Angua suddenly felt tired. They had done this routine for two weeks now, and nothing. Not a trace of the Donkey anywhere.
Her feet were aching from standing on the cobblestones in high heels all night long, she was shivering with cold, and now on top of it all she would have to deal with Nobby's insecurity. Again.
It would have to wait, she decided. The problem was that they were fighting a two front battle. On the one hand there was the Donkey himself and the urgent need to catch him before he struck again, but on the other there was the Guild of Seamstresses, that didn't appreciate the Watch butting in on what they saw as their territory one bit.
Mister Vimes had been successful in keeping them at bay so far11, but the Guild of Lawyers were filing new complaints with the Patrician on a daily basis now, so it was only a matter of time before the Watch would be ordered to seize their activities. The major guilds looked after one another12, and the Guild of Seamstresses was one of the most influential of them all, second only to the Assassins. Before long they wouldn't even be allowed to catch this creep, even if they could!
She sent Nobby/Bethi back into the shadows to his look-out post, and he went grudgingly, the bangles forcing him to walk like a Djelibeybi as he did. Angua looked at his retreating back, wondering for the umpteenth time if this whole set-up wasn't one big mistake. And yet it had started out so well.
-----
They had applied together for their preliminary guild cards the day after the meeting with Mister Vimes.
The old lizard-like hag behind the counter at the Guild reception desk had given Angua a maternal smile of welcome, and then she had laid eyes on Corporal Nobbs in full attire. Chameleons would have gone green13 with envy if they had seen the bulging eyes of the receptionist right then, Angua thought. She coughed.
"My friend . . . Bethi . . . would also like to become a seamstress, ma'am," she said. The two of them had discussed it briefly beforehand, but Angua still found it very hard to keep a straight face when she said Nobby's new name.
"She is from somewhere in Al Khali, and has promised to teach me all the 967 secrets of the Seriph's Harem14."
This brought on a deep blush on what little could be seen of Nobby's face that would have had the lizard population sit up and take notes if there had been any present.
"Really?" said the receptionist, "I would have thought that some secrets are best left alone." Then she shrugged. What was the Guild coming to? She wrote their names in a ledger and on a pair of cards, which she proceeded to hand over to them, together with a list of various services and their respective prices.
"Here. You are now officially neophytes to our trade. This gives you the right to practice our profession for two weeks," she said, while managing to indicate with her tone of voice that two lifetimes of practice probably wouldn't do Bethi much good. "After that you will have to sit an exam, and if you pass it you can join."
"Exam?" Bethi managed to look absolutely horrified in spite of the veil15.
"Oh, don't you worry about that, Bethi," Angua had said quickly, "I'm sure that to one who's so well versed in the secrets of love as you that won't be a problem!"
"I dunno 'bout any verse," Bethi said sullenly. "OW! What did you have to go and do that for? It's hard enough to walk in this things without you stompin' on my toes."
Angua's smile remained, but it was only because it was painted on. The Lizard gave them a look, for free.
"Always ask for cash up front, always use Sonkies, medical check-up twice per month and the Guild gets fifteen percent of your net income, payable weekly," she rattled off. "Any questions?"
-----
That had been a crucial moment, Angua thought. Or at least she had thought so at the time. The Guild had stubbornly refused to tell anyone who wasn't a card-carrying seamstress about where and when the Donkey had struck, and so by necessity they had joined their ranks. And then she had asked.
-----
"I have a question, ma'am . . ."
"Yes, 'Fifi'?"
Angua almost winced. She didn't know much about the inside world of the seamstresses, but somehow she didn't think that the name she had chosen for herself was as suitable for a working girl as she had imagined it would be. It sounded more like a name for a poodle or a pet swamp dragon. The lizard woman's face certainly implied as much. She tried to ignore it, and struggled on.
"Well, I'm a bit worried about this madman I've been hearing about, ma'am," she said, and tried to look frightened.
"Yeah," 'Bethi' had added, looking up from the list that he had been busy trying to decipher, "We don't wanna end up gettin' donkeyed or anything!"
Lizard woman eyed them both suspiciously for a moment, and Angua almost thought the game was up when she leaned back and got a scroll out from underneath her desk. She held her breath and then had to hold back a sigh of relief when it turned out to be a map of the city.
"Don't you worry 'bout a thing, Bethi," the lounge lizard said, before shooting them a lecherous grin, "Remember, we take good care of our members!"
-----
Angua had felt sure at the time that it was the only joke the reptile-like woman had ever come up with, but that it was one that she was happy to repeat over and over again nonetheless.
What she hadn't done, happily or otherwise, was divulge any information on where the Donkey had attacked his victims. Instead, all she had done was direct them towards a little appendix of a dead end street on the map, which was to be their place of work for the next three weeks.
And here they had stayed since, with little hope of getting out. The guild checked up on its members twice every night, when two little old ladies came around, ostensibly to hand out warm tea and a bun to the guild members, but in reality they were on the lookout for the Donkey. They looked like someone's grannies, but Dottie and Sadie were a lot more than that. They were the guild law enforcers, and the Guild's laws were the toughest of them all. Nobby shivered with fear every time they came around.
It wouldn't have mattered much if they had only been a pair of grannies, though, because their presence still meant that Angua and Nobby couldn't leave. Their absence would soon have been noticed, and then the game would have been up.
-----
Over in Pseudopolis Yard at his desk, Commander Vimes was echoing his sergeant's thoughts.
"The game is up, Fred."
"Why is that, Mister Vimes?" Fred Colon wondered.
"See this?"
Vimes could swear without actually saying any bad words, and the way he pronounced "this" made it clear to the listener that whatever "this" was would take any other person the equivalent of a whole dictionary of blasphemies to describe.
"This is a writ from the President of the Lawyer's Guild," Vimes explained, "And what it means is, as of now the Donkey is sacrosanct. No one apart from the seamstresses can touch him. Hah! You had better get over to Fan Tan Alley, Fred, and tell Angua and Nobby about it."
Sergeant Colon looked crestfallen from his commanding officer's bloodshot eyes to the document in his nicotine-stained hand.
"Is it really as bad as all that, sir?" he ventured.
"See this?" Vimes pointed to a blob of wax at the bottom of the page, and this time there simply wouldn't have been any dictionaries to look things up in. Any such book would have spontaneously self-ignited before its author could have finished it.
"This is the Patrician's official seal of approval! Get going, Fred. If they were to catch him they would end up in jail for a long time. Now go!"
-----
Another potential customer sidled up to her. A greasy grin appeared on the man's face when he saw Angua close up.
"Hey, baby! Wanna try a real man?"
Angua automatically simpered coquettishly, while taking a look at the specimen in front of her. She groaned inwardly. He was a good five inches shorter than she was. Another schoolteacher type. What was it with her and schoolteacher types?
"I even brought my own Sonkies16! Extra large, see?" the man winked at her, and his lecherous grin broadened further still, until it threatened to take the top of his head off.
Angua had wondered about that. She had found out that Sonkies didn't seem to come in any size but extra large, which was ridiculous. She had gone home and compared the ones she had been given by the Guild, and found that the actual sizes varied a great deal, in spite of the fact that they were all supposed to be extra large. And then she had noticed the unobtrusive marks on the side of all the packages, and smiled.
She didn't now.
-----
The one advantage of the alleyway was that it was secluded, Angua had said. From his hidden point of view, Nobby disagreed with this. The seclusion meant that he didn't get to meet any other . . . hem, hem . . . colleagues, and the Sergeant certainly didn't want him around, either. Nobby was sulking.
This whole thing hadn't worked out the way he had hoped. Nobby had heard other watchmen talking, and even though he wasn't sure that he had understood everything, he felt sure that this wasn't right. Seriously, how was he ever supposed to get under covers if he was ordered to stand in a dark doorway on his own all night long?
There was another client over by the Sergeant now, he noticed. They all seemed to look alike to him, like crossbreeds from an unholy union of accountants, priests and schoolteachers, and this one was no exception. He glanced over to the couple, knowing full well what would happen next.
Yep. There it was. The guy showing her a wad of money, leering at her, getting closer, almost touching, before it happened. Wham! A look of dread on his face as she responded, before stammering a reply and hurrying off. Nobby knew that Angua had to get them close by in order to smell them, of course. What he hadn't yet been able to figure out was what the Hells it was that she said to make them take off like that.
-----
Looking at the disappearing figure, Angua made a mental note that she had to write another week's worth of fake receipt copies for tomorrow night, which she and Nobby would then hand over to the Guild with fifteen per cent of their supposed earnings. She was struck again by the vast difference between the harsh reality of Fan Tan Alley and the rosy stories that Birgitta Goodmountain sold in her little shop.
Birgitta Goodmountain was a dwarf who had a small engraving business over in Gleam Street, where she produced books. They were cheap ten-penny magazines with smudged woodcuts that invariably told of how True Love Prevailed, and Angua despised and loathed them. Loathed them with such a passion, in fact, that she had bought and read every single one of them just so that she could fuel her anger even more.
If Ms. Goodmountain ever got a job around here she would have a very different story to tell, Angua thought bitterly.
She had had just about enough of this, she decided.
-----
He had had just about enough of this, he decided.
And yet he hadn't done anything wrong! He was just doing what every right-thinking man had an obligation to do, namely teaching those whores a lesson they had deserved a thousand times over. He was the Creature of the One God, and it was their only duty to fulfil his every wish and desire, and yet when he told them so they laughed scornfully in his face! And now on top of it all he had finally understood that the Watch were on his back, too.
But they would all be sorry! He would show them the errors of their ways, and they would come to see the Light at last.
The man hid in the shadows once more.
-----
11 Mainly by conveniently forgetting to mention Angua's and Nobby's undercover operation.
12 Guild leaders were always rubbing up against one another. Or, in the case of the seamstresses, just rubbing, and often with lubricants…
13 And pinkish yellow, and chequered, and a rather attractive pale blue hue, and so on.
14 The Khalians are renowned for two things. The other is their meticulousness about the first.
15 The perception of the Guild of Seamstresses was that they didn't bother much with theory. Instead, they focused on the on-the-yob training.
16 Named after Wallace Sonky, pioneer in the rubber industry, without whose innovations the city of Ankh-Morpork would have been rather more crowded.