Pyramids tds-7 Read online

  But everyone agreed that the assassins' school offered the best all-round education in the world. A qualified assassin should be at home in any company, and able to play at least one musical instrument. Anyone inhumed by a graduate of the Guild school could go to his rest satisfied that he had been annulled by someone of taste and discretion.

  And, after all, what was there for him at home? A kingdom two miles wide and one hundred and fifty miles long, which was almost entirely under water during the flood season, and threatened on either side by stronger neighbours who tolerated its existence only because they'd be constantly at war if it wasn't there.

  Oh, Djelibeybi3 had been great once, when upstarts like Tsort and Ephebe were just a bunch of nomads with their towels on their heads. All that remained of those great days was the ruinously-expensive palace, a few dusty ruins in the desert and — the pharaoh sighed — the pyramids. Always the pyramids.

  His ancestors had been keen on pyramids. The pharaoh wasn't. Pyramids had bankrupted the country, drained it drier than ever the river did. The only curse they could afford to put on a tomb these days was 'Bugger Off'.

  The only pyramids he felt comfortable about were the very small ones at the bottom of the garden, built every time one of the cats died.

  He'd promised the boy's mother.

  He missed Artela. There'd been a terrible row about taking a wife from outside the Kingdom, and some of her foreign ways had puzzled and fascinated even him. Maybe it was from her he'd got the strange dislike of pyramids; in Djelibeybi that was like disliking breathing. But he'd promised that Pteppic could go to school outside the kingdom. She'd been insistent about that. 'People never learn anything in this place,' she'd said. 'They only remember things.'

  If only she'd remembered about not swimming in the river .

  He watched two of the servants load Teppic's trunk on to the back of the coach, and for the first time either of them could remember laid a paternal hand on his son's shoulder.

  In fact he was at a loss for something to say. We've never really had time to get to know one another, he thought. There's so much I could have given him. A few bloody good hidings wouldn't have come amiss.

  'Urn,' he said. 'Well, my boy.'

  'Yes, father?'

  'This is, er, the first time you've been away from home by yourself'

  'No, father. I spent last summer with Lord Fhem-pta-hem, you remember.'

  'Oh, did you?' The pharaoh recalled the palace had seemed quieter at the time. He'd put it down to the new tapestries.

  'Anyway,' he said, 'you're a young man, nearly thirteen-'

  'Twelve, father,' said Teppic patiently.

  'Are you sure?'

  'It was my birthday last month, father. You bought me a warming pan.'

  'Did I? How singular. Did I say why?'

  'No, father.' Teppic looked up at his father's mild, puzzled features. 'It was a very good warming pan,' he added reassuringly. 'I like it a lot.'

  'Oh. Good. Er.' His majesty patted his son's shoulder again, in a vague way, like a man drumming his fingers on his desk while trying to think. An idea appeared to occur to him.

  The servants had finished strapping the trunk on to the roof of the coach and the driver was patiently holding open the door.

  'When a young man sets out in the world,' said his majesty uncertainly, 'there are, well, it's very important that he remembers . . . The point is, that it is a very big world after all, with all sorts. . . And of course, especially so in the city, where there are many additional . . . ' He paused, waving one hand vaguely in the air.

  Teppic took it gently.

  'It's quite all right, father,' he said. 'Dios the high priest explained to me about taking regular baths, and not going blind.'

  His father blinked at him.

  'You're not going blind?' he said.

  'Apparently not, father.'

  'Oh. Well. Jolly good,' said the king. 'Jolly, jolly good. That is good news.'

  'I think I had better be going, father. Otherwise I shall miss the tide.'

  His majesty nodded, and patted his pockets.

  'There was something. . . 'he muttered, and then tracked it down, and slipped a small leather bag into Teppic's pocket. He tried the shoulder routine again.

  'A little something,' he murmured. 'Don't tell your aunt. Oh, you can't, anyway. She's gone for a lie-down. It's all been rather too much for her.'

  All that remained then was for Teppic to go and sacrifice a chicken at the statue of Khuft, the founder of Djelibeybi, so that his ancestor's guiding hand would steer his footsteps in the world. It was only a small chicken, though, and when Khuft had finished with it the king had it for lunch.

  Djelibeybi really was a small, self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of Frog4.

  That evening, when they were well outside the delta of the Djel and heading across the Circle Sea to Ankh-Morpork, Teppic remembered the bag and examined its contents. With love, but also with his normal approach to things, his father had presented him with a cork, half a tin of saddlesoap, a small bronze coin of uncertain denomination, and an extremely elderly sardine.

  It is a well-known fact that when one is about to die the senses immediately become excruciatingly sharp and it has always been believed that this is to enable their owner to detect any possible exit from his predicament other than the obvious one.

  This is not true. The phenomenon is a classical example of displacement activity. The senses are desperately concentrating on anything apart from the immediate problem — which in Teppic's case consisted of a broad expanse of cobblestones some eighty feet away and closing — in the hope that it will go away.

  The trouble is that it soon will.

  Whatever the reason, Teppic was suddenly acutely aware of things around him. The way the moonlight glowed on the rooftops. The smell of fresh bread wafting from a nearby bakery. The whirring of a cockchafer as it barrelled past his ear, upwards. The sound of a baby crying, in the distance, and the bark of a dog. The gentle rush of the air, with particular reference to its thinness and lack of handholds.

  There had been more than seventy of them enrolling that year. The Assassins didn't have a very strenuous entrance examination; the school was easy to get into, easy to get out of (the trick was to get out upright). The courtyard in the centre of the Guild buildings was thronged with boys who all had two things in common

  — overlarge trunks, which they were sitting on, and clothes that had been selected for them to grow into, and which they were more or less sitting in. Some optimists had brought weapons with them, which were confiscated and sent home over the next few weeks.

  Teppic watched them carefully. There were distinct advantages to being the only child of parents too preoccupied with their own affairs to worry much about him, or indeed register his existence for days at a time.

  His mother, as far as he could remember, had been a pleasant woman and as self-centred as a gyroscope. She'd liked cats. She didn't just venerate them — everyone in the kingdom did that — but she actually liked them, too. Teppic knew that it was traditional in river kingdoms to approve of cats, but he suspected that usually the animals in question were graceful stately creatures; his mother's cats were small, spitting, flat-headed, yellow-eyed maniacs.

  His father spent a lot of time worrying about the kingdom and occasionally declaring that he was a seagull, although this was probably from general forgetfulness. Teppic had occasionally speculated about his own conception, since his parents were rarely in the same frame of reference, let alone the same state of mind.

  But it had apparently happened and he was left to bring himself up on a trial and error basis, mildly hindered and occasionally enlivened by a succession of tutors. The ones hired by his father were best, especially on those days when he was flying as high as he could, and for
one glorious winter Teppic had as his tutor an elderly ibis poacher who had in fact wandered into the royal gardens in search of a stray arrow.

  That had been a time of wild chases with soldiers, moonlight rambles in the dead streets of the necropolis and, best of all, the introduction to the puntbow, a fearsomely complicated invention which at considerable risk to its operators could turn a slough full of innocent waterfowl into so much floating pўt©.

  He'd also had the run of the library, including the locked shelves — the poacher had several other skills to ensure gainful employment in inclement weather — which had given him many hours of quiet study; he was particularly attached to The Shuttered Palace, Translated from the Khalian by A Gentleman, with Hand— Coloured Plates for the Connoisseur in A Strictly Limited Edition. It was confusing but instructive and, when a rather fey young tutor engaged by the priests tried to introduce him to certain athletic techniques favoured by the classical Pseudopolitans, Teppic considered the suggestion for some time and then floored the youth with a hatstand.

  Teppic hadn't been educated. Education had just settled on him, like dandruff.

  It started to rain, in the world outside his head. Another new experience. He'd heard about it, of course, how water came down out of the sky in small bits. He just hadn't expected there to be so much of it. It never rained in Djelibeybi.

  Masters moved among the boys like damp and slightly scruffy blackbirds, but he was eyeing a group of older students lolling near the pillared entrance to the school. They also wore black — different colours of black.

  That was his first introduction to the tertiary colours, the colours on the far side of blackness, the colours that you get if you split blackness with an eight-sided prism. They are also almost impossible to describe in a non-magical environment, but if someone were to try they'd probably start by telling you to smoke something illegal and take a good look at a starling's wing. The seniors were critically inspecting the new arrivals.

  Teppic stared at them. Apart from the colours, their clothes were cut off the edge of the latest fashion, which was currently inclining towards wide hats, padded shoulders, narrow waists and pointed shoes and gave its followers the appearance of being very well-dressed nails.

  I'm going to be like them, he told himself.

  Although probably better dressed, he added.

  He recalled Uncle Vyrt, sitting out on the steps overlooking the Djel on one of his brief, mysterious visits. 'Satin and leather are no good. Or jewellery of any kind. You can't have anything that will shine or squeak or clink. Stick to rough silk or velvet. The important thing is not how many people you inhume, it's how many fail to inhume you.'

  He'd been moving at an unwise pace, which might assist now. As he arced over the emptiness of the alley he twisted in the air, thrust out his arms desperately, and felt his fingertips brush a ledge on the building opposite. It was enough to pivot him; he swung around, hit the crumbling brickwork with sufficient force to knock what remained of his breath out of him, and slid down the sheer wall.

  'Boy!'

  Teppic looked up. There was a senior assassin standing beside him, with a purple teaching sash over his robes. It was the first assassin he'd seen, apart from Vyrt. The man was pleasant enough. You could imagine him making sausages.

  'Are you talking to me?' he said.

  'You will stand up when you address a master,' said the rosy face.

  'I will?' Teppic was fascinated. He wondered how this could be achieved. Discipline had not hitherto been a major feature in his life. Most of his tutors had been sufficiently unnerved by the sight of the king occasionally perched on top of a door that they raced through such lessons as they had and then locked themselves in their rooms.

  'I will sir,' said the teacher. He consulted the list in his hand.

  'What is your name, boy?' he continued.

  'Prince Pteppic of the Old Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Sun,' said Teppic easily. 'I appreciate you are ignorant of the etiquette, but you should not call me sir, and you should touch the ground with your forehead when you address me.'

  'Pateppic, is it?' said the master.

  'No. Pteppic.'

  'Ah. Teppic,' said the master, and ticked off a name on his list. He gave Teppic a generous smile.

  'Well, now, your majesty,' he said, 'I am Grunworth Nivor, your housemaster. You are in Viper House. To my certain knowledge there are at least eleven Kingdoms of the Sun on the Disc and, before the end of the week, you will present me with a short essay detailing their geographical location, political complexion, capital city or principal seat of government, and a suggested route into the bed— chamber of the head of state of your choice. However, in all the world there is only one Viper House. Good morning to you, boy.'

  He turned away and homed in on another cowering pupil. 'He's not a bad sort,' said a voice behind Teppic. 'Anyway, all the stuffs in the library. I'll show you if you like. I'm Chidder.

  Teppic turned. He was being addressed by a boy of about his own age and height, whose black suit — plain black, for First Years — looked as though it had been nailed on to him in bits. The youth was holding out a hand. Teppic gave it a polite glance.

  'Yes?' he said.

  'What's your name, kiddo?'

  Teppic drew himself up. He was getting fed up with this treatment. 'Kiddo? I'll have you know the blood of pharaohs runs in my veins!'

  The other boy looked at him unabashed, with his head on one side and a faint smile on his face.

  'Would you like it to stay there?' he said.

  The baker was just along the alley, and a handful of the staff had stepped out into the comparative cool of the pre-dawn air for a quick smoke and a break from the desert heat of the ovens. Their chattering spiralled up to Teppic, high in the shadows, gripping a fortuitous window sill while his feet scrabbled for a purchase among the bricks.

  It's not that bad, he told himself. You've tackled worse. The hubward face of the Patrician's palace last winter, for example, when all the gutters had overflowed and the walls were solid ice. This isn't much more than a 3, maybe a 3.2. You and old Chiddy used to go up walls like this rather than stroll down the street, it's just a matter of perspective.

  Perspective. He glanced down, at seventy feet of infinity. Splat City, man, get a grip on yourself. On the wall. His right foot found a worn section of mortar, into which his toes planted themselves with barely a conscious instruction from a brain now feeling too fragile to take more than a distant interest in the proceedings.

  He took a breath, tensed, and then dropped one hand to his belt, seized a dagger, and thrust it between the bricks beside him before gravity worked out what was happening. He paused, panting, waiting for gravity to lose interest in him again, and then swung his body sideways and tried the same thing a second time.

  Down below one of the bakers told a suggestive joke, and brushed a speck of mortar from his ear. As his colleagues laughed Teppic stood up in the moonlight, balancing on two slivers of Klatchian steel, and gently walked his palms up the wall to the window whose sill had been his brief salvation.

  It was wedged shut. A good blow would surely open it, but only at about the same moment as it sent him reeling back into empty air. Teppic sighed and, moving with the delicacy of a watchmaker, drew his diamond compasses from their pouch and dragged a slow, gentle circle on the dusty glass…

  'You carry it yourself,' said Chidder. 'That's the rule around here.'

  Teppic looked at the trunk. It was an intriguing notion. 'At home we've people who do that,' he said. 'Eunuchs and so on.

  'You should of brought one with you.'

  'They don't travel well,' said Teppic. In fact he'd adamantly refused all suggestions that a small retinue should accompany him, and Dios had sulked for days. That was not how a member of the royal blood should go forth into the world, he said. Teppic had remained firm. He was pretty certain that assassins weren't expected to go about their business accompanied by handmaidens and buglers. Now, howev
er, the idea seemed to have some merit. He gave the trunk an experimental heave, and managed to get it across his shoulders.

  'Your people are pretty rich, then?' said Chidder, ambling along beside him.

  Teppic thought about this. 'No, not really,' he said. 'They mainly grow melons and garlic and that kind of thing. And stand in the streets and shout «hurrah».'

  'This is your parents you're talking about?' said Chidder, puzzled.

  'Oh, them? No, my father's a pharaoh. My mother was a concubine. I think.'

  'I thought that was some sort of vegetable.'

  'I don't think so. We've never really discussed it. Anyway, she died when I was young.

  'How dreadful,' said Chidder cheerfully.

  'She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile.' Teppic tried politely not to be hurt at the boy's reaction.

  'My father's in commerce,' said Chidder, as they passed through the archway.

  'That's fascinating,' said Teppic dutifully. He felt quite broken by all these new experiences, and added, 'I've never been to Commerce, but I understand they're very fine people.'

  Over the next hour or two Chidder, who ambled gently through life as though he'd already worked it all out, introduced Teppic to the various mysteries of the dormitories, the classrooms and the plumbing. He left the plumbing until last, for all sorts of reasons.

  'Not any?' he said.

  'There's buckets and things,' said Teppic vaguely, 'and lots of servants.'

  'Bit old fashioned, this kingdom of yours?'

  Teppic nodded. 'It's the pyramids,' he said. 'They take all the money.'

  'Expensive things, I should imagine.'

  'Not particularly. They're just made of stone.' Teppic sighed. 'We've got lots of stone,' he said, 'and sand. Stone and sand. We're really big on them. If you ever need any stone and sand, we're the people for you. It's fitting out the insides that is really expensive. We're still avoiding paying for grandfather's, and that wasn't very big. Just three chambers.' Teppic turned and looked out of the window; they were back in the dormitory at this point.

  'The whole kingdom's in debt,' he said, quietly. 'I mean even our debts are in debt. That's why I'm here, really. Someone in our house needs to earn some money. A royal prince can't hang around looking ornamental any more. He's got to get out and do something useful in the community.'