This is by first bash at Discworld, and my first really long fic. I do hope you like it. I DO NOT claim to be a patch on the genius of Terry Pratchett, but I've tried to take a few elements of his writing style. The story's going to be rather long, but so far no other chapters have so many unnecessary mentions of stamps (I went a bit OTT). ;) THE DEEPEST CIRCLE OF HELL IS RESERVED FOR BETRAYERS AND THOSE WHO DO NOT REVIEW. SAVE YOUR SOUL WHILE YOU STILL CAN. Thankyou.
Disclaimer: Blah, blah, blah. I am not worthy to wipe Pratchett's shoes, etc. etc.
Chapter One: Crunchtime
In which nobody escapes Death – What Lies Beyond – Gregory Trim makes arrangements – Ignita's opinion – Mr Trim is late – Chaos ruling – A single vote – Worries of the Beggar
You can't get the better of Death in the long run. Oh, you can borrow time, and you can steal it or trick someone out of it, but if the aim of your game is to escape the Ultimate Reality, you've lost before you've begun. And even the cleverest of clever men, with scores of clever people working for them night and day at being clever, can't keep on living. Even tyrants have to die, in the end, no matter how good at his job he is. Or she is.
The man's thoughts, as he lay on his deathbed, were impossible to guess. However, it was obvious to the few who thought about these things that he was very proud of himself. To die of real natural causes in Ankh-Morpork is quite an achievement. There were niggling worries in his mind, though, such as the matter of who was to succeed him. Only monarchs and other eccentrics handed such titles down through the family – here, the post would go to the first man to tread on the others' fingers and plant himself in the chair. He didn't want all his work to be spoiled by an idiot and, no matter how many plans he made, nothing could guarantee the new Patrician.
In his time, Lord Vetinari had seen some pretty amazing things. He had briefly been replaced by a dragon. Someone had put rocks into music. Giant women with screaming apes had climbed tall buildings (alright, so that only happened once, but that's more than most cities can boast). He'd been shot. Ghastly Things from the Dungeon Dimensions had run riot on more than one occasion.
And of course, stamps had been invented.
But now it was someone else's turn to have their face on a stamp, or vice versa, ha ha ha. (Vetinari never had acquired a normal sense of humour.) And for once, it didn't really matter what he thought. For once, it wasn't his problem.
HO HUM. HERE WE GO AGAIN.
Binky cantered silently across the sky towards Ankh-Morpork. Like the late ruler of the city, it was hard to say what the horse thought about, but Death had always assumed it was something similar to what other horses thought about. Only faster, and with longer words.
Slowing to a trot and then a walk, Binky carried his rider to the roof of the palace. Death strode off to where the client was waiting.
"Hmm . . ." Vetinari looked up at the approaching figure. "You must be Death?"
WELL DONE.
"And . . ." He glanced at the empty body on the bed. "That's my body. How . . . curious."
I MUST SAY, YOU'RE TAKING THIS VERY WELL. MOST PEOPLE FIND IT VERY DIFFICULT TO ADJUST TO BEING DEAD.
"Yes. Well, I knew it was coming, I suppose."
YES. IF YOU WOULD FOLLOW ME.
"Oh, yes, of course," the spirit said, waving a hand. Then he hesitated. "I don't suppose I could . . ?"
NO. GHOSTS ONLY, I'M AFRAID.
"Right." Vetinari sighed. "And you don't know who it's going to be?"
IF I DID I WOULDN'T TELL YOU. Death's voice was like the cracking of tombstones. COME WITH ME.
Vetinari followed Death out of the room, through the study and towards What Lay Beyond. But he never made things that simple, of course.
It was three weeks before the news reached Ignita Trim, by which time it hardly qualified as news anyway. Well, in reality, she'd known since the night after the man died, because of her fortunate habit of being in earshot at the right moments, but officially she was only informed when her father arranged her and her four brothers in the dining room for a serious talk. Yes, you did see 'arrange'. Ignita often felt like she was being arranged, like a bunch of flowers, or ghastly little souvenirs that accumulate on mantelpieces. It was very degrading.
Gregory Gunter Gleevenharger Trim was currently Head of the Merchant's Guild, but rumour had it that if it came to a vote, he'd make it as next ruler. People liked Trim. He seemed sort of friendly and trustworthy; the sort of person you'd jump a mile from if you met him down a dark alley with a knife. (There's something predictable about being mugged by a criminal. Being mugged by an honest man would be positively terrifying.)
It is ironic that the people who sustained this rumour were the least likely to believe it – even the easily over-excited citizens had not yet hit upon the fact that the Patrician was actually dead, and had been for weeks. They had come to think of Vetinari as something as constant and unchanging as, well, a rock, only smarter. Or bodies on the Ankh every morning, only not as, well, dead. He was just, well, there. You didn't have to do anything. He'd just be there in his palace, clicking away, making things work, and not dying.
"Hem-hem," began Trim, once his children were organised correctly. "Now, boys, and girl, I know this, um, will be very difficult for you, hem-hem. Our Patrician, who is, um, hem-hem, was, as you are aware . . . well . . ."
Trim did not have a way with words when it came to communicating with his children. If a sentence didn't have a special offer or a guarantee in it, the man could hardly cope. Ignita, who, at eighteen, was older than all her brothers, often knew what he was about to say anyway. "Oh dear, Father," she cried, "He's not dead, is he?"
"Well, hem-hem, actually, um, that is to say, um, yes." The man was in danger of creating a health hazard with his sweat. Well, at least now the city had a river that flowed.
"Oh, how dreadful," muttered Ignita, before stomping off to her room. Actually, she was genuinely upset. Of course, she'd known Vetinari was dead for weeks, but this made it all more real and official. She'd really admired that man. Somehow, when something went wrong for herself or her father, it was never actually his fault, although with a little digging one would often discover that the event was, in some subtle and complicated way, because of the Patrician. But it never felt that way. Someone who could make people think like that deserved a medal.
And it wasn't just that. Somehow, it had been kept from the general unwashed public for this long, but the Guild Heads and the really important people knew that in Ankh-Morpork it's hard to hide this sort of thing. As soon as everybody found out Vetinari was, frankly, to be precise, not to beat about the bush, to put it bluntly, dead, there'd be panic the likes of which hadn't been seen in the city since the last lot of Ghastly Things From the Dungeon Dimentions, and then some horrid business man (or worse, Ignita's own father) would be put in charge. It was unfair. At least Vetinari had had a little sense, a little . . . style; he could make the city work, or at least look like it worked.
"Argh!" the girl cried for no real reason other than she didn't know what else to say; and it was either say something or thump something. It is curious that this is how Wizards sometimes tend to operate, but in a different way of course.
Cowardice was the key to all this, she thought. Cowardice, and selfishness, and the belief that if you closed your eyes tight enough, it would all be gone when you opened them. And when that sort of nonsense got around, clever people could change things quickly while you weren't looking and make you trust them . . .
Ignita had a lot of views and she was determined to make them heard. Perhaps, if her father made it as Patrician (she could always pray; her family were devout followers of Anoia, goddess of Things That Jammed in Drawers) that would become easier. Perhaps. Sitting down at her tiny, cluttered desk, the girl got down to some serious thinking.
Mr Gregory Gunter Gleevenharger Trim knew from experience that his children were somewhat alarming. Sometimes he'd put the younger ones to bed and they'd start to cry that there was something under the bed going to throw them in the dungeons. All with vivid green eyes and black hair, they walked like they owned the world and spoke as if they couldn't care less if you were to wake up on the Ankh – even though three of them were under the age of ten. It didn't pay to upset the Trim children.
However, the merchant took this to be a good sign. Surely anyone who could steeple his little fingers like that at the age of seven was destined for great things? If only they'd stop smiling in that frightening way. It was enough to make a grown man weep, and they often did after being crushed by the pre-adolescent version of a bolt of lightning. Ignita was the worst, but, well, she was only a girl, after all.
Trim arrived at the meeting exactly five minutes and two seconds late, as the Chairman of the Thieves' Guild informed him. That was precisely two minutes and thirty-seven seconds after the assassin, meaning he was too late to be fashionable; just irritating.
All the heads of the major Guilds, as well as other influential citizens plus lawyers (but minus the Wizards, who had refused to be involved, and the Seamstresses, for reasons the males thought were self-evident), had gathered to discuss recent and, more pressingly, future events. They were all pretending to be sad, and all of them knew this, and they all knew that they all did know this, and they knew it. Yet they did it anyway. Who can fathom the depths of the business mind?
"Well," sighed the young head of the Assassins' Guild, "now that we are all here" – the thief glared at Trim – "we can begin. Firstly . . ."
"Hey," cut in the alchemist, "who put you in charge, mister?"
The assassin blinked. "Well, I assumed . . ." He was G Deral. Enough said. Everyone listened to G Deral. Nature had put him in charge.
"Oh, you just assumed you'd start bossing us around, did you?" demanded the alchemist. "Well, I'm not going to stand for it! I'm sick of being told what to do! I'm Chairman of the damn Alchemists' Guild, godsdammit!"
"But I'm . . ."
"Shut up, you! I'm always being pushed about! Shut up, shut up, and let someone else speak for a change!"
Everyone stared. The alchemist was usually . . . quiet, and sort of dreamy, and a bit . . . strange. Two-stamps-short-of-a-collection, if you know what I mean, etc, etc. Nobody really noticed that this was not his natural state of being. He was just a coward, and the things that had scared him most had died along with Vetinari; the fingers, the smile, the voice, and the endless, unbearable feeling that you didn't know the half of it. Now all that had gone, the alchemist found that he could start to speak up for himself – start, but unfortunately, not finish. It was a shame, really. If he had completed that speech, he could have been a great revolutionary leader. It may have been just as well that he didn't finish.
"Um, I mean, well . . ." mumbled the alchemist, suddenly aware that there were very unfriendly eyes on him. "I mean, you . . . we . . . er . . ." There was a small 'thunk' as he hit the floor.
"Thank gods for that," said G. "Well, Like I say, let us begin. As you are all aware, the task of choosing the new ruler of the city now falls to us. Ordinarily, the position would go to whoever killed the last one, but as this, remarkably, is not relevant, it seems that we must decide with a vote."
They stared.
"Among us, naturally," the assassin added hastily, and the group relaxed. "We have delayed this meeting too long . . ."
"Three weeks, fourteen hours and fifty-eight minutes," said the thief, helpfully. The beggar and a businessman, who were sitting on either side of him, shuffled away nervously.
"Quite," continued G, smoothly. "We all knew that there would be difficulties when we accepted a dictatorship . . ." he went on, but was interrupted by Trim whispering, "I don't think I accepted it."
"All right, all right, none of us actually agreed to it," snapped the assassin, "but now things are different. Now we choose our Patrician. This is it, gentlemen."
This is it. As this thought crossed the merchant's mind, his eyes slid towards a certain man seated across the table from him. Well, that was only to be expected. This person drew the attention of blind cave fish simply be being there.
Laetissimus 'Chaos' Greenferry was a great supporter of individuality, but only in so far as the individual in question was himself. His parties were famous, if only because nobody could ever remember what had actually happened at them, as were his Igors. Even other Igors left them alone. What it was exactly that Greenferry did, nobody knew, but everyone knew him and he was always followed around by a large man with no visible body parts, so it must have been important.
While the others talked, Trim's eyes kept going back to the face of the man opposite, who had remained completely silent throughout the meeting. Everything about Greenferry screamed, 'I have a very tall man behind me and I'm not afraid to use him.' It was unsettling.
Trim very gradually realised that there were people watching him expectantly. "Um?"
"Well?" sighed G.
"Um, could you please repeat the question, er?" asked the merchant.
"Do you agree that a vote should be held to select the new Patrician?" the assassin replied impatiently.
"But isn't that what you said just a few minutes ago?" enquired Trim nervously.
"Actually," the thief corrected him, "it was four minutes and forty-nine . . . fifty . . . fifty-one . . ."
"Yes, yes, thank you," the assassin snapped. "But do you agree, Mr Trim?"
"Oh, right, yes, of course." The merchant nodded manically.
"Good." G rolled his eyes. "Let's get this over with."
The voting was quickly over. Only Greenferry and, to general surprise, a rather alarmed Trim actually received any votes. The merchant was nominated by G, who, obviously, had half the assassins in the city after him already and didn't really want to see Greenfery in charge. Well, none of them did, but they were all scared. Cowardice and selfishness, as Ignita said later. But the assassin's vote spread like the Candle Flame of Hope over the Lump of Butter of Terror. Anoia must have been in a good mood, too, because Trim won. By a single vote.
Walking out, G found himself walking with the Chairman of the Guild of Beggars. "There's a turn up for the books, hm?" said the assassin cheerfully.
"I don't know what you're so happy about," the beggar replied, miserably. "I voted for Trim! I voted against Greenferry! Argh, we're all doomed!"
"There, there," said G comfortingly. "At least you probably won't live long enough to regret this."
It wasn't the most cheering of observations.
