criminals, although they wouldn’t have thought of themselves as such and couldn’t
even spel words like ‘nefarious’. What they general y did was move things around.
Sometimes the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, say, or in the wrong
house. Sometimes the things were in fact people who were far too unimportant to
trouble the Assassins’ Guild with, but who were nevertheless inconveniently positioned
where they were and could much better be located on, for example, a sea bed
somewhere5. None of the five belonged to any formal guild and they general y found
their clients among those people who, for their own dark reasons, didn’t want to put the
guilds to any trouble, sometimes because they were guild members themselves. They
had plenty of work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B
or, of course, to the bottom of the C.
‘Any minute now,’ said Peachy, as the waiter brought their beers.
Banjo cleared his throat. This was a sign that another thought had arrived.
‘What I don’ unnerstan,’ he said, ‘is…’
‘Yes?’ said his brother.6
‘What I don’ unnerstan is, how longaz diz place had waiters?’
‘Good evening,’ said Teatime, putting down the tray.
They stared at him in silence.
He gave them a friendly smile.
5 Chickenwire had got his name from his own individual contribution to the science of this very specialized ‘concrete overshoe’ form of waste disposal. An unfortunate drawback of the process was the tendency for bits of the client to eventually detach and float to the surface, causing much comment in the general population. Enough chickenwire, he’d pointed out, would solve that, while also allowing the ingress of crabs and fish going about their vital recycling activities.
6 Ankh-Morpork’s underworld, which was so big that the overworld floated around on top of it like a very small hen trying to mother a nest of ostrich chicks, already had Big Dave, Fat Dave, Mad Dave, Wee Davey, and Lanky Dai. Everyone had to find their niche.
Peachy’s huge hand slapped the table.
‘You crept up on us, you little- he began.
Men in their line of business develop a certain prescience. Medium Dave and
Catseye, who were sitting on either side of Peachy, leaned away nonchalantly.
‘Hi!’ said Teatime. There was a blur, and a knife shuddered in the table between
Peachy’s thumb and index finger.
He looked down at it in horror.
‘My name’s Teatime,’ said Teatime.’Which one are you?’
‘I’m … Peachy,’ said Peachy, stil staring at the vibrating knife.
‘That’s an interesting name,’ said Teatime. ‘Why are you cal ed Peachy, Peachy?’
Medium Dave coughed.
Peachy looked up into Teatime’s face. The glass eye was a mere bal of faintly
glowing grey. The other eye was a little dot in a sea of white. Peachy’s only contact
with intel igence had been to beat it up and rob it whenever possible, but a sudden
sense of selfpreservation glued him to his chair.
‘ cos I don’t shave,’ he said.
‘Peachy don’t like blades, mister,’ said Catseye.
‘And do you have a lot of friends, Peachy?’ said Teatime.
‘Got a few, yeah.’
With a sudden whirl of movement that made the men start, Teatime spun away,
grabbed a chair, swung it up to the table and sat down on it. Three of them had already
got their hands on their swords.
‘I don’t have many,’ he said, apologetical y. ‘Don’t seem to have the knack. On the
other hand … I don’t seem to have any enemies at al . Not one. Isn’t that nice?’
Teatime had been thinking, in the cracking, buzzing firework display that was his
head. What he had been thinking about was immortality.
He might have been quite, quite insane, but he was no fool. There were, in the
Assassins’ Guild, a number of paintings and busts of famous members who had, in the
past, put … no, of course, that wasn’t right. There were paintings and busts of the
famous clients of members, with a noticeably modest brass plaque screwed
somewhere nearby, bearing some unassuming little comment like ‘Departed this vale
of tears on Grune 3, Year of the Sideways Leech, with the assistance of the Hon. K.
W. Dobson (Viper House)’. Many fine old educational establishments had dignified
memorials in some hal listing the Old Boys who had laid down their lives for monarch
and country. The Guild’s was very similar, except for the question of whose life had
been laid.
Every Guild member wanted to be up there somewhere. Because getting up there
represented immortality. And the bigger your client, the more incredibly discreet and
restrained would be the little brass plaque, so that everyone couldn’t help but notice
your name.
In fact, if you were very, very renowned, they wouldn’t even have to write down your
name at al …
The men around the table watched him. It was always hard to know what Banjo was
thinking, or even if he was thinking at al , but the other
four were thinking along the lines of: bumptious little tit, like al Assassins. Thinks he
knows it al . I could take him down one-handed, no trouble. But … you hear stories.
Those eyes give me the creeps…
‘So what’s the job?’ said Chickenwire.
‘We don’t do jobs,’ said Teatime. ‘We perform services. And the service wil earn
each of you ten thousand dol ars.’
‘That’s a lot more’n Thieves’ Guild rate,’ said Medium Dave.
‘I’ve never liked the Thieves’ Guild,’ said Teatime, without turning his head.
‘Why not?’
‘They ask too many questions.’
‘We don’t ask questions,’ said Chickenwire quickly.
‘We shal suit one another perfectly,’ said Teatime. ‘Do have another drink while we
wait for the other members of our little troupe.’
Chickenwire saw Medium Dave’s lips start to frame the opening letters ‘Who-’ These
letters he deemed inauspicious at this time. He kicked Medium Dave’s leg under the
table.
The door opened slightly. A figure came in, but only just. It inserted itself in the gap
and sidled along the wal in a manner calculated not to attract attention. Calculated,
that is, by someone not good at this sort of calculation.
It looked at them over its turned-up col ar.
‘That’s a wizard,’ said Peachy.
The figure hurried over and dragged up a chair.
‘No I’m not!’ it hissed. ‘I’m incognito!’
‘Right, Mr Gnito,’ said Medium Dave. ‘You’re just someone in a pointy hat. This is my
brother Banjo, that’s Peachy, this is Chick—’
The wizard looked desperately at Teatime.
‘I didn’t want to come!’
‘Mr Sideney here is indeed a wizard,’ said Teatime. ‘A student, anyway. But down on
his luck at the moment, hence his wil ingness to join us on this venture.’
‘Exactly how far down on his luck?’ said Medium Dave.
The wizard tried not to meet anyone’s gaze.
‘I made a misjudgement to do with a wager,’ he said.
‘Lost a bet, you mean?’ said Chickenwire.
‘I paid up on time,’ said Sideney.
‘Yes, but Chrysoprase the trol has this odd little thing about money that turns into
lead the next day,’ said Teatime cheerful y. ‘So our friend needs to earn a little cash in
a hurry and in a climate where arms and legs stay on.’
‘No one said anything about there being magic in al this,’ said Peachy.
‘Our destination is … probably you should think of it as something like a wizard’s
tower, gentlemen,’ said Teatime.
‘It isn’t an actual wizard’s tower, is it?’ said Medium Dave. ‘They got a very odd sense