‘You should’ve been there. You should’ve seen it !’ Moist said to himself. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Across the room, a man hit another man with his own leg and picked up seven points.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘You should have. And three months ago my brother John raised enough to start a rival to the Trunk. That took some doing. Gilt has got tentacles everywhere. Well, John ended up dead in a field. They said he hadn’t clipped his safety rope on. He always did. And now my father just sits and stares at the wall. He even lost his workshop when everything got taken away. We lost our house, of course. Now we live with my aunt in Dolly Sisters. That’s what we’ve come to. When Reacher Gilt talks about freedom he means his, not anyone else’s. And now you pop up, Mr Moist von Lipwig, all shiny and new, running around doing everything at once. Why?’
‘Vetinari offered me the job, that’s all,’ said Moist.
‘Why did you take it?’
‘It was a job for life.’
She stared at Moist so hard that he began to feel uncomfortable. ‘Well, you’ve managed to get a table at Le Foie Heureux at a few hours’ notice,’ she conceded, as a knife struck a beam behind her. ‘Are you still going to lie if I ask you how?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Good. Shall we go?’
A little pressure lamp burned in the stuffy snugness of the locker room, its glow a globe of unusual brilliance. In the centre of it, magnifying glass in hand, Stanley examined his stamps.
This was… heaven. Peas are known for their thoroughness, and Stanley was conscientious in the extreme. Mr Spools, slightly unnerved by his smile, had given him all the test sheets and faulty pages, and Stanley was carefully cataloguing them - how many of each, what the errors were, everything.
A little tendril of guilt was curling through his mind: this was better than pins, it really was. There could be no end to stamps. You could put anything on them. They were amazing. They could move letters around and then you could stick them in a book, all neat. You wouldn’t get ‘pinhead’s thumb’, either.
He’d read about this feeling in the pin magazines. They said you could come unpinned. Girls and marriage were sometimes mentioned in this context. Sometimes an ex-head would sell off his whole collection, just like that. Or at some pin-meet someone would suddenly throw all their pins in the air and run out shouting, ‘Aargh, they’re just pins!’ Up until now, such a thing had been unthinkable to Stanley.
He picked up his little sack of unsorted pins, and stared at it. A few days ago, the mere thought of an evening with his pins would have given him a lovely warm, comfortable feeling inside. But now it was time to put away childish pins.
Something screamed.
It was harsh, guttural, it was malice and hunger given a voice. Small huddling shrew-like creatures had once heard sounds like that, circling over the swamps.
After a moment of ancient terror had subsided, Stanley crept over and opened the door.
‘H-hello?’ he called, into the cavernous darkness of the hall. ‘Is there anyone there?’
There was fortunately no reply, but there was some scrabbling up near the roof.
‘We’re closed, you know,’ he quavered. ‘But we’re open again at seven in the morning for a range of stamps and a wonderful deal on mail to Pseudopolis.’ His voice slowed and his brow creased as he tried to remember everything Mr Lipwig had told them earlier. ‘Remember, we may not be the fastest but we always get there. Why not write to your old granny?’
‘I ate my grandmother,’ growled a voice from high in the darkness. ‘I gnawed her bones.’
Stanley coughed. He had not been trained in the art of salesmanship.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Er… perhaps an aunt, then?’
He wrinkled his nose. Why was there the stink of lamp oil in the air?
‘Hello?’ he said again.
Something dropped out of the dark, bounced off his shoulder and landed on the floor with a wet thud. Stanley reached down, felt around and found a pigeon. At least, he found about half a pigeon. It was still warm, and very sticky.
Mr Gryle sat on a beam high above the hall. His stomach was on fire. It was no good, old habits died too hard. They were bred in the bone. Something warm and feathery fluttered up in front of you and of course you snapped at it. Ankh-Morpork had pigeons roosting on every gutter, cornice and statue. Not even the resident gargoyles could keep them down. He’d had six before he sailed in through the broken dome, and then another huge warm feathery cloud had risen up and a red haze had simply dropped in front of his eyes.
They were so tasty . You couldn’t stop at one! And five minutes later you remembered why you should have done.
These were feral, urban birds, that lived on what they could find on the streets. Ankh-Morpork streets, at that. They were bobbing, cooing plague pits. You might as well eat a dog turd burger and wash it down with a jumbo cup of septic tank.
Mr Gryle groaned. Best to finish the job, get out of here and go and throw up over a busy street. He dropped his oil bottle into the dark and fumbled for his matches. His species had come to fire late, because nests burned too easily, but it did have its uses…
Flame blossomed, high up at the far end of the hall. It dropped from the beams and landed on the stacks of letters. There was a whoomph as the oil caught fire; blue runnels of flame began to climb the walls.
Stanley looked down. A few feet away, lit by the fire crawling across the letters, was a figure curled up on the floor. The golden hat with wings lay next to it.
Stanley looked up, eyes glowing red in the firelight, as a figure swooped from the rafters and sped towards him, mouth open.
And that’s when it all went wrong for Mr Gryle, because Stanley had one of his Little Moments.
Attitude was everything. Moist had studied attitude. Some of the old nobility had it. It was the total lack of any doubt that things would go the way they expected them to go.
The maitre d’ ushered them to their table without a moment’s hesitation.
‘Can you really afford this on a government salary, Mr Lipwig?’ said Miss Dearheart as they sat down. ‘Or are we going to exit via the kitchens?’
‘I believe I have adequate funds,’ said Moist.
He probably hadn’t, he knew. A restaurant that has a waiter even for the mustard stacks up the prices. But right now Moist wasn’t worrying about the bill. There were ways to deal with bills, and it was best to deal with them on a full stomach.
They ordered starters that probably cost more than the weekly food bill for an average man. There was no point in looking for the cheapest thing on the menu. The cheapest thing theoretically existed but somehow, no matter how hard you stared, didn’t quite manage to be there. On the other hand, there were a lot of most expensive things.
‘Are the boys settling in okay?’ said Miss Dearheart.
The boys , Moist thought. ‘Oh, yes. Anghammarad has really taken to it. A natural postman,’ he said.
‘Well, he’s had practice.’
‘What’s that box he’s got riveted to his arm?’
‘That? A message he’s got to deliver. Not the original baked clay tablet, I gather. He’s had to make copies two or three times and the bronze lasts hardly any time at all, to a golem. It’s a message to King Het of Thut from his astrologers on their holy mountain, telling him that the Goddess of the Sea was angry and what ceremonies he’d have to do to placate her.’
‘Didn’t Thut slide into the sea anyway? I thought he said—’
‘Yeah, yeah, Anghammarad got there too late and was swept away by the ferocious tidal wave and the island sank.’
‘So… ?’ said Moist.
‘So what?’ said Miss Dearheart.
‘So… he doesn’t think that delivering it now might be a bit on the tardy side?’
‘No. He doesn’t. You’re not seeing it like a golem. They believe the universe is doughnut-shaped.’
‘Would that be a ring doughnut or a jam doug
hnut?’ said Moist.
‘Ring, definitely, but don’t push for further culinary details, because I can see you’ll try to make a joke of it. They think it has no start or finish. We just keep going round and round, but we don’t have to make the same decisions every time.’
‘Like getting an angel the hard way,’ said Moist.
‘What do you mean?’ said Miss Dearheart.
‘Er… he’s waiting until the whole tidal wave business comes around again and this time he’ll get there earlier and do it right?’
‘Yes. Don’t point out all the flaws in the idea. It works for him.’
‘He’s going to wait for millions and millions of years?’ said Moist.
‘That’s not a flaw, not to a golem. That’s only a matter of time. They don’t get bored. They repair themselves and they’re very hard to shatter. They survive under the sea or in red-hot lava. He might be able to do it, who knows? In the meantime, he keeps himself busy. Just like you, Mr Lipwig. You’ve been very busy—’
She froze, staring over his shoulder. He saw her right hand scrabble frantically among the cutlery and grab a knife.
‘That bastard has just walked into the place!’ she hissed. ‘Readier Gilt! I’ll just kill him and join you for the pudding… ’
‘You can’t do that!’ hissed Moist.
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘You’re using the wrong knife! That’s for the fish! You’ll get into trouble!’
She glared at him, but her hand relaxed and something like a smile appeared.
‘They don’t have a knife for stabbing rich murdering bastards?’ she said.
‘They bring it to the table when you order one,’ said Moist urgently. ‘Look, this isn’t the Drum, they don’t just throw the body on to the river! They’ll call the Watch! Get a grip. Not on the knife! And get ready to run.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I forged his signature on Grand Trunk notepaper to get us in here, that’s why.’
Moist turned round to look at the great man in the flesh for the first time. He was great, a bear-shaped man, in a frock coat big enough for two and a gold-braid waistcoat. And he had a cockatoo on his shoulder, although a waiter was hurrying forward with a shiny brass perch and, presumably, the seed-and-nut menu.
There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed across the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own. Waiters bustled and grovelled and did unimportant things with an air of great importance, and it was probably only a matter of minutes before one of them told Gilt that his other guests had been seated. But Moist was scanning the rest of the room for the— Ah, there they were, two of them. What was it about hired muscle that made it impossible to get a suit to fit?
One was watching the door, one was watching the room, and without a shadow of a doubt there was at least one in the kitchen.
—and, yes, the maitre d’ was earning his tip by assuring the great man that his friends had been duly looked after—
—the big head, with its leonine mane, turned to stare at Moist’s table—
—Miss Dearheart murmured, ‘Oh gods, he’s coming over!’—
—and Moist stood up. The hired fists had shifted position. They wouldn’t actually do anything in here, but nor would anyone else be worried if he was escorted out with speed and firmness for a little discussion in some alley somewhere. Gilt was advancing between the tables, leaving his puzzled guests behind.
This was a job for people skills, or diving through the window. But Gilt would have to be at least marginally polite. People were listening.
‘Mr Reacher Gilt?’ said Moist.
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Gilt, grinning without a trace of humour. ‘But you appear to have me at a disadvantage.’
T do hope not, sir,’ said Moist.
‘It appears that I asked the restaurant to retain a table for you, Mr… Lipwig?’
‘Did you, Mr Gilt?’ said Moist, with what he knew was remarkably persuasive innocence. ‘We arrived in the hope that there might be a spare table and were astonished to find there was!’
‘Then at least one of us has been made a fool of, Mr Lipwig,’ said Gilt. ‘But tell me… are you truly Mr Moist von Lipwig the postmaster?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Without your hat?’
Moist coughed. ‘It’s not actually compulsory,’ he said.
The big face observed him in silence, and then a hand like a steel-worker’s glove was thrust forward.
‘I am very pleased to meet you at last, Mr Lipwig. I trust your good luck will continue.’
Moist took the hand and, instead of the bone-crushing grip he was expecting, felt the firm handshake of an honourable man and looked into the steady, honest, one-eyed gaze of Reacher Gilt.
Moist had worked hard at his profession and considered himself pretty good at it but, if he had been wearing his hat, he would have taken it off right now. He was in the presence of a master. He could feel it in the hand, see it in that one commanding eye. Were things otherwise, he would have humbly begged to be taken on as an apprentice, scrub the man’s floors, cook his food, just to sit at the feet of greatness and learn how to do the three card trick using whole banks. If Moist was any judge, any judge at all, the man in front of him was the biggest fraud he’d ever met. And he advertised it. That was… style. The pirate curls, the eyepatch, even the damn parrot. Twelve and a half per cent, for heavens’ sake, didn’t anyone spot that? He told them what he was, and they laughed and loved him for it. It was breathtaking. If Moist von Lipwig had been a career killer, it would have been like meeting a man who’d devised a way to destroy civilizations.
All this came in an instant, in one bolt of understanding, in the glint of an eye. But something ran in front of it as fast as a little fish ahead of a shark.
Gilt was shocked , not surprised. That tiny moment was barely measurable on any clock but just for an instant the world had gone wrong for Reacher Gilt. That moment had been wiped out so competently that all that remained of it was Moist’s certainty that it had happened, but the certainty was rigid.
He was loath to let go of the hand in case there was a flash that might broil him alive. After all, he had recognized the nature of Gilt, so the man must certainly have spotted him.
‘Thank you, Mr Gilt,’ he said.
‘I gather you were kind enough to carry some of our messages today,’ Gilt rumbled.
‘It was a pleasure, sir. If ever you need our help, you only have to ask.’
‘Hmm,’ said Gilt. ‘But the least I can do is buy you dinner, Postmaster. The bill will come to my table. Choose whatever you wish. And now, if you will excuse me, I must attend to my… other guests.’
He bowed to the simmering Miss Dearheart and walked back.
‘The management would like to thank you for not killing the guests,’ said Moist, sitting down. ‘Now we should—’
He stopped, and stared.
Miss Dearheart, who had been saving up to hiss at him, took one look at his face and hesitated.
‘Are you ill?’ she said.
‘They’re… burning,’ said Moist, his eyes widening.
‘Ye gods, you’ve gone white!’
‘The writing… they’re screaming… I can smell burning!’
‘Someone over there is having crepes,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘It’s just—’ She stopped, and sniffed. ‘It smells like paper , though… ’
People looked round as Moist’s chair crashed backwards.
‘The Post Office is on fire! I know it is!’ he shouted, and turned and ran.
Miss Dearheart caught up just as he was in the hall, where one of Gilt’s bodyguards had grabbed him. She tapped the man on the shoulder and, as he turned to push her away, stamped down heavily. While he screamed she dragged the bewildered Moist away.
‘Water… we’ve got to get water,’ he groaned. ‘They’re burning! They’re all burning!�
�
Chapter Ten
The Burning of Words
In which Stanley remains Calm - Moist the Hero - Searching for a Cat, never a good idea - Something in the Dark - Mr Gryle is encountered - Fire and Water - Mr Lipwig Helps the Watch - Dancing on the edge — Mr Lipwig Gets Religion — Opportunity Time - Miss Maccalariat’s hairgrip - The Miracle
The letters burned.
Part of the ceiling fell down, showering more letters on to the flames. The fire was already reaching for the upper floors. As Stanley dragged Mr Groat across the floor another slab of plaster smashed on the tiles and the old mail that poured down after it was already burning. Smoke, thick as soup, rolled across the distant ceiling.
Stanley pulled the old man into the locker room and laid him on his bed. He rescued the golden hat, too, because Mr Lipwig would be bound to be angry if he didn’t. Then he shut the door and took down, from the shelf over Groat’s desk, the Book of Regulations. He turned the pages methodically until he came to the bookmark he’d put in a minute ago, on the page What To Do In Case Of Fire.
Stanley always followed the rules. All sorts of things could go wrong if you didn’t.
Going Postal Page 24