SURPRISES IN UBERWALD
When Havelock Vetinari woke up in the big bed, the vampire was smiling at him.
"Good evening. I hope you are feeling vell?
He was feeling bruised from head to toe, and amazingly happy, but something was off.
He peered muzzily at her. "Lady Margolotta! You look so different today!" The dumpy, shy little woman who had lead him upstairs was gone, replaced by someone sharper-featured, a voluptuous dark-haired beauty with bright teeth.
"It vaz an anti-glamor. Mizdirection for a wery condescendink younk man."*
*He wouldn't realize for some time that the Uberwaldean accent was more misdirection.
"I wasn't condescending!"
"Yes, you vere. You vere thinking "Here's the brilliant young man from Ankh-Morpork, come to share civilization vit the old lady from Uberwald." I have been reading humans for decades—your faces, your postures. You vere very proud. You vill learn, too."
She shrugged her shoulder and her nightgown drooped astonishingly over one creamy breast. He nearly stopped breathing. The Assassin's guild had not prepared him for enemies who deployed lingerie as a weapon.
His closed his eyes for a moment, and then she was speaking again. " I vanted to meet you. I had heard how romantic you are."
"Pardon?"
"A man who could kill the Patrician with a vord, and who put a flower—a flower, mind you! in his mouth while fighting for a rebellion iz nothing but romantic."
"Mmm?" His body twinged again, and he struggled to remember exactly what had happened the night before. He had been standing by the bed undoing his tunic, and then there was this—movement and—he was looking at the ceiling, and then there was that, and then THAT, and then more...she was quite strong.
"Still, I might have killed you for your pride, if I had not promised Roberta my help."
Aunt Bobbi's idea of help had doubtless not pictured what had passed between him and Lady Margolotta. She would never know the vampire's conquest of him.
"You didn't need to, to, to half kill me!"
"Yes, I did. It was a lesson in the uses of control. It iz very easy to control men viz sex. It iz much harder to control them with only a vord, an expression, a glance. Hardest still to bend their minds in the vay you vant them to go while agreeing with them. Bobbi and I know that you need the training if you are to be Patrician."
She took his hand and placed it on her breast. He tried to avoid breathing.
Mischievously, she said, "But your further lessons do not need to begin this instant."
And now he did gasp as she began to touch him.
OOOO
Lady Margolotta was about to lie down in her coffin when she saw that Vetinari was packing.
"Leavink? After only a veek?"
"Yes. I'm going to Lancre."
It had been an astonishing week as he read from her library and listened to her golden voice. But he had kept her from learning that he was aware of the peril.
She swung round on him. Her hands stood on glorious hips. "Vit the vitches?" A casual listener might have thought she used another consonant.
"Yes."
She was furious. "So vat was I to you, only another turret in your castle?"
At his confusion she thought again. "Ah. Another notch in your bedpost?"
"You know it's much more than that. I wish I could stay." He found he really meant this. He bent to pick up a small box, and then carefully placed it in her hands.
"Vat is this?" She opened it suspiciously, and pulled out an ornate little scroll. "Some kind of stupid poem?"
It was a square thirty letters on a side, with white and black spaces.
"A word-game puzzle. I have devised your first four names into it. I thought you might like it on a long night."
"Hmph." She withdrew a tissue-paper wrapped item. It was a long silken dress with a fitted jacket, silver-colored and subtly patterned, and a black scalloped edging of little bats.
"I thought you might want to come to Ankh-Morpork incognito."
She laughed and kissed him. "Vere did you get this?
"I had it in my rucksack."
She lifted her eyebrows.
"That is, I brought the cloth and persuaded Igor to stitch it up. The bats were his idea , and I think they work well.
"Silver for a vampire. Quelle surpise!" She laughed, then frowned. "But I hear the vitch now.
In the courtyard an old woman in black straddled a broomstick.
"Good morning, Mistress Weatherwax. A pleasure to see you again."
"Morning, Ladyship. Get up here, man, it's a long trip. Hope you've got a coat."
"A revoir, Ladyship." He held her close, wishing it could have lasted, knowing he would miss her danger forever.
OOOO
When Vetinari and Granny Weatherwax were safely ensconced in her cottage, she wheeled on him.
"How did you do it, man? she snapped. "I didn't think they knew things like this in the city. How did you keep her from catching you?"
He hesitated for a minute, as one who doesn't want to give away secrets.
"It was a mixture of things. Partly Aunt Bobbi and I did know, or suspected very much. Some travelers who visited her never returned. People chalked it up to the risks in Uberwald, but I thought it was too much to be natural. That's why we asked you to come for me after a week." He shivered. It had been close.
"Part of it was what she gave away herself, always trying to catch my eye, talking about how happy I would be there, that mesmerizing smile. It would have been splendid. Even knowing what I did, I so wanted to believe her."
"She has an amazing library, do you know?" he continued after a moment. "It's startling what vampires will write down. They're so arrogant they never think anyone will learn to read backward. And finally I learned from Igor, chatting with him during the day. It's fascinating what he gets up to in his lab, but he's essentially lonely. No one ever talks to Igors."
"Lady Margolotta ain't a flighty young thing to be deceiv'd. How did you keep her from—the blasted biting?"
"Vampires like to—toy with their food."
She silently agreed. There were secrets from that whole Magrat business no one else needed to know.
"She did take blood from me." He shuddered. "It was not always unpleasant. But it takes special circumstances for a person to be actually changed. Mostly it's not worth it to a vampire; the new ones are essentially competition. I also—played with her. Always seem more ignorant, more a fool than you are. She thought I was fatuous, preening, and innocent. She thought she had plenty of time."
"And you ain't any virgin, are you?" Granny Weatherwax demanded as someone who had a right to know. "You ain't gonna let anything come between you and yer plans."
He smiled in a cold way which would be perfected in the next decade.
"No. I do not allow anyone to detain me."
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