Hogfather tds-20 Read online

  There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she'd got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She'd got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like ‘disembowelled’ in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children?

  They were naturally good at it.

  And she was, to her mild horror, naturally good with them. She wondered suspiciously if this was a family trait. And if, to judge by the way her hair so readily knotted itself into a prim bun, she was destined for jobs like this for the rest of her life.

  It was her parents' fault. They hadn't meant it to turn out like this. At least, she hoped charitably that they hadn't.

  They'd wanted to protect her, to keep her away from the worlds outside this one, from what people thought of as the occult, from… well, from her grandfather, to put it bluntly. This had, she felt, left her a little twisted up.

  Of course, to be fair, that was a parent's job. The world was so full of sharp bends that if they didn't put a few twists in you, you wouldn't stand a chance of fitting in. And they'd been conscientious and kind and given her a good home and even an education.

  It had been a good education, too. But it had only been later on that she'd realized that it had been an education in, well, education. It meant that if ever anyone needed to calculate the volume of a cone, then they could confidently call on Susan Sto-Helit. Anyone at a loss to recall the campaigns of General Tacticus or the square root of 27.4 would not find her wanting. If you needed someone who could talk about household items and things to buy in the shops in five languages, then Susan was at the head of the queue. Education had been easy.

  Learning things had been harder.

  Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

  She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.

  After tea she read them a story. They liked her stories. The one in the book was pretty awful, but the Susan version was well received. She translated as she read.

  ‘…and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions. And now,’ she closed the book with a snap, ‘it's time for bed.’

  The previous governess had taught them a prayer which included the hope that some god or other would take their soul if they died while they were asleep and, if Susan was any judge, had the underlying message that this would be a good thing.

  One day, Susan averred, she'd hunt that woman down.

  ‘Susan,’ said Twyla, from somewhere under the blankets.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You know last week we wrote letters to the Hogfather?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Only… in the park Rachel says he doesn't exist and it's your father really. And everyone else said she was right.’

  There was a rustle from the other bed. Twyla's brother had turned over and was listening surreptitiously.

  Oh dear, thought Susan. She had hoped she could avoid this. It was going to be like that business with the Soul Cake Duck all over again.

  ‘Does it matter if you get the presents anyway?’ she said, making a direct appeal to greed.

  ‘'es.’

  Oh dear, oh dear. Susan sat down on the bed, wondering how the hell to get through this. She patted the one visible hand.

  ‘Look at it this way, then,’ she said, and took a deep mental breath. ‘Wherever people are obtuse and absurd… and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach… and wherever people are inanely credulous, Pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering… yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.’

  There was silence from under the bedclothes, but she sensed that the tone of voice had worked. The words had meant nothing. That, as her grandfather might have said, was humanity all over.

  ‘G' night.’

  ‘Good night,’ said Susan.

  It wasn't even a bar. It was just a room where people drank while they waited for other people with whom they had business. The business usually involved the transfer of ownership of something from one person to another, but then, what business doesn't?

  Five businessmen sat round a table, lit by a candle stuck in a saucer. There was an open bottle between them. They were taking some care to keep it away from the candle flame.

  ‘'s gone six,’ said one, a huge man with dreadlocks and a beard you could keep goats in. ‘The clocks struck ages ago. He ain't coming. Let's go.’

  ‘Sit down, will you? Assassins are always late. ‘cos of style, right?’

  ‘This one's mental.’

  ‘Eccentric.’

  ‘What's the difference?’

  ‘A bag of cash.’

  The three that hadn't spoken yet looked at one another.

  ‘What's this? You never said he was an Assassin,’ said Chickenwire. ‘He never said the guy was an Assassin, did he, Banjo?’

  There was a sound like distant thunder. It was Banjo Lilywhite clearing his throat.

  ‘Dat's right,’ said a voice from the upper slopes. ‘Youse never said.’

  The others waited until the rumble died away. Even Banjo's voice hulked.

  ‘He's’ — the first speaker waved his hands vaguely, trying to get across the point that someone was a hamper of food, several folding chairs, a tablecloth, an assortment of cooking gear and an entire colony of ants short of a picnic — ‘mental. And he's got a funny eye.’

  ‘It's just glass, all right?’ said the one known as Catseye, signalling a waiter for four beers and a glass of milk. ‘And he's paying ten thousand dollars each. I don't care what kind of eye he's got.’

  ‘I heard it was made of the same stuff they make them fortune-telling crystals out of. You can't tell me that's right. And he looks at you with it,’ said the first speaker. He was known as Peachy, although no one had ever found out why[4].

  Catseye sighed. Certainly there was something odd about Mister Teatime, there was no doubt about that. But there was something weird about all Assassins. And the man paid well. Lots of Assassins used informers and locksmiths. It was against the rules, technically, but standards were going down everywhere, weren't they? Usually they paid you late and sparsely, as if they were doing the favour. But Teatime was OK. True, after a few minutes talking to him your eyes began to water and you felt you needed to scrub your skin even on the inside, but no one was perfect, were they?

  Peachy leaned forward. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I reckon he could be here already. In disguise! Laughing at us! Well, if he's in here laughing at us—’ He cracked his knuckles.

  Medium Dave Lilywhite, the last of the five, looked around. There were indeed a number of solitary figures in the low, dark room. Most of them wore cloaks with big hoods. They sat alone, in corners, hidden by the hoods. None of them looked very friendly.

  ‘Don't be daft, Peachy,’ Catseye murmured.

  ‘That's the sort of thing they do,’ Peachy insisted. ‘They're masters of disguise!’

  ‘With that eye of his?’

  ‘That guy sitting by the fire has got an eye patch,’ said Medium Dave. Medium Dave didn't speak much. He watched a lot
.

  The others turned to stare.

  ‘He'll wait till we're off our guard then go ahahaha,’ said Peachy.

  ‘They can't kill you unless it's for money,’ said Catseye. But now there was a soupçon of doubt in his voice.

  They kept their eyes on the hooded man. He kept his eye on them.

  If asked to describe what they did for a living, the five men around the table would have said something like ‘This and that’ or ‘The best I can’, although in Banjo's case he'd have probably said ‘Dur?’ They were, by the standards of an uncaring society, criminals, although they wouldn't have thought of themselves as such and couldn't even spell words like ‘nefarious’. What they generally did was move things around. Sometimes the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, say, or in the wrong house. Sometimes the things were in fact people who were far too unimportant to trouble the Assassins' Guild with, but who were nevertheless inconveniently positioned where they were and could much better be located on, for example, a sea bed somewhere[5]. None of the five belonged to any formal guild and they generally found their clients among those people who, for their own dark reasons, didn't want to put the guilds to any trouble, sometimes because they were guild members themselves. They had plenty of work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B or, of course, to the bottom of the C.

  ‘Any minute now,’ said Peachy, as the waiter brought their beers.

  Banjo cleared his throat. This was a sign that another thought had arrived.

  ‘What I don' unnerstan,’ he said, ‘is…’

  ‘Yes?’ said his brother.[6]

  ‘What I don' unnerstan is, how longaz diz place had waiters?’

  ‘Good evening,’ said Teatime, putting down the tray.

  They stared at him in silence.

  He gave them a friendly smile.

  Peachy's huge hand slapped the table.

  ‘You crept up on us, you little—’ he began.

  Men in their line of business develop a certain prescience. Medium Dave and Catseye, who were sitting on either side of Peachy, leaned away nonchalantly.

  ‘Hi!’ said Teatime. There was a blur, and a knife shuddered in the table between Peachy's thumb and index finger.

  He looked down at it in horror.

  ‘My name's Teatime,’ said Teatime. ‘Which one are you?’

  ‘I'm… Peachy,’ said Peachy, still staring at the vibrating knife.

  ‘That's an interesting name,’ said Teatime. ‘Why are you called Peachy, Peachy?’

  Medium Dave coughed.

  Peachy looked up into Teatime's face. The glass eye was a mere ball of faintly glowing grey. The other eye was a little dot in a sea of white. Peachy's only contact with intelligence had been to beat it up and rob it whenever possible, but a sudden sense of self-preservation glued him to his chair.

  ‘'cos I don't shave,’ he said.

  ‘Peachy don't like blades, mister,’ said Catseye.

  ‘And do you have a lot of friends, Peachy?’ said Teatime.

  ‘Got a few, yeah.’

  With a sudden whirl of movement that made the men start, Teatime spun away, grabbed a chair, swung it up to the table and sat down on it. Three of them had already got their hands on their swords.

  ‘I don't have many,’ he said, apologetically. ‘Don't seem to have the knack. On the other hand… I don't seem to have any enemies at all. Not one. Isn't that nice?’

  Teatime had been thinking, in the cracking, buzzing firework display that was his head. What he had been thinking about was immortality.

  He might have been quite, quite insane, but he was no fool. There were, in the Assassins' Guild, a number of paintings and busts of famous members who had, in the past, put… no, of course, that wasn't right. There were paintings and busts of the famous clients of members, with a noticeably modest brass plaque screwed somewhere nearby, bearing some unassuming little comment like ‘Departed this vale of tears on Grune 3, Year of the Sideways Leech, with the assistance of the Hon. K. W. Dobson (Viper House)'. Many fine old educational establishments had dignified memorials in some hall listing the Old Boys who had laid down their lives for monarch and country. The Guild's was very similar, except for the question of whose life had been laid.

  Every Guild member wanted to be up there somewhere. Because getting up there represented immortality. And the bigger your client, the more incredibly discreet and restrained would be the little brass plaque, so that everyone couldn't help but notice your name.

  In fact, if you were very, very renowned, they wouldn't even have to write down your name at all…

  The men around the table watched him. It was always hard to know what Banjo was thinking, or even if he was thinking at all, but the other four were thinking along the lines of: bumptious little tit, like all Assassins. Thinks he knows it all. I could take him down one-handed, no trouble. But… you hear stories. Those eyes give me the creeps…

  ‘So what's the job?’ said Chickenwire.

  ‘We don't do jobs,’ said Teatime. ‘We perform services. And the service will earn each of you ten thousand dollars.’

  ‘That's a lot more'n Thieves' Guild rate,’ said Medium Dave.

  ‘I've never liked the Thieves' Guild,’ said Teatime, without turning his head.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They ask too many questions.’

  ‘We don't ask questions,’ said Chickenwire quickly.

  ‘We shall suit one another perfectly,’ said Teatime. ‘Do have another drink while we wait for the other members of our little troupe.’

  Chickenwire saw Medium Dave's lips start to frame the opening letters “Who—” These letters he deemed inauspicious at this time. He kicked Medium Dave's leg under the table.

  The door opened slightly. A figure came in, but only just. It inserted itself in the gap and sidled along the wall in a manner calculated not to attract attention. Calculated, that is, by someone not good at this sort of calculation.

  It looked at them over its turned-up collar.

  ‘That's a wizard,’ said Peachy.

  The figure hurried over and dragged up a chair.

  ‘No I'm not!’ it hissed. ‘I'm incognito!’

  ‘Right, Mr Gnito,’ said Medium Dave. ‘You're just someone in a pointy hat. This is my brother Banjo, that's Peachy, this is Chick—’

  The wizard looked desperately at Teatime.

  ‘I didn't want to come!’

  ‘Mr Sideney here is indeed a wizard,’ said Teatime. ‘A student, anyway. But down on his luck at the moment, hence his willingness to join us on this venture.’

  ‘Exactly how far down on his luck?’ said Medium Dave.

  The wizard tried not to meet anyone's gaze.

  ‘I made a misjudgement to do with a wager,’ he said.

  ‘Lost a bet, you mean?’ said Chickenwire.

  ‘I paid up on time,’ said Sideney.

  ‘Yes, but Chrysoprase the troll has this odd little thing about money that turns into lead the next day,’ said Teatime cheerfully. ‘So our friend needs to earn a little cash in a hurry and in a climate where arms and legs stay on.’

  ‘No one said anything about there being magic in all this,’ said Peachy.

  ‘Our destination is… probably you should think of it as something like a wizard's tower, gentlemen,’ said Teatime.

  ‘It isn't an actual wizard's tower, is it?’ said Medium Dave. ‘They got a very odd sense of humour when it comes to booby traps.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Guards?’

  ‘I believe so. According to legend. But nothing very much.’

  Medium Dave narrowed his eyes. ‘There's valuable stuff in this… tower?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Why ain't there many guards, then?’

  ‘The… person who owns the property probably does not realize the value of what… of what they have.’

  ‘Locks?’ said Medium Dave.

  ‘On our way we shall be picking up
a locksmith.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr Brown.’

  They nodded. Everyone — at least, everyone in ‘the business’, and everyone in ‘the business’ knew what ‘the business’ was, and if you didn't know what ‘the business’ was you weren't a businessman — knew Mr Brown. His presence anywhere around a job gave it a certain kind of respectability. He was a neat, elderly man who'd invented most of the tools in his big leather bag. No matter what cunning you'd used to get into a place, or overcome a small army, or find the secret treasure room, sooner or later you sent for Mr Brown, who'd turn up with his leather bag and his little springy things and his little bottles of strange alchemy and his neat little boots. And he'd do nothing for ten minutes but look at the lock, and then he'd select a piece of bent metal from a ring of several hundred almost identical pieces, and under an hour later he'd be walking away with a neat ten per cent of the takings. Of course, you didn't have to use Mr Brown's services. You could always opt to spend the rest of your life looking at a locked door.

  ‘All right. Where is this place?’ said Peachy.

  Teatime turned and smiled at him. ‘If I'm paying you, why isn't it me who's asking the questions?’

  Peachy didn't even try to outstare the glass eye a second time.

  ‘Just want to be prepared, that's all,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Good reconnaissance is the essence of a successful operation,’ said Teatime. He turned and looked up at the bulk that was Banjo and added, ‘What is this?’

  ‘This is Banjo,’ said Medium Dave, rolling himself a cigarette.

  ‘Does it do tricks?’

  Time stood still for a moment. The other men looked at Medium Dave. He was known to Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right. He was reliable in a tight spot and, above all, he was honest, because good criminals have to be honest. If he had a fault, it was a tendency to deal out terminal and definitive retribution to anyone who said anything about his brother.