**Hola! I'm back from sunny Spain, posting updates again. Glad you're liking the story so far, and a special welcome to LadyRhiyana, lobster johnson, Arch, starmouse and other newbies to the Hanna-Havvie series. (*smile*)
VII.
In the Oblong Office, the Patrician Lord Downey read the dispatch a second time in case he'd misread it. Standing before his desk was his head clerk, Lercaro, lately of the Assassins Guild, who had transitioned smoothly with his master to the Palace and now held what had been Drumknott's position. He had delivered the dispatch Downey eyed with a certain amount of doubt. It was a report from Kinsey about Vetinari's daytime activities during the previous week.
7 a.m. Breakfast with Miss Stein
8 a.m. Walk in garden alone or read
9 a.m. Write or walk island alone with notebook, taking flower or rock specimens
Noon. Organization of specimens
1 p.m. Small lunch alone or siesta
3 p.m. With Miss Stein, afternoon spent on the beach in…
Downey looked up at Lercaro.
"This was correctly decoded?"
"Yes, sir."
"You're sure? Absolutely sure?"
"It was Mr. Kinsey's exact choice of words, sir. I am one hundred percent certain."
Downey re-read the entry for 3 p.m.
"What do you make of it?"
"Couldn't say, sir."
Downey huffed a moment, scribbled a reply and handed it over.
"Send this to Townsend."
"Yes, sir." Lercaro tucked the message into a pocket. He set a small stack of thick, creamy paper on the desk. Downey pushed it aside.
"I haven't finished the other things you brought! I'll read it later."
"You might want to read it now, sir."
"Don't go telling me what I do and do not want, Lercaro. You're speaking to the Patrician, you know!"
"Of course, sir, but… I found it misfiled. Now that I think about it, it might have been purposely misfiled."
"What do I care about a misfiled report?
"It's not a report, sir."
Grumbling, Downey pulled the first sheet off the stack and glanced at it. The irritation instantly drained from his face. He reached for the rest of the papers and flipped through them greedily.
"Did you read this, Lercaro?"
"Just the start, sir."
Downey settled back in his chair and read through the papers quickly, beginning at the beginning: Exclusivity Agreement. Parties: Lord Havelock Vetinari, Patrician and Hanna Louria Stein, Seamstress. Contract length: Three years. Terms as follows…
When he was finished, Downey was grinning.
"This is gold, Lercaro. Gold." He shook his head. "He's paying her a small fortune. I wonder if she has something on him."
Lercaro coughed into a hand. Downey thought about what he'd just said, and laughed.
"Believe me, she's not worth this much. She's worth a lot, but not this." He turned to the first page again and stared at it for a moment. The smile widened. He inked a quill and scribbled off a short note, which he folded and handed to Lercaro. "Send it to Miss Stein. By messenger, not clacks." He handed Hanna's contract to Lercaro. "Keep this safe. And get Mr. Slant. I want to talk to him."
Downey gave a contented sigh. He was feeling very clever.
"There are some gentlemen waiting outside to see you, sir."
"I haven't had a moment's peace all day. Tell them to come back after lunch."
"They're rather important, sir. The ambassadors from Ephebie, Klatch, Istanzia and some countries I hadn't heard of until last week."
"What do they want?"
"They are apparently upset about the debt situation, sir. They insist that calling in their debts will cause a fiscal crisis."
"For them," said Downey.
"Would you like to see them, sir?"
"All right. Send them in."
Downey leaned back in his chair and smiled. He was feeling very patrician-like at the moment. A word from him and there was fear of fiscal crisis in countries on the other side of the Disc. It was all more work than he rather liked to do, of course, but he left a good deal of the minutiae to Lercaro, who was a thorough lad, no denying it. He'd found the contract between Hanna and Vetinari, a most interesting document that Mr. Slant of the Lawyers Guild will be very interested to see. With the clerk doing the mucky jobs, Downey focused on the important things. Ruling. He'd enjoyed the reception the previous night when Lord Rust was forced to walk behind him. He was first among, well, not among equals, but among others not far below him on a strict hierarchy. He was important. Called upon. Looked to. It was the power equivalent of a windmill. Heading the Assassins Guild had been like a ladies fan.
When the office door opened, the smile was still fixed on Downey's face.
A half hour later, there was no trace of it.
**
Detritus didn't think fast but sometimes he thought deep. It was not a coincidence, he decided when he lumbered into the Octarine Parrot, the most popular troll bar in the city, that one of the papers in his stony fist had been received by Strata, unofficial leader of the troll community, a day after Detritus had told Vimes about how trolls were feeling about Downey. This was first level academic thinking for Detritus.
The Parrot was packed on Friday night with trolls seeking a moment to relax, loosen the loin cloth and put their feet up after a hard day's bouncing at night clubs, heaving heavy merchandise onto ships or collecting from people not smart enough to pay their debts. It wasn't a fancy place, the Parrot. Rows of rough benches, a shabby stage for the lounge singer and a bar serving the kinds of drinks trolls could get into (dark green with a mossy aroma, powerful enough to knock a human flat by the smell alone). There were a couple hundred packed in that night from every part of Ankh-Morpork's troll society.
Detritus was well known. Not well-liked, being a watchmen, but well known. He got greetings and slaps on the back and a drink was shoved into his hand. He set it aside.
"Dere's someding I got to tell you!" he bellowed. It was summer, and the heat was having an effect on the speech of all trolls. Give them cool mountain air and they could spew Huel sonnets. The hot dampness of Ankh-Morpork overheated troll brains. Articulation was right out.
There was sudden silence. The lounge singer put her fists on her hips.
"Wat you doin? I got song."
Detritus stepped onto the stage. He was still in his watch uniform, which meant that he was wearing a helmet. Armour was not necessary, though he did wear a loin cloth. The badge he'd had carved into his arm would have had to be removed with a sanding machine.
"Trolls! A message from Strata!"
The silence thickened. Strata was a female troll of indeterminate age who was at least nominally respected by every troll in the room. She was something of a recluse and had developed her reputation through word of mouth and written letters, speeches and pamphlets passed around to the increasingly literate group. Very few trolls had ever seen her. Detritus was one. She'd wanted to meet the first troll watchman.
He eyed the paper, waiting for the letters to form themselves into something he could read to the crowd. It took too long, so he relied on memory.
"Strata says trolls stop working," he said.
There was a rush of mumbling and choruses of "Wat?"
"Stop working," Detritus repeated. "Strata says Downey send a letter. Says trolls not loyal. Says trolls should go back to de mountain."
"WAT?"
There were scuffs. Benches tipped backwards as trolls moved faster than they normally did, fueled by anger.
"Dat wat it say?" said a troll in the first row.
"Dat wat it say," said Detritus.
"Strata say dat?" asked another.
"Strata say dat," said Detritus. He sounded all the more convincing since he didn't know of Rufus Drumknott and his talent for what could politely be called "reproduction," but under usual circumstances was labelled "forgery." Downey's handwriting was easy once Drumknott got the arrogant flourishes right, and Strata wasn't sophisticated enough in handwriting analysis to tell the difference anyway.
Detritus tried to remember that other thing he was supposed to say. What Vimes told him about that morning.
"Trolls!" he called over the noise. "We make signs! We carry dem to de Palace! We MARCH!"
**
Kinsey and Townsend leaned against a large volcanic boulder in the shade of a broad-leafed palm tree, Downey's note tucked into an inner pocket of Townsend's black suit coat. He'd shown it to Kinsey and a discussion had started up.
"I told you it was the wrong wording, Mr. Kinsey."
"Seemed right to me, Mr. Townsend."
The Assassins paused to observe Vetinari and Hanna on the black sand beach about twenty feet away.
"What would you call it?" asked Kinsey.
"Certainly not…" Townsend mimicked Kinsey's slightly lilting voice. "3 p.m. With Miss Stein, the afternoon spent on the beach in a state of frolic. Of course Lord Downey would be suspicious. Frolic begs for an explanation."
"It looks like frolic to me."
"Lord Vetinari doesn't frolic, Mr. Kinsey."
"What does it look like, then?"
They fell into silence. The massive leaves of the palm nodded in the breeze and the waves grew milder as the afternoon wore on.
"That's not frolic," said Townsend. "That's the building of a sand castle."
"It looks like the Palace, doesn't it? It has little gates and that trench is like the Ankh. See? It fills up when the tide comes in."
Townsend lit a cigarette and smoked it. He lit another. After awhile, butts were sprinkled across the sand at the foot of the boulder.
"I admit, I never expected to see him wear something like that," he said. "A man goes through life wearing perfectly serviceable black and now this."
"At first he frolicked in black," said Kinsey, "but I think he found it impractical. The robes, certainly. Hems getting wet all the time, sand and heat retention."
"But stripes?"
Kinsey shrugged. "Looks comfortable, serviceable and sporty."
"Lord Vetinari doesn't wear stripes, Mr. Kinsey."
"The straw hat suits him, I think. The corks give it a flair."
Townsend raised an eyebrow at Kinsey, then turned back to watch Vetinari and Hanna abandon the sand palace for a wade in the surf. More cigarette butts fluttered to the sand, joined by an increasing heap of spent matches.
"He does seem to be enjoying himself," admitted Townsend. "Has he ever laughed like that in public? Seems to me he should have the decency to suffer in exile."
"Why shouldn't he laugh? He doesn't have to work, has a private tropical island, an ocean, a beach and a woman a decade younger than him wearing enough fabric for a small handkerchief, which by the way I find quite distasteful, though I realize some men may find it interesting." Kinsey sniffed.
Townsend, a man who found Hanna's choice of beach wear quite interesting, peered at Kinsey over his cigarette.
"Lord Vetinari doesn't laugh, Mr. Kinsey."
Vetinari sounded like an opera tenor laughing on stage. It carried over the sound of the waves rushing to fill the Ankh he'd cut into the black sand, next to the black Palace.
Another cigarette was discarded by Townsend, another lit up. And another. There were piles of dark brown paper at his feet. A breeze stirred them, scattering them across the sand.
"He can't keep his hands and…such…off of her," he said. "A lord his age. And in public." He shook his head and tried to look away but failed completely. "Shocking, Mr. Kinsey."
"Not so much, Mr. Townsend. After swimming in the ocean, one does acquire a crust of salt on the skin, even on the stomach."
"It's undignified. Look at him! A Provost…"
"Former Provost--"
"…of the Assassins Guild just…sprawled out like that on the sand with a seamstress."
From their perches in trees and on rocks along the beach, the majority of day shift Assassins imagined how nice it must be in the afternoon heat to be sprawled out on the sand with a seamstress. None of them particularly disliked Lord Vetinari; guarding him was a job. But lately, he'd become the object of very pointed glares. Hanna was the only desirable woman on an island with nineteen men. Vetinari didn't have to rub it in.
Burnt bits of brown cigarette papers at Townsend's feet were joined by new ones. He was now smoking only half of the cigarette and dropping everything, tobacco and all before lighting a new one.
After a while he asked, "Is Miss Stein usually so…merry during the day?"
"What do you mean, Mr. Townsend?"
"The…er…giggling."
"Oh, that. It's probably just his lordship's beard. A beard can be ticklish, especially on the skin of sensitive areas of the body such as the stomach."
Townsend glanced at Kinsey.
"So I've been told," Kinsey said hastily.
In a little while, Townsend was only managing a few puffs from his cigarettes before allowing them to drop from his lips. Without letting his eyes leave Vetinari and Hanna, he rummaged in his jacket for a pack he hadn't yet transferred to his silver monogrammed cigarette case. The pack found, it promptly slipped from his fingers.
Kinsey gasped. "My, my, my. Wasn't that interesting, Mr. Townsend?"
"Nobody slaps Lord Vetinari," said Townsend, swiping up his cigarette pack as quickly as possible so as not to miss anything. "Just wait, Mr. Kinsey. He's going to do something unpleasant to her. After he stops that with her ear…and finishes untying her…er…"
Townsend ran out of matches.
"It's a trick," he said breathlessly.
"A trick, Mr. Townsend? As in, that is not really Lord Vetinari pawing a seamstress on the beach, it is someone who looks exactly like him wearing a blue and white striped bathing costume with a bloody great grin on his face."
"It's a trick," Townsend insisted. "He wants us to think he's frolicking. It's part of his grand plan."
"In what way would the appearance of frolic be part of a grand plan?" asked Kinsey. "Wait. I've got it. With sun tan lotion he's drawing a sketch of the ship on Miss Stein's stomach that he will use to escape from the island. It will be invisible until she tans enough for the paler lines to be revealed."
"Your sarcasm is not appreciated, Mr. Kinsey."
"He's frolicking."
"It's a trick."
They watched. A good deal of wriggling and squealing from Hanna. Roving hands belonging to Lord Vetinari.
The sun began to set. The beach grew quieter.
"All right. That looked like frolic, I grant you," said Townsend.
"I told you."
Townsend lit a cigarette and wondered how he would compose his clacks message back to Downey. "Who was to know he had it in him?" he asked.
"Certainly not me," said Kinsey. "I was wondering something else, though, Mr. Townsend. Why doesn't the day shift get extra pay? As you've seen here today, we do have the more unpleasant duty."
It was true. There was a trick. There always was.
Vetinari had been frolicking not because of a new found interest in getting sand in his shorts. His lifetime ban on sunshine was not given up because he admired the golden brown tint Hanna managed to get once her bruises healed.
It was also true that he couldn't keep his hands off of her. It was not due to the inconvenience of their enforced separation nights.
When the Assassins looked with shock and envy at what Vetinari was doing with his hands, they weren't paying attention to what he was really doing with his hands.
Flashback to just before Hanna slapped him. What looked to the Assassins like Vetinari taking a culinary interest in the salt crust that had developed on Hanna's stomach was actually Vetinari speaking softly, repeating certain words while at the same time, repeating a series of taps and brushes of his fingers on her skin. The letters he tapped out formed words. P.i.g.e.o.n.8.p.m.u.n.d.r.e.s.s.2.n.d.t.e.r.r.a.c.e.
Communication was important, the exchange of information and ideas. With the surveillance on them at all times, speaking could only convey the information they wished the guards and servants to hear. What they didn't wish them to hear had to be expressed in a different way. Something silent, reliable, but which left no trace, as notes, even coded ones, would.
Vetinari was well read. Soon after settling on the island he'd decided to try out a method of communication he'd learned from a book about the education of blind deaf-mutes he'd read years ago. Hanna learned the code of taps and brushes quickly, but especially well under a system of physical reinforcement – positive and negative -- which seemed to focus her mind while serving as distraction for the guards. Caresses, tickles, kisses, pinches, scratches, she was rewarded when she identified a coded message correctly and punished in small, irritating ways when she didn't. She slapped Vetinari lightly out of frustration after a series of punishments. He used it as an excuse to whisper in her ear a few instructions.
The waves in the afternoon and early evening grew milder but still served their purpose. To obscure his voice, leaving the Assassins hearing only murmurs – Of pleasure? Passion? – beneath the rush of the water.