** Forgot to add in chapter 1 that of course this is just fanfiction, DW belongs to Terry Pratchett, etc. Jenny – I only lurk and pick up a bit of the lingo. I find it all a bit intimidating for some reason. Reviewers – Thanks for the comments! And now, let's follow Havvie into exile, shall we? **
II.
There was luggage after all. No one would tell him who packed it, but he deduced it quickly enough from the selection of books he found in a small chest the guards had carried, along with several trunks and wooden crates, into the hold of the Ephebian ship the Tolmae. A partition of worm-eaten slats had been thrown up between the little space reserved for Vetinari and the rest of the hold, which was full of barrels and crates destined for trade on the other side of the Circle Sea.
At dawn the docks had overflowed with spectators eager to witness the historic occasion of Lord Havelock Vetinari going into exile. A guarded carriage rumbled directly up to the gangplank and deposited him on the dock. He glimpsed the crowd for only a few moments before being escorted politely but firmly onto the ship. A field of faces he had never seen before, quite a few that he had. They all shared the same mildly shocked expression.
On ship he sat on one of the trunks, a lantern with the smell of fried bacon fat swinging over his head, and noted how he had underestimated Downey's ambition and boldness. When Vetinari and Downey had studied together at the Assassins Guild School thirty years before, Downey had been an arrogant git. When Downey was a lord moving up in the administration of the Guild, he was an arrogant git. When he became president of the Guild, he was…yes…an arrogant git.
Consistency was a wonderful thing. Vetinari had liked having Downey around because the man was predictable.
Alas…
Even he had unexpected depths.
Vetinari sighed. It was all rather embarrassing. Like being overthrown by a bad-tempered, ill-trained sheep dog of average intelligence but above-average bite.
He turned his attention back to the small chest made of stained teak sitting next to him on a trunk. It was familiar to him, though it wasn't his. As far as he knew, the chest was normally full of scarves and shawls, not things a gentleman would normally take on a journey. That it contained books was a delightful surprise, especially when he began to browse through them. He couldn't resist; he was a bookish sort of person and there wasn't anything else to do at the moment. None of the volumes were political; there were quite a few history books he'd been meaning to read, one or two novels, several plays by Hwel in folio form, a few foreign language dictionaries, a thesaurus, an anatomy, several bound books of blank paper and, interestingly enough, a geographic narrative of the Disc, a mammoth work that took up a good portion of the space inside the chest. Vetinari settled it onto his lap and opened it at the bookmark. He hadn't read the entire book yet but he knew who had been working through it in small bits the past year. The marked page began a description of the island of Khavos. Vetinari read for a moment, then lifted the book up closer to the lantern.
Pale pencil lines underscored certain words. Open was one, in a sentence referring to the open plain on the rimward side of the island. Then there was a the. Then an underlined trunk in a sentence that talked about the unusual trunk and branches of the Khavian dragon tree.
He repacked the books, hefted the chest off the trunk it had been sitting on and quickly undid the straps and buckles. The ship lurched, catching Vetinari bent over at the moment of pulling the trunk from the wall; he gripped the straps to keep his balance. It was a series of waves, waters choppy enough to make the ship sway worse than it had when it was still in the calmer waters near Ankh-Morpork. It was a sign that he was in open sea.
When things settled, he made space so that both halves of the trunk could rest on the floor. Black cloth lining covered each half. On one side he found a folded supply of black robes. He drew some aside. Beneath was a layer of shirts and breeches. He reached beneath them and felt…
…heard…
…a muffled sound, very faint. He piled his clothes to the side until he found a small black bundle, which he unwrapped gently.
It was a cage that contained two birds. Vetinari was no bird expert but these two were on the young side and looked like the pigeons the City Watch used to run messages. They were groggy, needing air. He made little clicking noises and softly tapped the cage. One of the birds opened its eyes. The other kicked a leg, which had a small leather tube attached. Empty.
The second trunk contained assorted items including handkerchiefs of red, white and black, monogrammed towels, soap, Vetinari's shaving kit and, as he dug to the bottom, items of clothing he would not normally think to pack if left to his own devices: Several simple thin chemises in white or yellow with bits of lace or ribbon around the cuffs and neck, two pairs of silk stockings, a corset, a long-sleeved gown in dark blue, a red summer dress.
The last trunk stood upright. He pulled it open quickly and caught the carpet as it fell into his arms.
It was an intricate pattern, blood red, bits of white and black, of Klatchian make. He eased it to the floor and unrolled it carefully. Strands of light brown hair stuck up out of the center of the roll.
Lord Vetinari was not surprised to find a woman sprawled out on the open carpet, gulping up the vaguely fishy air of the hold. He knew of course that he'd opened the trunks in the wrong order and that finding her clothing had spoiled a bit of the drama.
"Finally," she gasped. "Gods, I thought you'd never find me."
Hanna Stein pulled herself painfully against a crate. She was a seamstress under contract with Vetinari, his mistress, so to speak, but better paid. Why she had risen so high in her profession could be seen by the fact that she had just been unrolled from a carpet in a steamer trunk on the hold of a ship sailing into exile and still managed to smile as if she'd just come across Vetinari at a cocktail party.
He sat on the carpet beside her. "I see the guards were very thorough about searching the luggage."
"They had the wrong set. I paid the captain for a last-minute switch."
She began slowly unbuttoning the tunic she was wearing. The bandage on her right hand made it difficult. "It was ungrateful of you not to invite me along after everything I've done," she said.
The lining of the tunic looked like a honeycomb of small pockets. From each came a reassuring golden gleam of metal.
"Sybil helped me. We sewed day and night on your damned robes. I took them as soon as I heard about the arrest. The hems have all the jewelry I own. The handkerchiefs are the colour of clacks flags for a reason. I sewed your manuscript in between pages of the Hwel folios. Vimes sent the pigeons with his compliments on getting him booted out of a job." Hanna paused for breath. "I also got a clacks out to your aunt. Drumknott has your agents in the city on stand-by. He took Wuffles and Leonard with him. Some files from your office too. I don't know where they are now. Did I forget anything?"
Vetinari had been staring at the collar of the shirt Hanna wore underneath the tunic. The top couple of buttons were undone, revealing a bit of the skin of her throat. She noticed where his gaze was and tried to close the tunic but he gently pulled her hands away and undid a few more buttons. Blue-black bruises were set out against the skin of her neck as if someone had daubed them on with a thick paint brush. He worked his way lower and found a walnut-sized bruise below her collar bone, a plum-coloured one at her left breast, another at her left ribs. Not severe bruises; they would heal quickly. But they were…there.
He carefully unwrapped the bandage on her hand. The knuckles were black and swollen, far worse than the bruises on her chest. She could barely bend her fingers.
"That's my fault," said Hanna. "I went to see Downey last night and I-- They'll need to plaster that patch of wall outside your office again."
She tried to do up the shirt but couldn't manage the small buttons. Vetinari brushed her hands away and did it himself.
"You should have stayed in the city," he said quietly.
"I don't have anywhere to go. I'm banned from the Palace and Guild and my house has been confiscated, something to do with you misappropriating funds, bloody nonsense."
He was suddenly on his feet, pacing the few open feet in his section of the hold.
"You could go to your family."
"They have enough problems without me. Downey is getting the Lawyers Guild to look at confiscating the breweries. My family will be lucky to have the shirts on their backs when it's over."
Vetinari reached the wooden partition, spun around and marched back.
"You have friends who could take you in."
"This may come as a shock to you, but most of my friends' husbands don't like you. I'm sure they think helping me means helping you. Which is true."
He reached the upright trunk, turned again.
"Vimes would have protected you."
"He has his own worries. Downey wants to break up the Watch and integrate it with the Palace Guard." Hanna rubbed her eyes. "Stop pacing, your lordship. It's driving me insane."
He kept pacing. "Your presence is inconvenient."
"Would you like me to jump overboard?"
"I can't hide you indefinitely."
"You don't need to hide me."
He stopped.
"We have a deal," she said.
Hanna was leaning back against the crate, her head resting on it, her eyes closed. She looked like she'd just eaten something rotten.
"Downey probably won't hold up his end because he's a bastard but he did give me his word…" she sniffed, "…as a gentleman. For what that's worth. He wouldn't let me just come on board, but… He said if I'm found at sea there's nothing much he can do about it." She shrugged. "We'll see what the guards were ordered to do with me."
The ship rolled over a wave, then another, the contents of the hold shifting back and forth. Vetinari held onto a bit of hemp rope on the partition and watched the lantern swing, the flame of the candle dimming as melted fat splashed up the wick. He breathed in time to the swing.
"You should have let me come," said Hanna. "I was forced to--"
Vetinari held up a hand for silence.
The ship calmed. The candle in the lantern brightened, though it was far from the clear, true light given off by the quality wax candles Vetinari was used to. It was enough light to see on one of the crates the small wooden board the captain had left behind containing a bread loaf, a hunk of cheese and a hard salami. There was no knife. Those that Vetinari routinely carried with him, including the small ones in his shoes, had been confiscated by Downey.
Hanna pulled up her left trouser leg. Three of Vetinari's slim knives, ones he usually kept in his desk in the Oblong Office, were strapped in scabbards to her calf. He unbuckled them without a word, selected one and portioned out the meal. They ate in silence, swaying with the ship as it worked its way further into the open sea, the sound of the waves exaggerated in the hold. When they were finished, Vetinari fetched the geography tome and settled beside Hanna.
"Shall we read about our little island?" he said, browsing the pages.
He began reading as if he was giving a lecture at a geographic society. He enjoyed reading aloud, controlling the pace and tone of his voice, and Hanna usually found it pleasant to listen to him. But it was different now. Faster, strained, the words clipped.
He heard it himself and struggled for control and almost achieved it by the bottom of the first page. Early in life he had learned that if he spoke calmly while angry he soon calmed.
He turned the page and kept reading.
Emotions that had no use except for the spoiling of his ability to think objectively dissolved in the measured tone of his voice. By the bottom of the second page, he was reading at a calm, pleasant pace.
Hanna shifted against the crate, trying to find a more comfortable way to lean against it. There wasn't one so she settled back and continued to listen.
In the middle of a sentence about the rare Khavian Royal Palm, Vetinari kissed her on the temple, then resumed reading like there had never been a break.