Chapter 6: The Deal
"Is this mine?" Vetinari asked.
"I don't know, I can't see a thing," Alexandra said. "I think I just tried to put your trousers over my head."
She giggled. In the darkness, she passed the trousers in the direction of Vetinari's voice.
"Definitely mine," he said. "This must be your…" he paused, searching for vocabulary he did not normally need to use, "…bodice. It didn't fit me very well."
"Let's just try not to get our stockings mixed up."
After much fumbling in the darkness, which was incidentally largely what they'd been doing the past hour, Vetinari and Alexandra succeeded in dressing in the correct clothing.
"My hair's full of hay," Alexandra said.
"It looks fine to me."
"You can't see anything, silly."
Vetinari smiled in the dark. It was very nearly a grin, though grinning was not something he was accustomed to, and he was certain this was the first time in his life anyone had dared call him silly. It didn't seem to matter. Alexandra could have called him an imbecile son of a rabid titmouse and he would have grinned just the same.
The headache was gone, the confusion of memories in his mind had stopped, and he felt he didn't have a care in the world. When he'd ridden out from Tallstone, he'd grumbled at being sent to the country in the middle of winter, especially when there were matters to attend to at court. But now, it didn't seem like such a bad idea. Clean country air did a body good. Nice country ladies did even better.
He groped in front of him and finally found the hayloft door. He lifted it and moonlight spilled inside. They'd discovered that it was a very big loft indeed, separated into two sections. The one they were in was cut off from the festivities on the other side by a solid wall of cubical hay bales.
"Your hair is full of hay," he said.
Alexandra pulled out some straws and released them to the wind.
"I'll be a laughingstock," she said. "There are people from six towns down there and they're all going to know who was in the hayloft tonight."
She caught Vetinari's eye but it was too dark for him to see her blush. "I don't do this every year, you know," she said.
"Neither do I. Shall we?"
When they reached the ground, Alexandra looked at the sky.
"Almost dawn," she said. "We should go back to the festival. Mr. Smiggins will want to meet you."
The barn was just as hot as before, and the people still danced and talked and played in expectation that the lottery would soon begin. Alexandra led Vetinari to a table where several older, pot-bellied men relaxed in their chairs, scumble mugs in hand.
"This is Mr. Smiggins, he's mayor of Ogden, the biggest town in the valley," she said. "Mr. Smiggins, here's our knight for the evening."
A man with a crown of wispy white hair got to his feet with some difficulty and stuck out a meaty hand.
"Welcome, milord. I see you've met our Alexandra. We are proud of her, yes indeed." He paused to take aim at a wooden spittoon at the foot of the table and let fly. There was a thump as the wad hit the target. "What was I saying? Oh, yes. Our Alexandra." He absently removed a piece of hay from her hair. "She's the first, count 'em, first woman mayor in the kingdom. The voters in Taylorsville are a smart bunch."
Vetinari shot a questioning glance at Alexandra, who shrugged her shoulders.
"The king declared women can't vote," she said. "He never said anything about standing for election."
Something deep, deep inside of Vetinari recoiled at the word election. When he heard it, it was like fingernails dragged across a blackboard inside his skull. He couldn't quite remember why he felt that way about the word. And about the related term that arose right along with it, threatening to escape on his tongue…
"I was not aware that the towns of the valley practised…" he paused, the fingernails in his mind at the ready again, "…democracy." He couldn't have sounded more disgusted if he'd been talking of cannibalism.
"Oh, yes, milord" said Mr. Smiggins. "It's the ancient right of the valley towns to elect our leaders. Every five years new." He grinned. "The loser of the run-off gets a free chicken."
"How…civic." Vetinari turned to Alexandra, who was looking rather sheepish. "If I recall correctly, you defined your work as 'doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that,'" he said.
"It's true. I have to keep the records up to date, meet with the council, get the hen rotation figured out and we're even thinking of putting a stop sign on Main Street. On market day we have two-way traffic and practically a bloody war between the mules."
"Why didn't you just tell me you were the mayor of Taylorsville?" Vetinari asked.
"It always seems to put men off," Alexandra said, colour rising in her face. "Around here, a woman who can carry a two-by-four across her shoulders is more valuable than one who can count without needing her fingers."
Vetinari nodded thoughtfully. "Ah yes, the loneliness of leadership," he said. "I've often thought a leader is much like a lighthouse, a single tower standing guard on the coast where waves of trouble lap against it. Yet it remains steadfast, its light a warning and perhaps salvation for ships that otherwise sail blindly into the rocks."
Alexandra and Mr. Smiggins exchanged a look. It was a silent agreement to stay respectful and polite in the face of Vetinari's rather stretched metaphor.
"Well said, milord," said Mr. Smiggins. He had the presence of mind to cover his mouth with his hand before he smiled. Vetinari chose to pretend he didn't see it.
"Not to change the subject," Alexandra began, in words that made clear this was just what she was about to do, "but do you have any special instructions for His Lordship, Mr. Smiggins?"
"Not really. You've done lotteries before, haven't you, milord?"
"Certainly," said Vetinari. "I take it my task will be merely to draw the slips and announce the names."
"And congratulate the winners," said Mr. Smiggins.
"Of course. A hand shake, a pat on the back—"
"—a kiss for the women," Alexandra added. "They like telling their friends they kissed a knight. We really thought we'd have trouble getting another one after the unfortunate incident from last year."
The wisp of a rumour floated into Vetinari's memory. Something about last year's knight and a particularly enthusiastic, and decidedly large woman who'd won a year's free rat catching.
"I trust there will be someone around to support me if I need it," he said. "Literally."
Mr. Smiggins waved a hand. "Don't you worry, milord. Winners from the last five years aren't allowed in the draw." He took out a pocket watch. "I think we'll be settin' up. Won't be long now, milord." He hustled off.
Vetinari gazed a long time at Alexandra.
"Well, well, well. A mayor," he said.
"That's right. I was the only one in the last election who could write her own name."
"You don't strike me as a municipal leader."
Alexandra folded her arms and looked at him with amusement.
"What are municipal leaders supposed to be like, then -- aside from lighthouses?" she asked.
"They drink less than you, I believe," said Vetinari, smiling. "And dance worse. And are perhaps not so… friendly."
"Everybody in the valley drinks a lot and dances well. It's cultural," said Alexandra, returning the smile. "As for friendliness, well, you just caught me in a good mood."
"I'm astonished at my luck."
"I bet you are."
The musicians struck up Savelli's Prelude and Fugue, usually a staid song that Vetinari in another dimension would have thoroughly enjoyed in the silence of his room, the music captured on paper and uncontaminated by the addition of things so unnecessary as instruments and musicians. But this was Prelude and Fugue as Savelli never intended; one of the valley banjoists had rearranged it for fiddle and banjo with scumble jug accompaniment. The toe-tapping result was locally dubbed the Swamp Rat Blues. It really was an improvement over the original.
Alexandra, never able to keep still around a good beat, began to sway.
Vetinari watched Mr. Smiggins and a young man with a grin like an over ripe jack-o-lantern carry a table onto the center of the dance floor. They covered it with a white cloth and decked it with a stack of envelopes and ten shot glasses.
"What is the grand prize in the Lottery?" Vetinari asked.
"Trip for two to Tallstone," Alexandra said over the music.
"Really?"
Mr. Smiggins carefully set a glass bowl filled with paper slips onto the table.
"I take it as a mayor, you aren't allowed to enter the draw," said Vetinari.
Alexandra nodded. "That's right."
"It's unfortunate. No free trip to Tallstone for you."
"My bad luck." Alexandra's hand tapped her hip to the beat of the music.
"Well. Perhaps you'll get there some other way," Vetinari said.
Alexandra turned her eyes from the band and looked at him curiously.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, I assumed that at some point, civic leaders of every stripe deserve a vacation."
"Do they?"
"Certainly. Once every five or ten years shouldn't hurt." Vetinari gazed up at the rafters of the barn. The pigeons fluttered more than usual due to their perches vibrating from the noise of the festival. "When does your term of office end, Alexandra?" he asked.
"A year from this summer."
"Ah. Perhaps that would be a perfect time to relax a bit. See the sites the kingdom has to offer."
Alexandra followed his gaze, but couldn't figure out what was so interesting about the rafters. She waited for Vetinari to get to the point.
"And yet," he said finally, "I can't help but guess that there is far less for you to do in winter in your roll as municipal leader."
Alexandra pressed her lips together to keep back the little laugh that threatened to escape. "True enough," she managed to say.
Vetinari nodded, a faraway look in his eye. "Winter is, in fact, a time when the absence of the mayor for, say…a few weeks would surely be forgiven by the good people of Taylorsville," he said. "Especially if the mayor used that time to—"
"Observe the municipal systems of other towns?" Alexandra suggested. "And even…cities?"
"Precisely. It would be time well spent."
A cheer welled up from the people near the dance floor and caught on in a wave until everyone except Alexandra and Vetinari were clapping ecstatically.
"We're about to start," she said over the noise. "You better get out there."
"We'll continue this conversation afterward?"
Alexandra grasped Vetinari's hand and shook it like a business deal had just been reached. "Go on," she said. "They're waiting."