by The Wit
† The better class of gods, anyway. Not the ones with the tentacles, obviously
TIFFANY Aching put one foot wrong, made one little mistake …
And now the spirit of winter is in lo love with her her. He give her roses and iceber icebergs, says it with avalanches and showers her with snowflakes – which is tough when you’re thirteen, but also just a little bit … cool.
And just because the Wintersmith wants to marry you is no excuse for neglecting the chores. So she must look after Miss Treason, who’s 113 and has far too many eyes, learn the secret of Boffo, catch Horace the cheese, stop Annagramm Hawkin from becoming an embarrassment to all witches, avoid Nanny Ogg giving her a lecture on sex, stop the gods from seeing her in the bath—
‘Crivens!’
—oh, yes, and be helped by the Nac Mac Feegles, whether she wants it or not.
It’s unfair, but as Granny Weatherwax says, no one ever said it was going to be fair. And if Tiffany doesn’t work it all out, there will never be another springtime …
When the gods made sheep they must’ve left their brains in their other coat.
‘Cackling’, to a witch, didn’t just mean nasty laughter. It meant your mind drifting away from its anchor. It meant you losing your grip. It meant loneliness and hard work and responsibility and other people’s problems driving you crazy a little bit at a time, each bit so small that you’d hardly notice it, until you thought that it was normal to stop washing and wear a kettle on your head. It meant you thinking that the fact you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. It meant thinking that right and wrong were negotiable. And, in the end, it meant you ‘going to the dark’, as the witches said. That was a bad road. At the end of that road were poisoned spinning-wheels and gingerbread cottages.
*
Everyone had something inside them that told the world they were there. That was why you could often sense when someone was behind you, even if they were making no sound at all. You were receiving their ‘I am here!’ signal.
Some people had a very strong one. They were the people who got served first in shops. Granny Weatherwax had an ‘I am here’ signal that bounced off the mountains when she wanted it to; when she walked into a forest, all the wolves and bears ran out the other side.
*
Mrs Earwig was all wrong to Granny Weatherwax. She wasn’t born locally, which was almost a crime to begin with. She wrote books, and Granny Weatherwax didn’t trust books. And Mrs Earwig believed in shiny wands and magical amulets and mystic runes and the power of the stars, while Granny Weatherwax believed in cups of tea, dry biscuits, washing every morning in cold water and, well, she believed mostly in Granny Weatherwax.
*
Most witches liked black, but Miss Treason even had black goats and black chickens. The walls were black. The floor was black. If you dropped a stick of liquorice, you’d never find it again. And, to Tiffany’s dismay, she had to make her cheeses black, which meant painting the cheeses with shiny black wax. It did keep them moist, but Tiffany distrusted black cheeses. They always looked as though they were plotting something.
*
‘Gods, elementals, demons, spirits … sometimes it’s hard to tell ‘em apart wi’oot a map.’
*
You could hear the snow falling. It made a strange little noise, like a faint, cold sizzle.
*
The Chalk Hill Feegles were more at home with the drinkin’, stealin’ and fightin’, and Rob Anybody was good at all three. But he’d learned to read and write because Jeannie had asked him to. He did them with a lot more optimism than accuracy. When he was faced with a long sentence he tended to work out a few words and then have a great big guess.
*
The white kitten watched the snowflakes. It was called You, as in ‘You! Stop that!’ and ‘You! Get off there!’ When it came to names, Granny Weatherwax didn’t do fancy.
*
‘The important thing,’ said Miss Treason, ‘is to stay the passage of the wind. You should avoid rumbustious fruits and vegetables. Beans are the worst, take it from me.’
‘I don’t think I understand—’ Tiffany began.
‘Try not to fart, in a nutshell.’
‘In a nutshell I imagine it would be pretty unpleasant!’ said Tiffany, nervously.
*
The Feegles didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear’. Sometimes Tiffany wished they’d read a dictionary. They fought like tigers, they fought like demons, they fought like giants. What they didn’t do was fight like something with more than a spoonful of brain.
*
Nanny Ogg was good at listening, at least. She listened like a great big ear, and before Tiffany realized it she was telling her everything. Everything. Nanny sat on the opposite side of the big kitchen table, puffing gently at a pipe with a hedgehog carved on it. Sometimes she’d ask a little question, like ‘Why was that?’ or ‘And then what happened?’ and off they’d go again. Nanny’s friendly little smile could drag out of you things you didn’t know you knew.
*
From the best chair in the room of ornaments, a large grey cat watched Tiffany with a half-open eye that glinted with absolute evil. Nanny had referred to him as ‘Greebo … don’t mind him, he’s just a big old softie,’ which Tiffany knew enough to interpret as ‘He’ll have his claws in your leg if you go anywhere near him.’
It was hard to be embarrassed by Nanny Ogg, because her laugh drove it away She wasn’t embarrassed about anything.
She opened the cutlery drawer for a spoon. It stuck. She rattled it, pulled at it and swore a few times, but it stayed stuck.
‘Oh, yes, go ahead,’ said a voice behind her. ‘See how much help that is. Don’t be sensible and stick your hand under the top and carefully free up the stuck item. Oh no. Rattle and curse, that’s the way!’
Tiffany turned.
There was a skinny, tired-looking woman standing by the kitchen table. She seemed to be wearing a sheet draped around her and was smoking a cigarette. Tiffany had never seen a woman smoke a cigarette before, but especially never a cigarette that burned with a fat red flame and gave off sparks.
‘Who are you?’ she said sharply.
‘Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck In Drawers,’ said the woman. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘There’s a goddess just for that?’ said Tiffany.
‘Well, I find lost corkscrews and things that roll under furniture,’ said Anoia, off-handedly ‘They want me to do stuck zips, and I’m thinking about that. But mostly I manifest whensoever people rattle stuck drawers and call upon the gods.’ She puffed on her cigarette. ‘Got any tea?’
‘But I didn’t call on anyone!’
‘You did,’ said Anoia. ‘You cussed. Sooner or later, every curse is a prayer.’ She waved the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette and something in the drawer went pling. ‘It’ll be all right now. It was the fish slice. Everyone has one, and no one knows why. Did anyone in the world ever knowingly go out one day and buy a fish slice? I don’t think so.’
Annagramma was as vain as a canary in a room full of mirrors.
Roland tugged the sword out of its scabbard. It was heavy and not at all like the flying, darting silver thing that he’d imagined. It was more like a metal club with an edge.
He gripped it in both hands and managed to hurl it out into the middle of the slow, dark river.
Just before it hit the water a white arm rose and caught it. The hand waved the sword a couple of times, and then disappeared with it under the water.
‘Was that supposed to happen?’ he said.
‘A man throwin’ his sword awa’?’ yelled Rob. ‘No! Ye’re no’ supposed tae bung a guid sword intae the drinkie!’ ‘No, I mean the hand,’ said Roland. ‘It just—’
‘Ach, they turn up sometimes.’ Rob Anybody waved a hand as if midstream underwater sword jugglers were an everyday occurrence.
*
When the noise had died down
a bit the drummer beat the drum a few times and the accordionist played a long drawn-out chord, the legal signal that a Morris Dance is about to begin, and people who hang around have only got themselves to blame.
IT’S an offer y you can’t refuse.
Who would not wish to be the man in charge of Ankh-Morpork’s Royal Mint and the bank next door?
It’s a job for life. But, as former conman Moist von Lipwig is learning, life is not necessarily for long.
The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire. There’s something nameless in the cellar (and the cellar itself is pretty nameless), and it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss. A three-hundred-year-old wizar is after his girlfriend, he’s about to be exposed as a fraud, but the Assassins’ Guild might get him first. In fact, lots of people want him dead.
Oh. And every day he has to take the Chairman for walkies.
Everywhere he look looks he’s making enemies.
What he should be doing is … Making Money!
The Guild of Thieves paid a twenty-dollar bounty fee for a non-accredited thief brought in alive, and there were oh, so many ways of still being alive when you were dragged in and poured out on the floor.
*
‘You Have An Appointment Now With Lord Vetinari,’ said the golem.
‘I’m sure I don’t.’
‘There Are Two Guards Outside Who Are Sure You Do.’
*
Lord Vetinari lifted an eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his salad, raises the rest of the lettuce.
*
‘[The bank] was built as a temple, but never used as one.’
‘Really?’ said Moist. ‘Which god?’
‘None, as it turned out. One of the kings of Ankh commanded it to be built about nine hundred years ago,’ said Bent. ‘I suppose it was a case of speculative building. That is to say, he had no god in mind.’
‘He hoped one would turn up?’
‘Exactly sir.’
‘Like bluetits?’ said Moist, peering around. ‘This place was a kind of celestial bird box?’
*
‘It costs more than a penny to make a penny’ Moist murmured. ‘Is it just me, or is that wrong?’
‘But, you see, once you have made it, a penny keeps on being a penny’ said Mr Bent. ‘That’s the magic of it.’
‘It is?’ said Moist. ‘Look, it’s a copper disc. What do you expect it to become?’
‘In the course of a year, just about everything,’ said Mr Bent, smoothly. ‘It becomes some apples, part of a cart, a pair of shoelaces, some hay, an hour’s occupancy of a theatre seat. It may even become a stamp and send a letter, Mr Lipwig. It might be spent three hundred times and yet - and this is the good part - it is still one penny, ready and willing to be spent again. It is not an apple, which will go bad. Its worth is fixed and stable. It is not consumed.’
*
Mr Fusspot was the smallest and ugliest dog Moist had ever seen. It reminded him of those goldfish with the huge bulging eyes that look as though they are about to explode. Its nose, on the other hand, looked stoved in. It wheezed, and its legs were so bandy that it must sometimes trip over its own feet.
The dog gave a little yappy bark and then covered Moist’s face in all that was best in dog slobber.
*
‘I don’t really understand how banks work.’
‘How do you think they work?’
‘Well, you take rich people’s money and lend it to suitable people at interest, and give as little as possible of the interest back.’
‘Yes, and what is a suitable person?’
‘Someone who can prove they don’t need the money?’
*
‘Old money’ meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds which had originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. Funny, that: a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and rogue was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of.
*
‘I did not become ruler of Ankh-Morpork by understanding the city. Like banking, the city is depressingly easy to understand. I have remained ruler by getting the city to understand me.’
The city bleeds, Mr Lipwig, and you are the clot I need..
The lady in the boardroom 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.
*
‘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? 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. 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 for ever. Bury a potato and in due season you could be looking at a dividend of a thousand per cent.’
*
‘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?’
‘Indeed.’
*
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.
*
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?
*
Claud 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 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.
*
The Watch armour fitted like a glove. He’d have preferred it to fit like a helmet and breastplate. It was common knowledge that the Watch’s approach to uniforms was one-size-doesn’t-exactly-fit-anybody and that Commander Vimes disapproved of armour that didn’t have that kicked-by-trolls look. He liked it to make it clear that it had been doing its job.
‘I’m an Igor, thur. We don’t athk quethtionth.’
‘Really? Why not?’
‘I don’t know, thur. I didn’t athk.’
Students, eh? Love ’em or hate ’em, you�
�re not allowed to hit ’em with a shovel.
‘I’m afraid I have to close the office now, reverend.’ The voice of Ms Houser broke into Cribbins’s dreams …
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.
*
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.
*
The price of a good woman was proverbially above rubies, so a bad one was presumably a lot more.
*
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!’
*
All heads turned. A path [in the crowd] cleared itself for Lord Vetinari; paths do for men known to have dungeons in their basements.
*
‘The law must be obeyed, Miss Dearheart [said Lord Vetinari]. 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.’
*
It was 6 a.m., and the fog seemed glued to the windows, so thick that it should have contained croutons.
*
‘Is he allowed to do that?’
‘I think that comes under the rule of Quia Ego Sic Dico.’
‘Yes, what does 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.’
*
‘Every problem is an opportunity,’ said Moist.
‘Well, if you upset Vetinari again you will have a wonderful opportunity to never have to buy a hat.’