Hello. I recently began to read the Terry Pratchett books and couldn't help but fall in love with them. I thought--"damn, this guy thinks almost exactly the same way I do." It was incredible. I hope this does Mr. Pratchett's work even a slight amount of justice, though I have my doubts. Please, read, try to enjoy, and give me some advice, especially if my facts aren't correct.

My thanks.

Hamlet II

I own neither the characters, nor the world in which they live.

The Patrician and the Serial Killer

CHAPTER ONE: The Patrician

Winter in Ankh-Morpork was a sore sight to see. The streets were crowded with hungry people, huddled together for lack of warm clothing. It was a mush of grey snow, mud the color of a latrine, and the black of wet cobble stones. The smoke from the chimneys curled up into the never ending charcoal sky that defined winter. The thick clouds held in all the heat, all the noise, the light, and worst of all the smell. A city of the size of Ankh-Morpork under siege from a perpetual winter storm, especially a city with the sewage system of Ankh-Morpork, quickly redefines the phrase 'smelling putrid'.

No one really liked the city in winter, but where was there to go? There was Uberwald, which had more severe blizzards and vampires, werewolves, dwarfs, igors...and then there was Klatch, which no one wanted to visit, even if they didn't know why. It just wasn't a place to go. You could, if you had half a mind, go even to the outskirts of Ankh-Morpork and at least there you would escape the clogged streets, the lack of food, and the aroma. Or perhaps maybe just the clogged streets and the aroma. No one had anything to eat there, which was the main deterrent. Of course, no one had much to eat in the city either.

Ankh-Morpork had been ruled, consecutively, for one hundred years by madmen. Normally this is a considerable drawback, but in Ankh-Morpork it was viewed as an exceptionally good thing. Only a lunatic would be able to consider ruling a city composed of every walk of life imaginable, though Darwin, and his marvellously inconvenient theory, made sure that it was several lunatics ruling, rather than one. In the last century that Ankh-Morpork had prospered, it had gone through no less than twenty five dictators, most of whom were paranoid bureaucrats that didn't know their left foot from a door knob. However, the most recent head of state was insanely sane. It made Darwin incredibly pissed.

The Patrician of the greatest city on Disc was up late one night, tirelessly working. He often worked into the late hours of the night, and often through them into the next day, for weeks on end. As the Witching Hour melted with the dawn and the first crow of the cock, his office window could be seen through out the city as a faint, flickering glow at the top of the Palace. It was, in a strange and unexplainable way, a comfort to everyone who lived in the clogged streets amongst the filth and stalls. It was an assurance that somewhere above the disorderly, twisting streets of industrial Ankh-Morpork, someone was watching, and working to insure that the city lived to see the dawn come.

The work the Patrician did was endless. It was a bottomless pit of paperwork that needed to be signed, revised, shredded, and sent out. The key to running a city smoothly was the paperwork. If there was copious amounts of paperwork, the likely-hood that a city as large as Ankh-Morpork would fail was greatly reduced. He knew that, and knew it well. If he happened to find an end to its infinite existence, he would make more work. His first and foremost role in life was to ensure the success, but perhaps not the well being, of his city. With the precision of an Uberwald clock. (It is very important to note that this is not an Ankh-Morporkian clock. Those often tell no time at all...) Work kept his mind busy, and if there was one thing he despised more than the thought of all the other things he despised, was idleness. An idle mind is a dead mind, someone had told him once. It had been the only advice he had ever taken from another person, and it was, indeed, priceless. To sleep, he reminded himself sometimes as he lit a new candle, was to lack conscious thoughts, was to be idle, was therefore to be dead. The head of his city's police force, Sir Samuel Vimes, often joked that the only testament to the Patrician sleeping at all was the existence of a bedroom behind his office. Of course, the only time anyone had ever seen their ruler in bed was when Vimes had put him there after an assassination attempt.

Assassination attempts happened all the time. Normally the perpetrators were sent by the Guild of Assassins, the only body of murderers that the Patrician would legally allow in his city. In fact, even the Guild of Thieves was unable to kill any of their victims, lest they wish to incur the horrible fine that would, inevitably, result. Cities as large as Ankh-Morpork are run with precision, and many, many laws. The Patrician was currently listed at a one million AM dollar bounty, which, even to the nobility of Ankh-Morpork, is a considerable lot. But so far, none of the would-be assassins had managed to kill him yet. He was still very, very alive.

But there was a little known reason for the continual failure. The Patrician had been trained at the very same Guild of Assassins from which they were sent. He was the best assassin the Guild had seen, far better than even Mr. Downey, the head of the Guild, and it was because of his finesse that he had nearly been ejected from the school. As a boy, he experimented, he tested, he conjectured, and he proved all his theories right every time. He seldom wore the black uniform of the assassin, instead choosing greys, browns, greens--with such clothes, he was able to turn himself invisible in the middle of a crowded street. He had all the patience of the world, and the quick mind of a scheming usurper. He had proved, time and time again, he had no match.

But they sportingly kept trying to kill him.

The Patrician refocused on the thick parchment book he had opened before him. His desk was frighteningly neat considering its constant use and flow of paperwork. All the piles, and there were not many, were alphabetized, categorized, cross indexed, and then prioritized. The system was such that anything immediately pressing, or urgent, inevitably found itself at the bottom of a very logical chain of 'to do' lists. There was a good chance that if infinity ever happened to end, the important documents would be at the end of it.

"Mr. Vetinari," came a low voice from one of the numerous shadows cast by the single tallow candle on the Patrician's desk, "it is inadvisable that you move." The Patrician looked up from his writing to where the voice came from, face impossibly expressionless. He dipped the long eagle quill he was holding in an ink well, and brushed the excess ink off. He began to write again. A knife buried itself in the back of the Patrician's chair, millimetres away from his sloping shoulders. "I said not to move," the voice hissed. "Do pay attention, or next time I might not be as exact."

Vetinari sighed and reached for a narrow wine bottle that sat next to his ink well. He uncorked it with a fast twist of his wrist and poured the rich, red drink into a crystal wine glass, just to vex his attacker. Another knife was hurled at his hand as he set the wine bottle back. Vetinari caught it easily by the handle without even appearing to see it, set it on his desk, and picked up his glass, taking a well measured sip. He looked at the knife for, apparently, the first time. "I wonder," he whispered, eyes not leaving the knife, "if I may ask a question." He set his wine glass down without a sound and continued to write.

"You're the bloody Patrician," was his answer after a short pause. "I don't see why not."

"Not bloody just yet," Vetinari corrected meticulously. He stared straight into the darkness, eyes fixed on nothing. Besides the extensive library, an ancient marble chess board, and a large grandfather clock that could not tell any metered time, there was just shadow. Long drapes were closed across what looked to be a window the length of the wall. Vetinari appeared to be having a normal conversation, completely unfazed the other member was invisible. "To what do I owe this unexpected and," Vetinari glanced at the clock, "late visit, Mr. Rodez?"

"Umm..."

The Patrician's face was studiously emotionless. It's lack of all human identifying feelings was so complete, that had he not blinked, one would have assumed he'd fallen asleep with his eyes open. "My next inquiry," he continued stonily, "is one I'm sure you will be sincerely careful upon answering." His unseen attacker remained silent. "Have you ever contemplated the devastating effect a well thrown quill would have on the ability to function of your jugular vein?"

His assassin said nothing.

"Ah," Vetinari murmured, fingers arched together, his chin resting on his thumbs. "Yes, somehow I didn't think you'd had the opportunity." His quill twirled though his stagnant fingers, apparently by will of its own.

The minutes passed unrhythmatically. The quill floated through the Patrician's fingers, over under over under over under around, and blurred in the dim light. The shadows remained just as bereft of life as they had when the assassin had spoke. And suddenly, precisely as the unbalanced grandfather clock struck an unholy hour in the wee hours of the morning, Vetinari's quill came to rest between his index finger and thumb. A slow smile, one of the most frightening things to see on a serious man's face, lit upon his lips. "No doubt," he began softly, breaking the silence unpleasantly, "you have had difficulty fathoming the excruciating pain such a hit would, no doubt, incur." His black eyes gleamed under impressively dark eye brows in the dying candlelight. "Do be sure to take into account just how much that agony will escalate with every moment I keep you alive--as the protector of an entire city, I have become very apt in the art of preservation and resurrection. I could extend your torment indefinitely." He stood from his chair with such speed, a normal brain only registered him sitting then standing, his black robes were slow to hang around the new positing.

"Haven't said anything because I think you're full of shit, sir," said the voice. There was a silent scraping of metal unsheathing. "You couldn't kill me with a damn eagle feather when I've got another two knives and body armor." The air bent around the dagger hurled at the space in front of Vetinari's eyes.

The Patrician caught this by the handle as well, eyes growing fiercer. The quill was still lightly resting along his thumb. "No doubt," he mumbled submissively, eyes lowering. With careful examination one would have seen how fiery the downward-glancing eyes burned. "How foolish of me, to think I know my own potential."

The shadows didn't quite have an answer for that.

"Nonetheless," Vetinari continued, brushing the previous matter of assassination aside, "I believe now would be an excellent time to depart--your visit was of the utmost importance to me. Thank you for your time."

The assassin spat. "Can you only say one bloody line?" he jeered. "D'ya treat assassins and them government workers the same? We're all just run'o-the-muck do-gooders that waste your time? No wonder someone wanted you dead! Yer worse'n a king!"

"Ah, certainly. A king will bleed to death if you scratch him with a toothpick. What a nuisance I must be." Vetinari breathed deeply, picked up his wine glass, and twirled it expertly in his left hand. "You are free to leave."

"I'm an assassin!" the assassin explained desperately, confused to why this wasn't already perfectly clear. "I kill people; I didn't just come up here for a nice midnight chat." Vetinari saw the shadow of a boot pivot minutely. "I get hired to kill people."

Vetinari had barely seemed to move as he flicked the quill across the room and into the darkness. There was a grunt of pain, and a ebony figure peeled out of the shadows and into the faint candle light. "Let me address one or two of my concerns before I release you," the Patrician whispered, taking a fistful of the man's cloak. He patted the assassin down, quickly found the last knife, and flung it aside. "Were you a true assassin you would know two things I do not believe you are aware of. To be brief, one does not kill. One exhumes. Secondly, I cannot be disposed of. I am not aware of any citizen of Ankh-Morpork that has resource enough to pay the million dollar price for my life." The masked face stared back at him in pain and absolute confusion. Vetinari gripped the man's arm with a grip of steel and lightly removed an embedded quill from the back of the man's wrist. "As Patrician and protector of this city, I charge you with Inability to Follow Preordained Protocol, in the highest offence, justified by an unlawful attempt to avoid Guild proceedings." His cold voice, calm and overly collected, had made a sentence of utmost complexity sound as though it were a line in the Bard's poems. A death sentence had never been so eloquently dealt. "I could," Vetinari murmured, releasing the man, "be slightly more lenient if you were to reveal who hired you."

The assassin took an uncertain step away, glancing warily at his blood on the tip of the quill in the Patrician's fingers. "It was at a bar; I can't remember. I just know that I agreed to it and then the next morning a bag of gold and a note arrived at my flat."

"Pity." Vetinari's smile froze the air in the room.

"So," the assassin said hesitantly after a second's pause, "can I go now?"

The Patrician nodded once. "You can." His assassin, or would-be, sauntered to the door leading out of the Oblong Office and pulled on the handle. A bolt crashed against a lock, echoing in the otherwise silent room. The assassin glanced back at Vetinari, eyebrows furrowed. "But you may not." Panic crossed the man's face. "You see," Vetinari explained, turning to face a bookshelf behind his desk, "you are an assassin, and I am a Patrician. You are paid to exhume, I do it out of the kindness of my heart, but only after I've considered the life that will be stolen." His eyes flickered over to his companion. "And I've thought this one over quite completely." The quill twirled again. "After all," he whispered, voice slicing through the icy air, "I am the Patrician."

Vetinari watched uninterestedly and poured himself more wine as the locked door was frantically tested again and again. Many times the desperate chose to leap bravely through the only window, behind the drapes, to their almost certain death. And those occasions, while brief moments of entertainment, merely meant he had to pay for a replacement for the window. There was an unpleasant THWACK as Vetinari stared ponderously at the dark drapes, a muffled scream of torment, a gasp of air, and silence.

All before Vetinari could turn around.