A thumb pressed against two fingers, and the lean figure of Dr Cruces, head tutor, looming over the startled boys. ‘We do not murder,’ he said. It was a soft voice; the doctor never raised his voice, but he had a way of giving it the pitch and spin that could make it be heard through a hurricane. ‘We do not execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or for petty advantage or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all these reasons are in the highest degree suspect. Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the click of evil’s scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language.
‘No, we do it for the money.
‘And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for the a great deal of money.
‘There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of all pretence.
‘Nil mortifi, sine lucre. Remember. No killing without payment.’
He paused for a moment.
‘And always give a reciept,’ he added.
‘So it’s all okay,’ said Chidder. Teppic nodded gloomily. That was what was so likeable about Chidder. He had this enviable ability to avoid thinking seriously about anything he did.
A figure approached cautiously through the open gates.[7]
The light from the torch in the porters’ lodge glinted off blond curly hair.
‘You two made it, then,’ said Arthur, nonchalantly flourishing the slip.
Arthur had changed quite a lot in seven years. The continuing failure of the Great Orm to wreak organic revenge for lack of piety had cured him of his tendency to run everywhere with his coat over his head. His small size gave him a natural advantage in those areas of the craft involving narrow spaces. His innate aptitude for channelled violence had been revealed on the day when Fliemoe and some cronies had decided it would be fun to toss the new boys in a blanket, and picked Arthur first; ten seconds later it had taken the combined efforts of every boy in the dormitory to hold Arthur back and prise the remains of the chair from his fingers. It had transpired that he was the son of the late Johan Ludorum, one of the greatest assasins in the history of the Guild. Sons of dead assasins always got a free scholarship. Yes, it could be a caring profession at times.
There hadn’t been any doubt about Arthur passing. He’d been given extra tuition and was allowed to use really complicated poisons. He was probably going to stay on for post-graduate work.
They waited until the gongs of the city struck two. Clock work was not a precise technology in Ankh-Morpork, and many of the city’s variuos communities had their own ideas of what constituted an hour in any case, so the chimes went on bouncing around the rooftops for five minutes.
When it was obvious that the city’s consensus was in favour of it being well past two the three of them stopped looking silently at their shoes.
‘Well, that’s it,’ said Chidder.
‘Poor old Cheesewright,’ said Arthur. ‘It’s tragic, when you think about it.’
‘Yes, he owed me fourpence,’ agreed Chidder. ‘Come on. I’ve arranged something for us.’
King Teppicymon XXVII got out of bed and clapped his hands over his ears to shut out the roar of the sea. It was strong tonight.
It was always louder when he was feeling out of sorts. He needed something to distract himself. He could send for Ptraci, his favourite handmaiden. She was special. Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped.
Or there was the sunrise. That was always comforting. It was pleasant to sit wrapped in a blanket on the topmost roof of the palace, watching the mists lift from the river as the golden flood poured over the land. You got that warm, contented feeling of another job well done. Even if you didn’t actually know how you’d done it . . .
He got up, shuffled on his slippers, and padded out of his bedroom and down the wide corridor that led to the huge spiral stairs and the roof. A few rushlights illuminated the statues of the other local gods, painting the walls with shifting shadow pictures of things dog-headed, fish-bodied, spider-armed. He’d known them since childhood. His juvenile nightmares would have been quite formless without them.
The sea. He’d only seen it once, when he was a boy. He couldn’t recall a lot about it, except the size. And the noise. And the seagulls.
They’d preyed on his mind. They seemed to have it far better worked out, seagulls. He wished he could come back as one, one day, but of course that wasn’t an option if you were a pharaoh. You never came back. You didn’t exactly go away, in fact.
‘Well, what is it?’ said Teppic.
‘Try it,’ said Chidder, ‘just try it. You’ll never have the chance again.’
‘Seems a shame to spoil it,’ said Arthur gallantly looking down at the delicate pattern on his plate. ‘What are all the little red things?’
‘They’re just radishes,’ said Chidder dismissively. ‘They’re not the important part. Go on.’
Teppic reached over with the little wooden fork and skewered a paper-thin sliver of white fish. The squishi chef was scrutinising him with the air of one watching a toddler on his first birthday. So, he realised, was the rest of the restaurant.
He chewed it carefully. It was salty and faintly rubbery, with a hint of sewage outfall.
‘Nice?’ said Chidder anxiously. Several nearby diners started to clap.
‘Different,’ Teppic conceded, chewing. ‘What is it?’
‘Deep sea blowfish,’ said Chidder.
‘It’s all right,’ he said hastily as Teppic laid down his fork meaningfully, ‘it’s perfectly safe provided every bit of stomach, liver and digestive tract is removed, that’s why it cost so much, there’s no such thing as a second-best blowfish chef, it’s the most expensive food in the world, people write poems about it-‘
‘Could be a taste explosion,’ muttered Teppic, getting a grip on himself. Still, it must have been done properly, otherwise the place would now be wearing him as wallpaper. He poked carefully at the sliced roots which occupied the rest of the plate.
‘What do these do to you?’ he said.
‘Well, unless they’re prepared in exactly the right way over a six-week period they react catastrophically with your stomach acids,’ said Chidder. ‘Sorry. I thought we should celebrate with the most expensive meal we could afford.’
‘I see. Fish and chips for Men,’ said Teppic.
‘Do they have any vinegar in this place?’ said Arthur, his mouth full. ‘And some mushy peas would go down a treat.’
But the wine was good. Not incredibly good, though. Not one of the great vintages. But it did explain why Teppic had gone through the whole of the day with a headache.
It had been the hangunder. His friend had bought four bottles of otherwise quite ordinary white wine. The reason it was so expensive was that the grapes it was made from hadn’t actually been planted yet.[8]
Light moves slowly, lazily on the Disc. It’s in no hurry to get anywhere. Why bother? At lightspeed, everywhere is the same place.
King Teppicymon XXVII watched the golden disc float over the edge of the world. A flight of cranes took off from the mist-covered river.
He’d been conscientious, he told himself. No-one had ever explained to him how one made the sun come up and the river flood and the corn grow. How could they? He was the god, after all. He should know. But he didn’t, so he’d just gone through life hoping like hell that it would all work properly, and that seemed to have done the trick. The trouble was, though, that if it didn’t work, he wouldn’t know why not. A recurrent nightmare was of Dios the high priest shaking him awake one morning, only it wouldn’t be a morning, of course, and of every light in the palace burning and an angry crowd muttering in the star-lit darkness outside and everyone looking expectantly at him..
And all he’d be able to say was, ‘Sorry’.
It terrified him. How easy to imagine the ice forming on the river, the eternal frost riming the palm trees and snapping off the leaves (which would smash when they hit the frozen ground) and the birds dropping lifeless from the sky
Shadow swept over him. He looked up through eyes misted with tears at a grey and empty horizon, his mouth dropping open in horror.