Possession Chapter 2: II, a discworld fanfic

-- Good mornin' readers… I realize this is a rather challenging story for fanfic – something written in alternating past and present "times" – so I appreciate all of you who are curious enough to read on. Byrdgirl – no Hanna here. I originally wrote the story before Hanna was invented. LadyNemesis – I trust I won't disappoint you on the twisted-ness. Wait and see! Bino – Thanks for the kind words. Twist and others with questions on the age difference between Ellie and Vetinari – That's answered below. So…time to get on with it! --

Peterson's Rest doesn't exist anymore. The Patrician pauses at the right address and finds nothing that he remembers. Seven years ago the owners of the neighboring wig factory bought the place, tore it down and built an extension of the workshop. He wanted the hotel destroyed, that first place Ellie had slept indoors in months. He marked it as a fire hazard on the municipal maps. He encouraged Peterson to retire, to sell out. On the day of the demolition, he watched from his carriage as the plank walls collapsed.

Now, the factory hums, 100 employees making wigs. The Patrician looks at the selection in the ground floor store front – ladies wigs, a fashion at the moment, mostly blond, curled and piled to impractical heights. He considers buying one as a gift. She'd laugh. Then again, perhaps not today.

He changes the package from one arm to the other and walks on, ignoring the newsboys surrounded by people eager to buy the very special edition of the day's newspapers. The one copy he carries in his pocket has everything the competing papers have; he read them all before they hit the streets at dawn. He heads toward the putrid waters of the Ankh, destination -- the New Bridge. He makes a mental note of a large crack in the road and calculates the speed of erosion on the stone, taking into account Ankh-Morpork's average yearly rainfall and the amount of traffic on the cobbles.

And he remembers…

…fifteen years ago…

…when she was writing at her desk and didn't look up when he came in. The air smelled of burnt paper; he saw torn sheets, half blackened, in the fire grate. The book case overflowed and more books were piled on the floor beneath the window. Before the days of the movable printing press, her library was already worth a small fortune. With her hair pinned up, her face pinched with concentration, Ellie looked older than 16. Older than when Vetinari last saw her. Four months ago.

She put down her pen. Vetinari relaxed into a chair.

"Your numbers please, Ellie."

"One, two, three—"

"In Klatchian."

"El, dol, tel, lan…"

He listened, corrected her pronunciation here and there, and watched her face. As she spoke she looked out the window at the dome of the Opera House across the street. Vetinari had moved her to the new flat a year ago. Peterson's Rest had become too small and shabby for them both. Faint music drifted into the room. She finished the numbers.

"Good," he said.

It had occurred to him that Ellie would be angry. Over the months he'd sent her money and notes in their private code but he forbade her to write him or attempt contact of any kind. His agents had reported that she rarely left her flat, and when she did, she normally walked the city, speaking to no one, doing nothing in particular. Last week had been an exception.

"I'm the Patrician now," he said.

She looked at him but said nothing.

"The city is filthy, chaotic, violent, but I will teach it to be orderly. I will teach it to work for its own good."

She crumpled up the page she'd been writing on and went to the grate. She hefted the iron poker in her hand, then thrust it aggressively into the ashes, looking for a lit coal.

"There is much to do," said Vetinari. "I don't know how often I will come from now on."

Ellie used the paper to re-ignite the fire. When she finished, she stood up and wiped her sooty hands on her skirt.

"Once a week," she said.

"Impossible. The work to be done is unimaginable. Snapcase left a--"

"Then let me go."

The upper registers of an aria from the Opera House drifted through the window. Vetinari thought the music unhealthy for the girl – it was surely making her sentimental -- and considered moving her again, perhaps to the other side of the canal.

"You're no prisoner," he said. "You've learned more than most girls and you've saved from your allowance. Leave if you want."

"Where would I go?"

"You've always wanted to travel. Go to Quirm or Pseudopolis. Or Genua."

"Get me a job at the palace."

"You'll get nothing if you use that tone with me."

"I have nothing now!" She stomped to her desk. Vetinari leaned back in his chair, watching her over his steepled fingers.

"Such drama is unbecoming, Ellie. This is not theater. I will have no outbursts from you and no more amateur acrobatics on city bridges."

"I love the theater. Street theater, too. Did you know there were jugglers in the square yesterday? And mimes! They're my favorite. At least they don't lecture me when they botherto show their faces."

Vetinari was satisfied to see that Ellie wasn't crying. Self control was the pillar of everything he had taught her over the years and he'd wondered lately if she was capable of learning the lesson.

"I apologize," he said, "for missing your birthday."

He had taught her about priorities. She knew what he intended to do even before he finished cultivating allies, or more accurately, sowing discord among potential enemies. He told her all along that she was not his first priority. Not even his second or third. He told her things would change after the city was his.

The silence coming from Ellie could have filled a cavern. Though Vetinari had taught her the silence trick himself, it made him uncomfortable.

"If you wish," he sighed, "I'll try to come. I can't promise every--"

Ellie dropped to her knees beside his chair and hugged him tightly around the waist. Startled, he raised his hands in the air as if he was confronted by the violent end of a crossbow. After a few moments, he relaxed somewhat and allowed himself a few pats on her back.

"I have something for you," she said suddenly. She rummaged in the pocket of her skirt and held up a small bundle wrapped in blue paper. "Congratulations, Lord Vetinari."

He took the little package, not surprised that she called him by his real name. She was bound to learn it some time. Inside the paper was a small box and inside the box a tuft of cotton. He removed it and found a grubby, dented gold coin hanging from a thin metal chain.

The New Bridge is full of ramshackle shops, the walls covered with placards and posters. The Patrician passes the placards without looking at them. Like the day's newspapers, they're familiar to him. His favorite is a poster engraving of an elegant piece of pottery with the words "The Wonders of Phalia: A new exhibition at the Winter Palace." Several thousand people have visited the Palace Museum already.

He looks in the shop windows as an excuse not to look down at the Ankh. Ellie lingered on the bridges often in the early days, staring at the water as the traffic passed. It was during his longest absence, that four-month transition from lord to Patrician, that his agents caught her in a balancing act on the edge of the Maudlin Bridge, her arms outstretched, her eyes on the water below. Vetinari hadn't wanted her to think such behaviour would be rewarded, so he waited a week before going to her. It was a week when he worked like a man possessed, without any sleep at all. Three Palace clerks quit, citing workplace stress.

The Patrician stops in at the bakery of John Bitterman at the end of the bridge. Without a word, Bitterman himself pulls a small white box tied with black ribbon from behind the counter. He's wearing gloves and doesn't look at the Patrician as he passes him the box. The bakery smells of Bitterman's sweetest creation, small sugar cakes covered in thick white glaze. The Patrician does not have a sweet tooth, and finds the scent rather sickening. He pays quickly and leaves.

Ellie's 17th birthday was on a rainy and unseasonably cold spring day. To make up for his gaff from the year before, Vetinari arrived with packages in both hands, packages under his arms. A hat, silk gloves, a new book, ear rings, sugar cakes from Bitterman's. She modeled the hat for him and devoured a cake. The book was Klatchian poetry, which she set aside without opening.

The armchair was angled toward the fire. Vetinari settled in and stretched his legs.

"A miserable week," he said with a sigh.

"It's rained every day," said Ellie. She sat on a foot stool beside him and leaned on her elbows on the arm of his chair.

"The thieves simply refuse the idea of a guild. A few like the idea of policing their own but the men in the power base, they're still unconvinced. I'm afraid less pleasant persuasion may be necessary." He kicked off his boots and let the fire warm his stockings.

"Did you tell them about the specials?" asked Ellie. "Offer victims the chance to pay for a year's burglary in advance?"

"They don't believe a Patrician would allow it."

"Did you try glaring at them?"

"I never glare."

"What do you call what you're doing now?"

He thought for a moment. "Staring intensely."

"Maybe glaring at them would help."

Vetinari sank back further into the chair until his feet nearly touched the fire. And then he did what no one at the palace had ever seen him do. He yawned.

"Not much sleep?"

"Too much to do. And I believe several dozen people with assorted weapons would form a line at my bedroom door the moment the candles went out."

"Could I join them?"

He smiled. "Of course. What weapon would you bring?"

"A budget deficit."

The smile lingered as he looked at her. A slim, smooth face, full lips she'd dabbed with a peach-colored cosmetic, thick lashes round brown eyes. And inside that head of hers, a sharp mind of his own making. She was strong, intelligent, pretty. He wondered if fathers felt like this. He had the same pride in her as he had some weeks before when the seamstresses finally formed a guild and agreed to clean up, in their way, Septimus Square. An old plan come to fruition. They'd negotiated about the children; they'd be quietly taken care of. Content, Vetinari closed his eyes.

Ellie was accustomed to his long stares and had been watching him in turn.

"Can I ask you something, sir?"

"Of course."

The silence grew longer. Ellie rocked back on the foot stool, then took a sharp breath, reached for Vetinari's collar and undid the first few buttons. There was a gleam of gold at his throat.

Later, he opened his eyes and saw her smiling happily at the fire.

He's wearing it now. High collars are not the height of Ankh-Morpork fashion anymore but the Patrician stays true to the button-up style. The newspapers call it old-fashioned. He calls it prudent. Everything about him is scrutinized by the public, and the last thing he wanted over the years was speculation about the gold coin. Anyway, the "they" of popular opinion would probably come up with an entirely wrong interpretation, he thinks as he turns onto Scoone Avenue and passes the Ramkin mansion. They'd think he wears the coin as a symbol of his personal greed.

He tips his hat to a near sighted old lady walking her poodle.

Come to think of it, maybe he does.

Chess bored Ellie when she was younger, no matter how Lord Vetinari tried to convince her of the beauty of logic, rules, order and strategy. When he wasn't at her lodgings, the chess board stayed on the shelf. She had no one to play with anyway.

The board sat on the breakfast table, the black pieces outnumbering the white. Ellie's chin rested on her hand, her elbow on the table.

"That is bad for your posture," said Vetinari. He moved a black pawn.

"I'm 18," said Ellie.

"Hm?"

"You don't have to mind my posture anymore."

"It's your move."

Ellie glanced disinterestedly at the board and moved a white knight.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You didn't think first."

"Yes I did."

Vetinari took the knight with his bishop. "Chess is a game of careful, deliberate thought and intense concentration."

"I know a better game."

"Do you."

Ellie set the chess pieces back into their start positions. "I call it 5-second chess."

"Indeed." Lord Vetinari tried not to smile.

"I thought of it a few days ago. We were talking about the loopholes in the Third Ephebian – Klatchian Peace Treaty, and you said that diplomacy is a game in which one side tries to rewrite the rules faster than the other. Since I never beat you at chess, I thought maybe I'd have more luck if I rewrote the rules."

"It is possible. What are they?"

"They're all the same. Except that players get only five seconds to decide each move."

"You consider that an advantage for you?"

Ellie tapped her temple. "I've been reading Thorsten's Cognitologika. He says the brain starts entrophying at age 30."

Lord Vetinari laughed out loud, unheard of at the Palace but quite common these days with Ellie. In the past couple of years she'd amused him more and more. "How old do you think Thorsten was when he wrote that?"

"The age of enlightenment: 18."

"Come then, Enlightened One. Play."

The first game was over in two minutes and Vetinari was the clear winner. He had the advantage after all, since Ellie insisted that the game could only be fair if he – the old man of 33 -- had five seconds to move while she – the young woman in the bloom of youth -- had three. The second game took three minutes, the third, two. Vetinari won every time.

"Your experiment doesn't seem to be working," he said.

"At least it's more fun."

Ellie's face was rosy, as if she'd just taken a run out in the open air. She flicked over several of the chess pieces to signal the game was over.

"I want to take a walk," she said.

Vetinari stood up. "I should leave anyway. The Council will meet this afternoon and it is always prudent to review the minutes of previous meetings beforehand. The members do get so impressed…ah, I meant distressed… by my memory for what they've said in the past."

Ellie slipped her arm in his. "I want to take a walk with you."

"You know that's impossible."

"Why should I be a secret?" she said. "It's not like we share a bed."

Even the Patrician, a man who had trained his face to reveal emotion only on command, could not control the shock. Ellie pulled her hand away and went to the window.

"Do you think I don't know how the world works? I knew years ago when you found me." She sneaked a peek at him. His face had changed from shock to a cold blankness. She softened her tone. "I know what it looks like already. I know how important that is, how things look. But if you just tell the truth—"

"I've told you…"

Ellie leaned against the windowsill. "It's a heart warming story, isn't it? Patrician saves girl from fate worse than death, raises her, educates her and forms her into a respectable young woman. That's all the truth. No one can say you ever laid a hand on me. I'll swear that you haven't and who should know better than me?"

Vetinari turned away from her and paced the room for a few moments. He hated doing it; he'd always cultivated stillness to hide his nerves. "My position is not consolidated," he said finally. "If my enemies find out about you I will be forced to deny you completely, do you understand?"

"Why? You haven't done anything wrong."

"There are citizens of this city who would like nothing better than to learn that I've been carrying on in some capacity with an unknown young woman. My control of the city is still tentative. A whisper campaign could be the end of me."

"I'm not your mistress."

"No, but you're still a liability of the first order."

She swept away from the window and went to the bookcase.

"Why did you do all this, then?" She selected a slim notebook and flipped through the pages, which were covered with a childish script. "When I was little I thought you took me in because you didn't have children of your own. I wrote that down right here." She pointed at the middle of the page. "Now that I'm grown it's not a very good explanation. It doesn't explain why we're still here."

"You can go at any time."

"As long as I never say a word about how I was raised and never try to see you again."

"Of course."

"That's inhuman."

"Practical."

Ellie shoved the notebook back onto the shelf. "How far would you go to remove a liability?"

Vetinari had regained something of his normal composure. He answered calmly. "As far as necessary."

Even now so many years later, she doesn't know how close the Patrician has come to having her killed. Or how many times. He feels the regret as he walks through Ankh, that circumstances have always dictated the spies, in rotations day and night, shadowing her the moment she leaves the house, recording her every word, men ready with slim, sharp blades to be used if she appears with packed bags in the street. She has no unauthorized friends, just a series of his most discreet female agents to keep her company. All it takes is a chance meeting with the wrong person, the littlest slip on her part, a mention of him, even indirectly, a detail she shouldn't know. Over the years the Patrician has withstood many things: rips in space-time, rogue spells, incarceration, wars and assassination attempts. A mistress, even a young one, would cause only momentary scandal; it certainly wouldn't end his political career. But in the early days, he made her think so. It was better than telling her the truth.

She soon discovered a good deal of it herself anyway.

He crosses a short lawn that stretches in front of the house. It's a stone cottage on a lonely dead end on the outskirts of Ankh's most exclusive neighborhood. It has two floors, columns before the front door and great wide windows everywhere. She insisted that the parlours have sunlight on those few days of the year when the sun breaks through the haze over Ankh-Morpork. There are many old trees to assure privacy, a 10-foot hedge along the perimeter of the land and a relatively large garden with rose bushes behind the house. The neighbors call Ellie Miss Trenolone and think her romantic when they see her on the balcony gazing toward the city.

After the argument, Vetinari's visits were strained. Ellie would sit in a chair and say nothing the entire evening. When he left he'd touch her hair but she wouldn't look at him.

He still visited. Even when it was no longer safe, instructive or amusing. It was quiet. And it was, he had to admit, a habit. A couple of weeks without seeing Ellie and he began to snap at the clerks. There wasn't a moment at the Palace when he unwound. No comfortable arm chair, no fire grate.

One evening, Ellie awakened from whatever reverie she'd been in since the argument. Without a word, she climbed onto Vetinari's lap and fell asleep with his arms around her.

After that, she asked questions. About his childhood, his parents, his aunt, his schooling, what he was doing when he first found her. She wanted to know where he lived, what kind of curtains hung in his bedroom, what kind of wood his desk was made of, how many knives he kept for protection, where the secret passages in the palace were. She knew the names of the lords and the diplomats already but now she wanted to know about the clerks, the maids, the cooks. She asked how many people he'd killed with his own hands, and how many he'd ordered killed. She asked if he had any friends. The interrogation lasted a month and Vetinari answered everything honestly, even admitting to the scarce and mainly opportunistic friendships he had.

"I think I understand now," Ellie said. It was a warm night and they sat on the settee before the open window. "It's all so sad, really. And unfair."

"I believe the phrase - Who said life was fair? - is quite popular."

"It was selfish of you."

"Yes."

"You've ruined me."

"It would have been worse if I'd left you to the streets."

The curtains fluttered in the breeze. Someone in the street below started singing, a baritone, maybe an opera singer out for an evening walk and a smoke outside the Opera House. Ellie sat up straight, her hands flat on her knees, her eyes on the window.

"I don't want a father anymore," she said.

He sighed, something that sounded like a mix of resignation and relief. Several minutes passed in silence. Then he took her hand.

As the years passed, it was always too dangerous to send her away. Too cruel to lock her up in an isolation more complete than it already was. Though he knew that it was foolish, he visited her when he could and gave her whatever she asked, except for the one thing she wanted the most. Politics hardened him, sharpened his sense of risk, yet he visited when he knew he shouldn't. The liability grew over the years until it became…unacceptable. The Patrician, all told, was a realist. It would have to end, and on his terms.

TBC...