IV.
Khavos was the second smallest island of an archipelago fifty miles off the Ephebian coast. Most of the islands had a sprinkling of villages made up of goat herders and fishermen speaking a dialect of Ephebian. But Khavos had been uninhabited until two hundred years before when an eccentric horticulturist from Ankh purchased the island, declared himself the Baron of Khavos and set neighboring islanders to build a luxurious villa and guest house on a cliff overlooking the sea. When he died the last of his line, he willed the island to Ankh-Morpork, which had allowed various lords and ladies over the years to maintain the house and grounds as an especially secluded holiday spot.
The first glimpse Lord Vetinari had of it was from the starboard deck of the ship as the sun came up on the third day of the voyage. Khavos was shaped like an old tortoise, roughly round, smooth at the edges where the waves rippled over volcanic rock, growing wilder in the interior, the land rising to a crest in the center of the island. A string of cloud hovered over the peak of the volcano and extended across the length of the island, but it appeared from a distance to be an effect only in the highlands; the sky over the coast was cloudless.
The ship dropped anchor. Sailors loaded the trunks and crates into several row boats, directed by one of the Assassins who had introduced himself to Vetinari as Mr. Townsend. He had the kind of straw blond hair normally seen on children and eyes an almost disturbingly pale blue. He chain smoked as the loading work was done, flicking the butts into the water. Most of the Assassins hired as guards, the luggage, edibles and alcohol (Downey had donated a crate of fine cognac from the family stores) were shuttled over to the coast in shifts. Vetinari and the remaining guards went last.
Hanna wasn't there. The second morning of the voyage a crewman discovered her stowing away under the tarp of the rowboat. Townsend was not surprised to see her but still locked her in one of the bunks for the rest of the trip. Vetinari managed to look surprised when he was informed that Hanna was on board.
Once on the island, he and his guards trekked up the hill to the villa.
It was salmon-coloured, trimmed in white and dotted with black stones, rows of windows on three floors facing out over the cliff to the sea, balconies stretching across the second level and roof terraces blooming with foliage. It had twelve bedrooms, two dining rooms, a stocked library, a wine cellar and all of the other amenities necessary for a country gentleman. It was small compared to the Winter Palace of Ankh-Morpork but massive for one man on a deserted island.
The white-clad servants were brothers and sisters, past middle age, as much fixtures in the old house as the chandeliers. They bowed to Vetinari at the top of the villa steps. The gardener, wearing a green smock over his white suit, showed off the guest house on the rimward edge of the gardens where the Assassins would share the bedrooms. Downey had a decades-old dislike for Vetinari but his class-consciousness overruled these feelings; a lord in exile should not have to sleep under the same roof as his guards.
Vetinari settled in. The first thing he did was fashion suitable hiding places for the more interesting items Hanna had packed in his luggage.
Two days later, she was rowed to the island. Townsend had sent a clacks asking for direction and Downey had consented to her remaining on the island under the condition that she and Vetinari never be alone together. Ever. It was obvious that surveillance would be around the clock.
The Tolmae finally pulled up anchor and left the island cut off from the outside world. Almost. Once a week a ship would bring supplies, perishables and mail.
A few days later, they tramped like a parade.
Lord Vetinari, head bent, stick swinging, black robe flaring out behind him, blazed the trail across a cactus-dotted stretch of dried ground on the slope of the volcano. He made only one concession to the hot weather: He was wearing a large, floppy straw hat.
Hanna was a few steps behind him, having a hard time keeping up. The one thing she was not blessed with as a seamstress was long legs. For every one of Vetinari's long strides, she took two steps. She was trying not to show how out of breath she was.
Behind her, nine Assassins were sweating through their black suit coats. It was the day shift, assigned to watch Vetinari and Hanna during daylight hours. They'd been in a disciplined line when the trek started outside the villa early that morning. But as the day wore on, the sun and heat and the pace Vetinari set took away some of their chic.
There was nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Vetinari had told no one when they started out that he intended to walk around the entire island. If Hanna had known she would have stayed home and that's why he hadn't told. "A stroll," he'd called it.
In ten hours they had taken one break, a ten-minute stop in a citrus grove. The Assassins gorged themselves on fruit, six, eight, ten oranges to a man, while Vetinari peeled two oranges with his fingernails and handed one to Hanna. He shook his head when she asked him to peel a second one for her.
By the time the sun was sloping on the horizon, the Assassins were straggling along behind, some dropping out into the bushes, clutching their stomachs. Though Vetinari was in front of them he paid close attention to who was doing what. Which Assassins felt it beneath them to loosen their ties in the heat, which had the concentrated faces of men fighting natural digestive processes, which bobbed into the trees again and again. Lord Vetinari was a great believer in observing people in uncomfortable conditions. How they dealt with them revealed all you really needed to know about their personalities.
He hadn't expected much from the day shift Assassins. Downey had a limited selection of men willing to act as guards for a six-month assignment on an island a thousand miles from Ankh-Morpork. Several of them had been sent as punishment, Vetinari could see, a couple of the youngest were fresh out of the Guild School, the others were likely single and needed the money. Assassins didn't actually fill contracts that often and the less wealthy ones would have welcomed a chance to earn a bit extra. Only the leader of the day shift Assassins seemed to take the trek with some kind of style. Kinsey. He'd taken an interest in many of the unusual plants the group had passed during the day. Touching them but never plucking them from the ground.
"Are we almost there?" complained Hanna.
"I believe the villa is just around that bend."
"I'm exhausted. It's ridiculous." She glared at the back of his head. "Why aren't you more tired? You're much older than I am."
"I set the pace."
He glanced behind him. Several Assassins were wiping their faces with their ties. It was a convenient opportunity to slow down and take Hanna's hand. She knew enough not to look at him in surprise. He occasionally held her hand if they were sitting together in private but it was unheard of in public. There was a reason she didn't instantly think Lord Vetinari was airing one of the little intimacies they shared when no one was looking: the very small folded square of paper pressed into the palm of her hand.
"Ten years ago I could've run around this island," she said, shaking her head. "Even five years ago I was in better shape than I am now. You've made me soft, your lordship."
"Oh, I do hope not."
The villa came into view on a crest up ahead. Most of the Assassins straggling behind started chatting with relief. The sun was lower in the sky; the men of the day shift would soon be allowed to drop into their beds.
Supper was ready for them, a long dining room table set for Vetinari and Hanna, another in the guest house for the Assassins. A servant stayed in the dining room at all times. Hanna managed to slip the note inside the bandage on her right hand.
When she and Vetinari retired to their rooms, a night shift Assassin stationed himself outside of each door. Hanna undressed slowly, her bad hand aching, and checked the bruises on her chest in the mirror. He hadn't asked how she got them and she hadn't offered the information. Hanna was a seamstress. She'd experienced worse in her career, and she wasn't going to whine about a few bruises, as unpleasant as it had been to get them.
She unfolded the note Vetinari had slipped to her at the end of their hike. It contained a good deal of information for such a small piece of paper. His handwriting, tiny letters in perfect rows from one edge of the paper to the other, made maximum use of limited space. The only allowance for conventions: a "My dear Hanna" at the top of the page followed by a line drop, and at the end: "Yours sincerely, a Secret Admirer." In between were Hanna's instructions. She read the note twice, held it over a candle until it curled into ash, and eased herself into bed.
***
After the successful test of what was coming to be called the Underground Clacks, a message system that criss-crossed Ankh-Morpork below the streets, the opposition to Lord Downey got organized.
Samuel Vimes was as surprised as anybody else to find that he was, in fact, the opposition. Expected to take a lead in it, at least. The Underground Clacks had been thought up and implemented by Sybil, who was taking to plotting with alarming speed. She'd even volunteered to sew secret pockets on the inside of his Watch armour.
He'd taken her up on the offer and wore it now as he meandered through the streets of Ankh-Morpork just after dusk. Four of the Assassins tailing him he'd been able to shake with some quick turns up alleys, dashes through courtyards, cuts into hole-in-the-wall eateries that always had back doors to alleys an Assassin with any breeding wouldn't dare enter.
For the last Assassin, Vimes reserved special treatment. He whipped around a corner, sprinted up a dark dead end and…disappeared.
The Assassin had been tailing him from the rooftops. There were no convenient hatches or chimneys for him to shimmy into the building from, so he swung himself onto a gable, hung suspended for a moment, then dropped silently into the alley.
The plank wasn't a two by four but it did the job.
The Assassin cried out and crumbled to the ground, clutching his knee.
Without letting go of the plank, Vimes struck a match one-handed on his thumb and relit the cigar in his teeth.
"Dear me, look at that. Posh lad like you wandering about the Shades at night. Tsk, tsk."
The Assassin tried to get up but thought twice when Vimes absently waved the plank around.
"Surveillance or contract?"
"Surveillance, sir."
"Is that right?" A cloud of smoke billowed up and joined the regular fumes of the alley. "Do you like rats, lad?"
The Assassin had not been expecting this turn in the conversation.
"Not particularly, sir."
Vimes pointed at a scuffed up door facing the alley. Bins of trash jumbled just outside of it, part of the origin of the alley's pungent smell.
"That there is the back door to Gimlet's Delicatessen. Mr. Gimlet is a nice man, wouldn't do anybody a nick of harm. He's so nice that when I go in there and ask him to bring out one of his cages of fresh, live and probably angry rats about to end their lives on a stick dipped in special sauce, he'll do it. He'll even get one of his busboys to sit right there on the steps with the cage. I reckon Mr. Gimlet would even be nice enough to approve if the boy opened the cage if you move a muscle in the next half hour." He exhaled slowly. "Like I said, a nice man, Mr. Gimlet."
The Assassin looked over at the scuffed-up door, then down the alley, and up at the buildings around him.
"You're assessing your chances, lad, but I don't recommend it," said Vimes. "Take my advice. Sit tight. In your condition, a gaggle of angry rats is not what you want to face." He dropped the plank and made his way to the door. "My regards to the Guild."
Inside, Vimes spoke briefly to Gimlet, then strolled out the front door and back into the streets. One of Gimlet's busboys draped a cloth over an empty cage and went out back for a long cigarette break.
Vimes soon found Featherbone Alley. Not the best of addresses, even for the Shades. Technically, it wasn't even an address. It wasn't on any of the official city maps. It wasn't even an alley. It was an alley of an alley, a dank side street that came up by surprise. In this part of the Shades, the buildings were nested like honeycombs. They were lucky if there was a shaft for the privy from the upper floors. Featherbone snaked in between and behind buildings that from the regular streets looked like one solid city block. The people who lived back there had reached social sea level. You couldn't get any lower.
Vimes reached a certain door that was as high as his shoulders, and rapped on it three times. A rasping voice said: "What's the password?"
"Open the bloody door."
"Righto."
It was a single room, beyond dank. It was dunk. A simple wooden table in the center of the room, a half dozen chairs, most of them occupied by people trying hard not to look too closely at the others. Mrs. Rosemary Palm, head of the Seamstress Guild, was chairing the meeting.
"Now that you're here, Sam, we can get this thing started." She sighed and looked around the table. "I thought I wouldn't have to do this nonsense anymore. Plotting. I had enough of that under Winder and Snapcase."
"We're not plotting," said the man with yellowish eyes and a wiry beard that covered the bottom half of his face. "We are…exploring our options."
A little man with glasses and a pale, mild face raised his hand.
"Yes, Mr. Fisk?"
"I'm here to plot. If that is all right with you."
"It may be useful." Mrs. Palm turned to her left. "What are your views on the subject?"
"I am at your service," said Rufus Drumknott, Lord Vetinari's head clerk, now unemployed.
The man with the raspy voice cleared his throat but it didn't help.
"On behalf of the Thieves Guild, I'd like to say that a mix of plotting and more neutral exploring of options is more comfortable for us."
"Thank you, Mr. Gloss." Mrs. Palm folded her hands and looked over at Vimes. "How fast do you think Lord Vetinari will get a message to you?"
"Depends. The pigeons are the best we had. We got them on the ship but it's possible they were discovered. Or they could lose their way trying to get back here. A thousand miles is a piece of flying for a city pigeon."
"They will not be discovered," said Drumknott. "His lordship will see to that."
"Won't know until I get a pigeon," said Vimes. "Calculating a couple days flight with allowance for some rests here and there, maybe we'll get something by the end of the week. Unless Vetinari's being cautious. We don't know what he's dealing with on that island."
"Eighteen Assassins as guards," said Mr. Fisk promptly. "Divided into day and night shifts. Lord Downey has ordered twenty-four-hour surveillance."
"On Hanna too, I assume?" asked Mrs. Palm.
"Oh, yes. Lord Downey seems to think Lord Vetinari will be pacified to some extent if she's there."
"What does he mean, pacified?"
"Content," said Mr. Fisk. "Or at least, too busy with her to do much plotting. The Assassins also have more leverage on the island. Lord Vetinari can take care of himself, of course, but Miss Stein is a point of vulnerability."
Drumknott cracked a cynical smile.
"The Seamstresses filed a formal complaint," said Mrs. Palm, "as much as that will bring us. Downey had no right to send Hanna into exile."
"Or Lord Vetinari," said Mr. Fisk. "I think that's why we're here, isn't it?"
Vimes spoke up. "She wasn't sent, Rosie. She didn't tell you what she planned to do?"
"She didn't tell me a thing." Mrs. Palm gave Vimes a look that told a slightly different story.
The group shifted onto a different point, the problem the City Council had faced when forced to approve a trial for Vetinari, then confirm Downey as Patrician, while Assassins lined the walls of the Rats Chamber. That was Mrs. Palm's biggest complaint, Vimes knew. Hanna was a detail; the Seamstress Guild was really angry that its president had been shut out of the decision making, rigged as it was. He turned his attention to Mr. Gloss. A thief, the new vice president, if Vimes remembered his guild politics correctly. Thieves and Assassins had always got along like slumpie and caviar, the Thieves accusing the Assassins of being uppity and soft, the Assassins accusing the Thieves of being low-brow, uneducated and without style. Old gripes that hadn't gone away even though both Guilds had changed under Vetinari's rule. The Assassins School allowed in more poor and middle class students. The Thieves had opened quite an advanced school of their own which attracted upper class students with an itching to pinch the finer things in life – paintings, jewelry, antiquities and so on. Downey hadn't yet appointed anyone to fill his chair as president of the Assassins Guild. As long as he was both Patrician and Guild president, the Assassins had an immense amount of power in the city. Too much for the Thieves.
The man with the yellow eyes was talking softly.
"I have only spoken with certain groups from my community," he said. "There is a general uneasiness about Downey's intentions. He was never a friend of Non-humans and the Undead." He turned to Vimes. "I'm told that this is the reason most of them left the Watch as soon as Downey took personal control of it."
"I'm not allowed within fifty feet of a watch house," said Vimes, scowling. "But Nobby and Frank and Carrot pop up to the house now and then to tell me what's going on. Angua and Littlebottom and Buggy and the rest are being watched."
"Persecution based on species," said the yellow-eyed man. "There will be consequences if this spreads in my community."
Drumknott had been listening silently, following the conversation with interest.
"May I make an observation?" He removed his glasses and polished them patiently on the edge of his jacket. "Those of us around this table do not have a tremendous amount of power at the moment. We won't be storming the Palace and we obviously don't have recourse to an Assassin. But if his lordship has taught me one thing, it is that power is not nearly as important as influence."
Mr. Fisk smiled slowly.
Vimes puffed on his cigar for a moment, blowing the smoke up at the ceiling. "I think I'm following you, Mr. Drumknott. A little pressure here and there and we can keep Downey on his toes, eh?"
Drumknott folded his hands.
The rest of the company looked at each other, eyes meeting with silent understanding. They each came from a different sector of Ankh-Morpork. With a little influence, they could see to it that the relatively smooth running of the city that the citizens were used to under Vetinari came to a stop. It wouldn't bring the city to a stand still but it would surely make things difficult for the powers that be.
And that was the point.