‘Right here and now is ven you vant the picture?’ said Otto, anxiety hanging off every syllable.
‘Right now, yes!’
‘As a matter of fact, there is a swede coming along that I’ve got great hopes of–‘ Mr Wintler began.
‘Oh, veil. . . if you vill look zis vay, Mr Vintler,’ said Otto. He got behind the iconograph and uncovered the lens. William got a glimpse of the imp peering out, brush poised. In his spare hand Otto slowly held up, on a stick, a cage containing a fat and drowsing salamander, finger poised on the trigger that would bring a small hammer down on its head just hard enough to annoy it.
‘Be smiling, please!’
‘Hold on,’ said Sacharissa. ‘Should a vampire really–?’
Click.
The salamander flared, etching the room with searing white light and dark shadows.
Otto screamed. He fell to the floor, clutching at his throat. He sprang to his feet, goggle-eyed and gasping, and staggered, knock-kneed and wobbly-legged, the length of the room and back again. He sank down behind a desk, scattering paperwork with a wildly flailing hand.
‘Aarghaarghaaargh . . .’
And then there was a shocked silence.
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Otto stood up, adjusted his cravat and dusted himself off. Only then did he look up at the row of shocked faces.
‘Veil?’ he said sternly. ‘Vot are you all looking at? It is just a normal reaction, zat is all. I am vorking on it. Light in all its forms is mine passion. Light is my canvas, shadows are my brush.’
‘But strong light hurts you!’ said Sacharissa. ‘It hurts vampires!’
‘Yes. It iss a bit of a bugger, but zere you go.’
‘And, er, that happens every time you take a picture, does it?’ said William.
‘No, sometimes it iss a lot vorse.’
‘Worse?’
‘I sometimes crumble to dust. But zat vich does not kill us makes us stronk.’
‘Stronk?’
‘Indeed!’
William caught Sacharissa’s gaze. Her look said it all: we’ve hired him. Have we got the heart to fire him now? And don’t make fun of his accent unless your Uberwaldean is really good, okay?
Otto adjusted the iconograph and inserted a fresh sheet.
‘And now, shall ve try vun more?’ he said brightly. ‘And zis time – everybody smile!’
~blk~
Mail was arriving. William was used to a certain amount, usually from clients of his news letter complaining that he hadn’t told them about the double-headed giants, plagues and rains of domestic animals that they had heard had been happening in Ankh-Morpork; his father had been right about one thing, at least, when he’d asserted that lies could run round the world before the truth could get its boots on. And it was amazing how people wanted to believe them.
These were . . . well, it was as if he’d shaken a tree and all the nuts had fallen out. Several letters were complaining that there had been much colder winters than this, although no two of them could agree when it was. One said vegetables were not as funny as they used to be, especially leeks. Another asked what the Guild of Thieves was doing about unlicensed crime in the city. There was one saying that all these robberies were down to dwarfs who
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shouldn’t be allowed into the city to steal the work out of honest humans’ mouths.
‘Put a title like “Letters” on the top and put them in,’ said William. ‘Except the one about the dwarfs. That sounds like Mr Windling. It sounds like my father, too, except that at least he can spell “undesirable” and wouldn’t use crayon.’
‘Why not that letter?’
‘Because it’s offensive.’
‘Some people think it’s true, though,’ said Sacharissa. ‘There’s been a lot of trouble.’
‘Yes, but we shouldn’t print it.’
William called Goodmountain over and showed him the letter. The dwarf read it.
‘Put it in,’ he suggested. ‘It’ll fill a few inches.’
‘But people will object,’ said William.
‘Good. Put their letters in, too.’
Sacharissa sighed. ‘We’ll probably need them,’ she said. ‘William, grandfather says no one in the Guild will engrave the iconographs for us.’
‘Why not? We can afford the rates.’
‘We’re not Guild members. It’s all getting unpleasant. Will you tell Otto?’
William sighed and walked over to the ladder.
The dwarfs used the cellar as a bedroom, being naturally happier with a floor over their heads. Otto had been allowed to use a dank corner, which he’d made his own by hanging an old sheet across on a rope.
‘Oh, hello, Mr Villiam,’ he said, pouring something noxious from one bottle into another.
‘I’m afraid it looks as if we won’t get anyone to engrave your pictures,’ said William.
The vampire seemed unmoved by this. ‘Yes, I vundered about zat.’
‘So I’m sorry to say that–‘
‘No problem, Mr Villiam. Zere is alvays a yay.’
‘How? You can’t engrave, can you?’
‘No, but . . . all ve are printing is black and vite, yes? And zer
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paper is vite zo all ve are really printink is black, okay? I looked at how zer dvarfs do zer letters, and zey haf all zese bits of metal lying around and . . . you know how zer engravers can engrave metal viz acid?’
‘Yes?’
‘Zo, all I haf to do is teach zer imps to paint viz acid. End of problem. Getting grey took a bit of thought, but I zink I haf–‘
‘You mean you can get the imps to etch the picture straight on to a plate?’
‘Yes. It is vun of those ideas that are obvious ven you zink about it.’ Otto looked wistful. ‘And I zink about light all zer time. All zer . . . time.’
William vaguely remembered something someone had once said: the only thing more dangerous than a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom window open was channelled into some other interest, with merciless and painstaking efficiency.
‘Er, why do you need to work in a dark room, though?’ he said. ‘The imps don’t need it, do they?’
‘Ah, zis is for my experiment,’ said Otto proudly. ‘You know zat another term for an iconographer would be “photographer”? From the old word photus in Latation, vhich means–‘
‘ “To prance around like a pillock ordering everyone about as if you owned the place”,’ said William.
‘Ah, you know it!’
William nodded. He’d always wondered about that word.
‘Veil, I am vorking on an obscurograph,’
William’s forehead wrinkled. It was turning into a long day. Taking pictures with darkness?’ he ventured.
‘Viz true darkness, to be precise,’ said Otto, excitement entering his voice. ‘Not just absence of light. Zer light on zer ozzer side of darkness. You could call it . . . living darkness. Ve can’t see it, but imps can. Did you know zer Uberwaldean Deep Cave land eel emits a burst of dark light ven startled?’
William glanced at a large glass jar on the bench. A couple of ugly things were coiled up in the bottom.
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‘And that will work, will it?’
‘I zink so. Hold it vun minute.’
‘I really ought to be getting back–‘
‘Zis vill not take a second
Otto gently lifted one of the eels out of its jar and put it into the hod usually occupied by a salamander. He carefully aimed one of his iconographs at William and nodded.
‘Vun . . . two . . . three . . . BOO!’
There was–
–there was a soft noiseless implosion, a very brief sensation of the world being screwed up small, frozen, smashed into tiny little sharp pins and hammered through every cell of William’s body.* Then the gloom of the cellar flowed back.
‘That was . . . very strange,’ said William, blinking. ‘It was like something very cold walking through me.’
‘Much may be learnt about dark light now ve have left our disgusting past behind us and haf emerged into zer bright new future vhere ve do not zink about zer b-vord all day in any vay at all,’ said Otto,’fiddling with the iconograph. He looked hard at the picture the imp had painted and then glanced up at William. ‘Oh veil, back to zer drawink board,’ he said.
‘Can I see?’
‘It vould embarrass me,’ said Otto, putting the square of cardboard down on his makeshift bench. ‘All zer time I am doing things wronk.’
‘Oh, but I’d–‘
‘Mister de Worde, dere’s something happening!’
The bellow came from Rocky, whose head eclipsed the hole.
‘What is it?’
‘Something at der palace. Someone’s been killed!’
William sprang up the ladder. Sacharissa was sitting at her desk, looking pale.
‘Someone’s assassinated Vetinari?’ said William.
‘Er, no,’ said Sacharissa. ‘Not . . . exactly,’
Down in the cellar Otto Chriek picked up the dark light
~blk~~foot~
* In many ways William de Worde had quite a graphic imagination.