Chapter Three

Mantis crept up the stairs of the building where the highest-ranking thieves lived. He was thinking about his next commission. That morning a messenger had arrived at his door.

"Oi, Mantis. Lord Rithtake wants you again. Someone's pissed 'im off royally," he had said.
"You ought to have more respect for someone who could terminate you in half a second without even trying," said Mantis, but he said it with a smile. He knew Lord Rithtake's boy well now. Anyone who has worked for that deranged man, learns when to fear assassins and when not to. You feared them when Rithtake glared at you in that peculiar way that seemed to see you in the past tense.

Mantis blew a poison sleepy dart at one of the guards stationed in the hallway, then ran forward and caught him as he fell. The guard was massive, and would have made a very audible thump.

A conversation with Lord Trinton Bezoar Rithtake III was like the visual and auditory equivalent of the taste of lemons. If you weren't careful, it made you squint for days afterward, and cringe at sudden noises. Fortunately, assassins were trained to maintain equilibrium in such situations. The only residual effect was a tendency to twitch whenever someone said the word "money!" sharply.
From one day to another, there was no telling the state of his personal finances. He had no business sense of his own, but should one of his servants come back to him with bad news on the outcome of his latest outlandish scheme...well, every one of Rithtake's remaining servants had developed incredible abilities to turn doomed ventures into overnight successes.
From the price of the commission Rithtake was asking, one of them must have reached a new plane of financial consciousness.
The Patrician. Mantis had thought it over. Mantis, like any smart assassin,* was scared stiff of him. Fear...fear was what kept assassins alive. As long as an assassin is afraid, he knows he's got a realistic grasp of his situation.

[*Meaning, of course, every assassin who's still alive. Most stupid would-be assassins died, if not during their years of schooling, while attempting to pass the exam. One glaring exception to this rule was a man named Jack "Nostrils" Jackson, who completed his exam by default when he tripped over a discarded sausage; his dagger slipped and terminally impaled his instructor. The next day he went into a pub, got roaring drunk, and patted a dwarf on the head, a commonly recognized form of suicide in Ankh-Morpork.]

Mantis took out his lock-picking tools and oil, and began to examine the door.

He had accepted the contract, of course.
So. An attempt on the Patrician. The Guild's rosters showed his price at one million dollars. This payment was enticing, but the Guild always had reason for the price of a life. Vetinari must inflict a million dollars worth of fear on any assassin who even considered taking up a knife against him. Mantis could believe that.
Stories had circulated around the Guild. One rumor said that the most dangerous mind on the Disc, that of the inventor Leonard of Quirm, had dreamed up ingenious and terrible devices to guard the palace from stealth. This might be true, but in Mantis's opinion, there were even more formidable deterrents guarding Vetinari's life. One of them was Vimes.
Sir Samuel Vimes was quickly becoming legendary himself within the Assassin's Guild. Mantis had seen the man once, years ago, when he had just passed his final exam and become an assassin. He had been walking down the street, for once being conspicuously deadly, just for fun, and watching people avoid him. He had seen a Watchman lying in the gutter outside the Mended Drum. The filth of the city was running around him, as fast as it could ooze, to join its kind in the Ankh. It hadn't surprised Mantis at the time. The Watch hadn't meant anything then. Then something happened.

Mantis oiled the hinges thoroughly.

Vimes began to try to change things. He insulted people, and he made enemies. He made enemies among the rich and powerful. He somehow managed to become the richest man in the city himself, which only enabled him to make more expensive enemies, more effectively.
When the first contract that the Guild received to nullify him, failed, it was considered normal clumsiness for a first-time assassin. The second was called a fluke. After the third, they started raising his price. Each time a member of the Guild contracted to terminate him, the assassin in question received less ridicule for their failure, and more ridicule that they had accepted the contract in the first place. And his price kept going up. It was now more than twenty thousand dollars.

Mantis gave the latch one last touch of oil, then turned the handle and pushed open the door.

Students would sit around the breakfast table in the Guild hall, attempting to poison each other, and speculating on the most effective way to dispatch the Commander of the Watch. Mantis had listened to one particularly interesting conversation a few days ago, as he ate breakfast at the head table in the Guild hall.
"It should be so easy! He doesn't even have any bodyguards! You could just walk into his house and embed a crossbow bolt in his skull!"
"Yeah, right. Reek, do you know what happened to the last person who tried that? He barely missed stepping on a bear trap that was in the shrubbery, he managed to stick one of his socks into the mouth of the gargoyle door knocker before it sounded the alarm, and he had gotten to the hallway outside Vimes's room, when he tripped over a pet dragon! It singed his eyebrows off, and it set his crossbow on fire! And, I see that arsenic Reek, he was one of the lucky ones. He still had all his bones whole. When I pass my final, I'll be smart enough not to go after people like Vimes. Ruins your reputation. Hell, everyone knows what he did to Lord Downey. Fooled 'im into giving away secrets, then gave 'im a bloody nose. He's a bloody ghost, Reek. He just doesn't die."

Mantis avoided the tripwire across the center of the room. This thief had reason to fear assassins. He stole a lot of very big things. He had gold leafing on his headboard.

"He's nothing, though. I saw 'im once, when I was a kid..."
"You are a kid, Reek, and I'm beginning to think you always will be."
"Shut up and let me finish, Kevin! Why do you think I tried to poison you? You talk too much!"
"The arsenic? I thought that was a joke, Reek! You'll never survive this place. Even if I hadn't just put Coatlin in your tea, you annoying twit!"
"But he was just a - a drunken coward, wandering the city, running away from things," said a progressively duller voice.
"Well, people are not always what they seem. Now he's outrageously rich, annoyingly influential, and incredibly expensive to inhume. And you're dead!"
There was a condescending laugh, a scuffling noise, and the sound of steel being drawn, and a cry. "You're right," said the one called Reek. "People aren't always what they seem. And you really talked too much."
"Reek!" boomed the voice of Lord Downey from beside Mantis.
"Yes, sir?" said Reek. He was wiping his dagger on his napkin.
"Not at the breakfast table! And Never Without Payment!"
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir. I'm sure my parents will pay for it."

Mantis reached the bed, and quickly completed his assignment. He left the contract on the table: Ten thousand dollars in exchange for the life of master thief, Verland Spacks.

Vimes's appearance was certainly deceiving, almost as much as Mantis's own. He might not have the education of assassins; but there is one quality that all good assassins have, that can't be learned at the Guild. Vimes had it too. They suspect everyone, but show fear of no one. He trusted his luck. He had to. If you go about worrying if someone's going to jump out and stick a knife in your back, someone eventually will.
And Vimes was set on protecting the Patrician. Not out of any fellowship, or because he liked the Patrician's decisions. It had come to the ears of the Guild that Vimes had once said that if anyone was going to kill Vetinari he'd like it to be him.
Vimes was going to be singularly annoying.