** The update frenzy continues…(*smile*) Glad you're all enjoying the story. Some exciting bits coming up!**

11. Enchanted

            He made good on his promise.

            Isabella was hauled out of bed around dawn by two brawny female servants and dropped directly into a hot bath. They washed her hair, they scrubbed her skin, they even brushed her teeth. They dried her off and dressed her. They pinned up her hair while she retched into a porcelain bowl. Twice. They brushed her teeth again. All of Lord Vetinari's servants were thorough and efficient.

            At breakfast she sat across from him, emptying cup after cup of black coffee, switching now and then to orange juice. There was no food.

            The Patrician wasn't looking his usual grim self. He was looking grimmer. If he'd slept the night before, it didn't look it. It was always impossible to tell by his clothes, since he wore the same thing every day, but the bags under his eyes were darker, the lines around them deeper, the ashy shade of his frown ashier than they were last night.

            "Who was it?" asked Isabella.

            "Billy Gabbershins, five-year-old nephew of a landlady on Market Street. Eulalie Bucket, eight years old, grand daughter of the cheese mogul Seldom Bucket. Tenacity Lode, 12 years old, member of a very large, very angry family of armed dwarfs."

            The Patrician spoke with the calm and softness of someone who will pull the trigger as soon as he knows where the target is. The reports had come in one at a time, once an hour. By dawn he'd already been to one of the murder scenes. The boarding house on Market Street. The landlady Mrs. Blunt was inconsolable. The daughter said her mum had woke up with what she called "a p'culiar feeling," went in to check on little Billy and there he was. The vampire Pefka tried to pick up the murderer's scent from the second crime scene at the Bucket residence but he was pelted with cutlery and curses the moment he showed his face.

            Isabella stared into her coffee and had the feeling she'd be sick again.

            "Why children?"

            "Why indeed."

            The Patrician did something he rarely did, which was run his hands through his hair. He'd heard quite a few members of the Lode family had started tearing theirs out when they found their child.

            He emptied his coffee cup and stood up.

            "I have a small task for you. Please check the structural integrity of the Pon's Bridge."

            "Why?"

            "I will not have you haunting the halls of the Palace all day sighing and spouting poetry. It would upset the servants."

            She pinched the space between her eyes but the scalding head ache didn't go away.

            "Havelock, I'm not really feeling up to--"

            He was already at the dining room door, speaking over his shoulder. "I would like to see the drawings this afternoon. A carriage is waiting."

**

            It had been a trying night for the wizards and the day was looking only slightly worse.

            For one thing, nobody had gotten any sleep. Nobody except the students and non-wizard servants. Anyone with a shred of training and a sensitivity to the presence of high levels of octarine could feel the package, no matter where at the university he was. Wizards tossed in their beds, paced in their rooms, descended on the pantry for snacks at midnight, two, four, and then, what the hell, they stayed in the dining room with a pot of coffee and  yesterday's scones, waiting for breakfast to be served.

            The senior faculty had to take their snacks in one of the most remote rooms in the massive university cellars. It had walls and floors of granite sealed with a series of complicated spells. A long wooden table was at the back wall. The room wasn't meant for storage. Only the most delicate magical experiments were performed there.

            It took Ridcully an hour to carry the package step by step to the cellar room without letting it slip from the tongs. There were a couple of close calls along the way but he succeeded in setting the package on the wooden table. It took another hour to take the brown packaging paper off the box, again using the tongs. Then the Senior Wrangler ran off to get his tool kit, and in the cellar hall the wizards performed some protective spells over the pliers before using them to slowly work open the straps of the box.

            A strategy meeting followed, along with some tea and some delightful little butter cookies.

            It was decided that the lid would stay on until a couple of thaumometers and a few more pairs of over sized tongs could be found. This took longer than planned. The Chair of Indefinite Studies was sent to a well-known hardware store to get the tongs. When he returned with several Handy Dwarf brand tongs with the price tags hanging off, he wouldn't tell anyone how he got them out of a closed and locked store in the middle of the night.

            Around dawn, they opened the box.

            Wizards with tongs at either side of the table lifted the gown. Another wizard with tongs removed the box. The gown was carefully draped across the table.

            The Dean whistled.

            Ponder gaped at the thaumometer in his hand. The readings he was getting were off the scales.

            Throughout the morning they performed a series of observations and experiments on the gown involving complicated snipping of gold and blue threads using magic sewing scissors and subjecting them to some exploratory spells. The Senior Wrangler sketched the golden dragon and the symbols embroidered on the silk and gave them to the Librarian for research among the university's magical books. It was all a very slow, stressful process. The senior faculty were rarely an efficient research body, and it was even harder to work when the hairs on their beards felt like someone was trying to extract them one by one with a pair of tweezers.

            The Lecturer in Recent Runes had been assigned the task of searching the inside of what they'd begun to call the Dragon Gown for a label of some kind. He wore gloves magicked for the purpose. You couldn't be too careful. After a half hour of painstaking, hesitant attempts to unbutton and unfold and generally manipulate the fabric in search of something, he thought he saw a white shadow on an inside hem. He reached a little deeper.

            The sleeve of his wizardly robe flopped up by accident…

            And his bare wrist came in contact with the fabric.

            It was like cool water on a summer day. It was like the softest skin he'd ever felt, which said something for the antics the Lecturer in Recent Runes had got up to as a student. He let the fabric of the gown slide up his wrist, up his arm, and he caught himself wishing it could go further. Wouldn't it be nice to pull the gown over his head, to feel the silk completely from head to toe, to admire it in a mirror…

             "Runes!"

            He yanked his arm out of the fabric. The Archchancellor glared at him.

            "What were you doing?"

            "I was just… I was…" The other wizards stared at him. "Maybe you should touch the fabric, Archchancellor."

            "That would be an extremely dangerous thing to do."

            "There's something strange about it."

            Ridcully registered the look on the face of the Lecturer in Recent Runes. It was flushed with a sort of happy and terrified confusion.

            Reluctantly, he took off his own gloves and reached out for the gown.

**

            "Disgraceful! My grandmother could have built a better bridge than that! Look at this."

            Isabella pointed at the sketches she'd made of the Pon's Bridge. Lord Vetinari deduced from the lines and echses and circles slashed in red across the strongest horizontal lines that the problem lay in the weight-bearing beams.

            "Ask me what that's made of," said Isabella.

            "What is that made of?"

            "Oak edged with iron! The most crucial part of the entire bridge is made of wood! The stone on the outside is just a facade and…" Isabella shook her head angrily, "…I could not believe my eyes. This is not the Century of the Fruitbat anymore. You can't build a bridge out of wood in Ankh-Morpork and then cover it with stone and hope it holds. It's not even good oak. I bet there were whole colonies of squirrels living in there before the tree was cut. The iron isn't much better. And look at this."

            She scrabbled among the papers on the desk Vetinari had set up for her in a small office on the widdershins side of the hallway on the same floor as the Oblong Office.

            "The clerks found this for me." She brandished a slip of paper. "An invoice from the building company. You paid for steel beams. Steel, Havelock." She jabbed the invoice at the proper place.

            The Patrician rubbed his beard. "That is curious."

            "Not at all. Swindlers. I really think we should…" Isabella paused. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

            "What was the total cost from the builders?"

            Isabella consulted the invoice. "Twenty thousand."

            "That's extremely interesting. The Palace was rather short on money at the time. I recall paying something resembling ten thousand."

            There was silence. Isabella looked again at her sketches and the invoice.

            "If I remember correctly," said the Patrician, "that was actual cost, ten thousand. For wooden beams."

             "A false invoice?"

            "It looks authentic to me. Signatures, a date, an impressive looking stamp." The Patrician looked at it closely. "Yes, everything seems in order."

            "You didn't pay for steel beams."

            "Wood."

            Isabella folded her arms. "I should probably ask what kind of in-sewer-ants you have on the bridge."

            "Ah, that's an interesting question. Very en pointe. Let me see." He scratched his beard again. "Something along the lines of forty thousand."

            "No. Don't tell me you…" She looked at the invoice again. "You allowed a cheap bridge to be built, doubled the price on the invoice and doubled it again for the in-sewer-ants. Do you want the bridge to fall?"

            The Patrician gazed at the silver top of his stick.

            "There are shops on it, Havelock! People do business there!"

            "What kind of shops are on the Pon's Bridge?"

            "I saw a couple costume shops, a place that sold theater paint, there was a workshop for constructing stage props, an engraver that printed what looked like programs for the Dysk…"

            The Patrician was nodding. His irritation at street entertainment and, by extension, theater in general was a carefully cultivated character trait. People expected him to be irrational in something. He was only human, after all.

             "This is not amusing at all," said Isabella. "If the bridge collapses, people could get hurt."

            "Not people. Theater people. Who from my observation have incredibly hard heads. They'll bounce on the Ankh a few times and be fit in time for curtain call. They'll probably write an exciting play about the whole dramatic experience. And the Palace will deposit money that will fund a new and stronger bridge." He spread his hands like he was the giver of nature's bounty. "Everyone will be happy."

            "There's really no hope for you."

            Vetinari put on an innocent face, or at least tried. He couldn't do it very well.

            "What did you send me to look at it for, then?" said Isabella. "You want to know how much longer you have to wait before this bit of theatrical genocide happens?"

            He raised an eyebrow.

            "By the end of the year," she said, rolling up her sketches. "And I hope I won't be here to see it. It's completely irresponsible of you."

            "Your husband never does such things?"

            "Of course, but only after I argue. It's a disgrace that you've got away with it without anyone appealing to your conscience."

            "Pardon, my what?"

            Isabella bit the inside of her cheek and began tidying up the work table. She looked much fresher than she had that morning. The shadows had left her eyes, her cheeks weren't so ashen, the general lethargy she'd had about her was replaced by what looked to Lord Vetinari like nervous energy. At least the cognac had made her sleep. It was obvious to him she hadn't slept at all the previous couple of nights.

            She'd made other fast sketches while she was out. The Patrician browsed through them. Buildings that looked a strong breeze from falling over, rough stone streets that routinely snapped carriage axles, a cracked part of the embankment along the canal. Snapshots of the city, details that most people didn't see anymore because they were simply there, a part of it all. Invisible. She saw them.

            That was the mind that had impressed him all those years ago. Talent that had ripened beautifully over the years. Somehow.

            "I am delighted to see you're feeling better," he said.

            "It was a nice distraction, yes." Isabella leaned against the drafting table. "For about five minutes I forgot that I'm dead. For thirty seconds I forgot that two of the children who died last night were the same age as our children." She chose not to correct the possessive. "If I get my hands on that vampire I'll nail her to the Deosil Gate myself."

**

            Actually, there already was a vampire nailed to the Deosil Gate.

            He'd obviously been hanging there for some time. When the Watch got the report and hot footed it up there, Gunther Brech was covered in rotten tomatoes, lettuce, graffiti, chunks of the Ankh and an unidentifiable brown and slimy substance that was not the Ankh. The crowd had at least let him keep his sun glasses.

            He tried to give Vimes a little wave. It was difficult because the sleeves of his evening jacket were nailed to the gate.

            "Haul him down," growled Vimes.

            Captain Carrot did the honours while a gathering crowd of the regular merchants, loafers and general busy bodies got up a chant that involved an inordinate number of boo's. Somebody threw a turnip. Vimes spun on the crowd.

            "Who did that? Own up!"

            The people had their hands behind their backs and were looking innocently at the cloudless summer sky.

            "Right. The next vegetable that gets thrown will be considered a deadly weapon and the throwee's backside will feel the business end of my boot." Vimes looked down at his footwear. "Sandal. Clear?"

            The crowd mumbled.

            Gunther Brech examined his jacket cuffs. There was no saving them.

            "You all right, sir?" asked Vimes.

            "BLOODSUCKER!" someone shouted.

            Vimes turned on the crowd again. He had the kind of glare that seemed to personally pick out each and every person, even in a crowd of fifty.

            "I've tried to tell zem I don't do zat sort of zing anymore," said Brech.

            "Who did this to you?"

            "I vas valking down ze street minding my own business vhen a few ruffians brought me here. I had done nozing to provoke zem."

            "MURDERER!" The chant was picked up and the crowd started to squeeze in. Watchmen made a protective line in front of Brech.

            Captain Carrot held up a hand.

            "I'm sure you all know it's wrong to blame an entire species for the wrongdoing of one member."

            The crowd was silent.

            "If a human murders someone, you can't go around nailing all the humans up on the gate, can you?"

            A man in blue overalls raised his hand. "I can."

            "No you can't, Mr. Looper. Then you'd have to nail yourself up. After you had one arm up, how could you do the other one?"

            The crowd considered this. Heads were scratched. Noses were thoughtfully picked. It was Problem Solving for Mobs.

            "Maybe if you was barefoot and had the hammer between your…"

            "Nah, you give the hammer to your buddy, he's a troll, see, and then…"

            A watchman burst through the crowd and slid to a stop in front of Vimes.

            "Sah! Fighting down on Short and God." The watchman took a breath. "Six wounded when I left."

            "Who's down there?"

            "Sergeant Detritus. He told 'em to stop but they kept swinging with engraved plates. The vampires are getting ticked. One of 'em…"

            "All right." Vimes waved at a few of his men. "Escort this gentleman home. The rest, come with me!"

**

            At the request of the senior faculty, Isabella dropped by Unseen University later in the afternoon. She was ushered into what looked like an abandoned classroom. Dust coated the desks. The wizards trooped in not long afterward looking like they'd spent all day with their fingers in a light socket. They collapsed onto the desks, coffee mugs in hand.

            "We have a few questions for you, Miss Capelli," said the Archchancellor.

            Ponder couldn't contain himself. "It's amazing! The threads are of no fiber known on the Disc! Pure octarine seeps out of the--"          

            "Stibbons!" Ridcully bent a stern eye on the young wizard. "You will let more level heads handle this." He cleared his throat. "Where, may I ask, did you get the Dragon Gown, Miss Capelli?"

            "It was a gift."

            "You don't know where it was created?"

            Isabella caught Ridcully's choice of word. Created. Dresses were usually made or sewed or something, weren't they?

            "I don't know where it's originally from. I assumed it was imported from Agatea."

            "You wore it?" said Ponder, enthusiasm exploding again from his desk. "You really wore it?"

            "Stibbons!"

            "Yes, I wore it, the same night I got it. It's the most beautiful gown I've ever seen." Isabella appealed to Ridcully. "What's happening, Archchancellor? Please tell me what you found."

            "We can't tell you much yet," he said gravely. "The textile handlers said they've never seen anything like what the gown's made of."

            "One of them tried to cut off a thread with normal scissors and it took us a half hour to wake him up afterward," said the Dean. "He said he dreamed about mountains when he was knocked out."

            "There's something else," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He looked nervously at his fellows.

            The wizards focused their gazes on various points of the dusty classroom rather than fix the others with the kind of stare that said: I know what you think about when you touch that gown. You wish it was a size 67 with extra room at the stomach. You want to wear it. You want to know what it's like to have that silk on your skin. You want to look in a mirror…

            After the Lecturer in Recent Runes and the Archchancellor survived touching the gown with their bare hands, the other wizards had tried, with similar results. Afterward, they kept their gloves on.

            Ponder cleared his throat. "The gown seems to…want to be worn."

            Isabella stared at him.

            "It has a certain attraction, yes," said the Dean. "We are, of course, wizards normally content with our robes of office but the gown has this tempting way about it."

            "It's a tease," the Chair agreed.

            The Archancellor held up a hand. "We're hoping for some more information from the library, Miss Capelli. What we do know is…" he rubbed the shock of white hair standing straight up on his head like a crescent moon-shaped mohawk. "…that gown of yours is powerful. I don't mean a little spell to make wine out of water powerful. I don't even mean wizard staff powerful."

            Isabella stared around at the wizards. "You're saying I have some kind of an enchanted gown."

            The wizards looked at each other again.

            "Or…?"

            "Maybe it would help if you told us who gave you this gift," said Ridcully.

            "My husband, of course. Or rather, my husband's clerk delivered it to me on his behalf. No one else could get away with giving me something that expensive."

            Ridcully took a deep breath and let it out slowly like a bellows.

            "The gown isn't expensive, Madam. It's priceless. It might be the only one of its kind in the universe."

            "We hope," said Ponder.