Author's note: Ahhhh.... The convention was amazing. I'm still not over it. In a bar with Terry Pratchett and Lord Vetinari! Anyway, quick comments: starmouse – No original fiction published yet, but I'm working on it. Ivycreeper – You've got a good nose for plot elements, my dear. The nickname is relevant to the story... Leelee – Don't die! Regular updates R' us! Cassandra – I actually did mention fanfic to Terry, and he said he used to write it too – LOTR fanfic. He just doesn't want to read DW stuff and find himself influenced by it. Understandable. Enjoy chapter 2 (it's a bit long)! oOo
2. Maltesi
Morning at the Pseudopolis docks was like morning at any other nautical location. Scruffy looking men in pancake hats smoked pipes around open fires. Street urchins scampered around trying to steal breakfast from the morning catch. Fishermen tramped by with flippers and gills flapping in their arms. It was foggy and there was a nip of cold in the air down from the mountains. Lanterns swung on the piers to help guide in the ships.
Hanna got directions to the headquarters of the Maltesi Shipping Co. It was one of those low buildings attached to a warehouse that looked like thieves had scraped the paint off. With their nails. From the outside, it looked like a strong wind would blow it over.
Inside, though, the clerks sat at tidy rows of desks. There were shelves of files organized on the walls. The place hummed with quiet, measured, business being handled by competent professionals.
One of the clerks pointed Hanna in the direction of the office she was looking for. It was at the end of a hallway. She stopped outside the door. There was shouting from inside.
"...and something else! Your arsehole is more than big enough to berth each and every one of my ships. If you even think of putting your lads on my piers, forget about sitting down on that lazy, swollen--"
"You always talked big, Anthony. Your father never needed to. Business is business, eh? Don't forget that."
The office door opened. A man in a gray suit with a trim gray moustache tipped his hat to Hanna and was halfway down the hall before he paused and glanced back at her with a thoughtful look on his face. Then he disappeared around the corner.
Hanna knocked once.
"GO AWAY!"
She opened the door anyway.
The man behind the desk had stacks of files blocking him in like a siege wall. His brown jacket was crumpled on the floor, his shirt sleeves were rolled up and his vest looked like it had seen better days. So did his hair. It sprouted out of his head every which way like dried-out grass that had been indifferently mowed. He fit right into his office. It was as organized as a drunken beehive.
He had a stack of papers in his hands. He shook them at Hanna.
"Did I take a dump in a temple?" he cried. "Did I piss on holy ground? I have enough bad luck right now to choke a Vicious Klatchian Desert Ferret."
"Who was that who just left?" asked Hanna.
He peered at her through his glasses.
"Who are you?"
"I asked my question first."
"You see this?" He pointed at a carved wooden name plate on the desk. "Anthony Maltesi. That's me. You might've noticed the Maltesi Shipping Co. sign outside. This is my damn office, my damn warehouse and out there," he pointed to the window, "are my damn ships on my damn part of the dock. No ladies have the right to come in here without invitation for a game of silly buggers."
He straightened his chair, took up another stack of papers and started shuffling through them. He was badly shaven. Badly dressed. Hanna doubted he bothered much with baths. But then, the whole dock smelled...nautical.
"You're still here," he said after a minute.
"That's because I'm a customer, Mr. Maltesi. And I'm not leaving until you treat me like one. Or is this how you treat all your passengers?"
He threw his papers onto the desk and stood up, his arms out.
"Oh, where are my manners? They must be around here somewhere." He started opening and slamming desk drawers. He finally straightened and waved a book at her. The Gentleman's Guide to Pseudopolian Etiquette, vol. 2. After consulting it for a moment, he gave her a deep Pseudopolis bow. It was stiff. Done properly, the back of his head could be seen during the dip.
"Do you want me to kiss your hand too?" he asked sarcastically.
"Definitely not."
He tossed the book onto the papers and flopped back in his chair. "So. I'm Maltesi, how do you do, pleased to meet you, enchanted and so on. Always glad to meet a customer, miss..."
"Hanna."
"Miss...Hanna. Right." He blinked at her through his glasses, took them off and blinked again, polished them on his shirt sleeve and put them back on.
"How can I help you?" He was sounding a little calmer.
"I wondered who that man was who left. He looked like a ghost."
"I wish he was. It'd mean he was dead." Maltesi waved for Hanna to take a seat in front of his desk. "Phineas Polk. A real bastard. He owns half the ships on the docks. He also owns half the docks in the form of his bleeding union. He's been pressuring my lads to join up, and I mean pressure on the end of a stick."
"He wants to form a dock guild?"
"He'd control everything if he did. Berths, warehouses, handling of cargo. My ships'd be at the mercy of his guild workers." He sneered the word. "If I'd wanted a guild, I'd of set up shop in Ankh-Morpork."
Pseudopolis was frontier territory when it came to organized labour. Most people thought it was the right of workers to be happy they had a job in the first place. It was the right of business owners to be happy to have somebody to do the dirty work for them. The equilibrium had held for centuries.
"That's where I'm from," said Hanna. "I came in on the Jewel of Istanzia the other day."
Maltesi leaned forward and sniffed the air.
"You have good soap, ma'am. Not a whiff of prawns. I've had a word with the captain about transporting the damn things when they're so high they could fly from Ephebie to Pseudopolis." He paused, rummaged on his desk and picked up a small card. "I deeply, humbly and solemnly apologize for any olfactory inconvenience we caused. If any of your clothing is irreparably damaged, we'll be glad to pay for replacement togs of equal or lesser value."
He set the card down.
"I'm not really here about that," said Hanna. "I have a small problem that I thought maybe you could help me with. I..."
She stopped because Maltesi didn't appear to be listening. He was flipping through his Gentleman's Guide to Pseudopolian Etiquette again. He studied a page for a moment, then shoved his glasses in his pocket.
"I think I've said a half dozen words off the Rude Words that Can't Be Said in the Presence of a Lady list," he said. He coloured slightly. "Sorry."
Hanna smiled. "Never mind. I'm here because maybe you can help me. I wondered if you know where I can find some--"
The office door opened and a small old man with bowed legs and more hair in his ears than on his head stomped in.
"Got the Star all loaded, boy," he said. He hocked in his throat in preparation to release a gob of phlegm on the floor, then noticed Hanna. He swallowed. "Eh. Got a customer, eh?" He waddled over to her and tipped his cap. "They calls me Old Pete."
"He's my second in command," said Maltesi.
"Right I am, boy, and don't ye forget it," Old Pete held his cap over his heart, " fer the honour of yer dear dead father, the best cap'n a sailor ever had."
"Good," said Hanna. "Maybe you could help too. I have a small problem that I was told only people of a seafaring nature could help me with."
"We're your men," said Old Pete.
"Wonderful. So... I was wondering if either of you happen to have, or know of anyone who has, some Hershebian chocolate."
Maltesi and Old Pete started waving their hands frantically.
"SSSSSHHHH!" they hissed at the same time.
"Not so loud," Maltesi whispered.
"Why not?"
Pete shook his head. "We ain't got none of that around here."
"I've never even seen the stuff," said Maltesi.
"Me neither." Pete stuck a finger in his ear and excavated among the hairs. There was a light sucking sound. "Didn't think it existed anymore."
"I heard you have to fight off the Vicious Hershebian Hippos to get to the only...c...grove on the Disc," said Maltesi. He made it clear that the "c" word was not to be spoken. "I read that somewhere. I have no idea where it is."
"Burned down," said Pete.
"Aye, I heard that."
"No more...stuff...anywhere."
"None at all." Maltesi got up out of his chair. "Sorry we couldn't help you, Miss...Hanna."
He was out from behind his desk but he was stopped by Hanna's hand on his chest.
"Please, sit down, sir. There's more to talk about."
"We ain't got any, gel," said Pete. "Nobody's got any. The stuff's so rare, it's worth a bleeding fortune. Five fortunes! The grove ain't there anymore, as far as I know. If there's any...stuff...left in the world, it's old stuff. Treasure, like."
Without knowing exactly why he did it, Maltesi backed up from Hanna's hand and sat back in his chair.
"Maybe it would help," she said, "if I told you that money is no object."
"We don't have any," said Maltesi. "If we got caught with it, our ships would be confiscated. It's not worth the risk."
"I'll pay double the market value."
"Didja hear him, gel? We ain't got any!"
Hanna studied them for a moment. Maltesi looked on the edge of asking her why she wanted...stuff...in the first place. Old Pete was nervously hopping from one foot to the other and flicking the contents of his ear off his fingernail.
"You don't know where I can get some?" she asked.
"We have no idea."
"That's too bad." Hanna looked around the cluttered office. "That's really too bad. I'm prepared to do a lot to get my hands on some."
Maltesi and Pete exchanged glances.
"I'm open to paying you gentleman a good sum of money to help me find a supply."
"It's impossible, gel! It probably don't exist anymore."
"And what if it does?"
"Don't matter." Pete looked to his boss. Maltesi was thinking that the woman in front of him didn't look like the typical chocolate addict. A bit too calm. And thin.
"If it exists somewhere, and if anybody caught us with it even temporarily..." He shook his head. "It's too big a risk."
"I'm saying please very nicely," said Hanna. "Please reconsider."
Maltesi got out of his seat again. "It'd bring us trouble. Go try Polk. He's less scrupulous than we are."
He had her by the elbow and was steering her toward the door, but she didn't let him shove her out. She hadn't wanted to do this, but she obviously didn't have a choice.
"I saw something very interesting when I was on the Jewel of Istanzia," she said. "I was wandering around at night because of the unbearable stink, you understand, and I ended up in part of the cargo hold. The thing is, I was just browsing with my little candle as I'm wont to do when I have insomnia and all those crates, they made me really curious."
Old Pete cleared his throat and looked worriedly at Maltesi.
"I'm one of those people who sees a box and just has to know what's inside," said Hanna. "It's some kind of compulsion. So I found a crowbar and pried open one of them. Guess what I found."
Old Pete was hacking now. Maltesi shrugged.
"It must've been prawns," he said.
"You'd think," said Hanna. "But imagine my surprise when I saw a DeathMaster brand 600-pound automatic reloading triple action crossbow with decorative spikes."
"That's impossible," said Maltesi. "We don't deal in that kind of thing."
Old Pete sounded like his lung was imploding.
"Really? You don't?" Hanna smiled brightly. "I'm glad to hear that. Ever since that mess with Klatch, Ankh-Morpork had been careful about what kind of weapons it exports." She scratched her head. "There's something of a black list. It's not very long – the Patrician doesn't believe in blocking free trade – but I seem to remember hearing that the DeathMaster 600-pound automatic reloading triple action crossbow with decorative spikes was on there."
"I told you. The Jewel carried prawns," said Maltesi. "It did not--"
Pete grabbed him by the arm and whispered something in his ear. Maltesi turned pale, then a shade of red.
"Right. It looks like there may have been an...error on the docks in Ankh-Morpork. A one-time occurrence. Won't happen again."
He had Hanna by the elbow but she stuck her foot in front of the door so he couldn't open it.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Course. You're a snoopin' gel what has no business in the hold of the boy's ships," said Pete.
"You don't read the Ankh-Morpork newspapers?"
They stared at her.
"You never saw the name Hanna in the newspaper? Ever?"
Deep thinking was going on behind the still faces of Maltesi and Pete. They weren't big newspaper readers. The stuff was good for wrapping fish and balling up as packing material but that was about it.
"You haven't heard the gossip about the Patrician?" she asked.
Pieces fell into place.
Pete pointed at her with the ear-excavation finger. "Yer not..."
Maltesi slowly went back to his seat. He wiped his mouth with his hand.
"There's got to be more than one Hanna in Ankh-Morpork," he said in the tone of a man who really, really hopes he's right about that.
Hanna opened her purse and took out a newspaper. It was the Ankh-Morpork Times. She turned to the society pages, folded the sheets back into a handy size and held it next to her face. On the page was a large iconograph.
"I'm not so well dressed right now," said Hanna, "but there's still a resemblance, right?"
They stared at the iconograph. They stared at Hanna. Pete wandered closer and squinted. Maltesi put his glasses on when his regular eye sight wasn't believable enough. Then he took his glasses off again and carefully folded them in his vest pocket.
He was a man unafraid to tell it like it is. He said:
"Bugger."
Hanna put the newspaper away.
"I'm not going to write to Havelock – that's the Patrician, mind you -- and tell him that a ship owned by Anthony Maltesi left Ankh-Morpork carrying contraband weapons. I'm not going to suggest that he take a look at the rest of the Maltesi ships on the docks to be sure that kind of thing doesn't happen again. He wouldn't do it if I just asked. Our relationship doesn't work that way."
She smiled broadly.
"What I will do, if I have to, is send a message to the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Dock Workers that a ship owned by Anthony Maltesi left the city carrying contraband weapons. I will remind them that the Patrician left it to them to enforce the shipping rules. My dear Havelock is known for his fairness and even temper. He never punishes anyone without cause. But he does get unhappy when the guilds don't live up to the trust he puts in them. The guilds don't want him unhappy. I don't either. So it would surely be in the best interests of everyone – even you, Mr. Maltesi – if the dock workers searched your ships themselves."
She admired her fingernails. "I think the penalty for carrying black list contraband is the cancellation of docking privileges and the lopping off of two fingers. Or is it three? I really can't keep up with guild practices these days."
Maltesi leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a while. He had around a dozen ships in the Ankh-Morpork docks at any given time. Most of them weren't carrying contraband. But enough of them were that Maltesi had to take a look at his hands and count the number of fingers he preferred to keep. About ten, he concluded.
He fixed Hanna with a stare.
"Pete?"
"Yeah, boy? Ye want me to throw 'er in the drink?" He rubbed his hands.
"Have I offended any gods lately?"
"Well, Helburt was lookin' a little sour yesterday. Said he had gas. Nothin' to do with you. And Finna, yeah, she's always got a gripe, sacrifice all the offal you got and she's still not satisfied..."
Hanna and Maltesi were locked in some sort of silent stare of death. It was like arm wrestling. He looked like he'd personally throw her in the river with weights on her ankles if it wouldn't immediately start an international incident.
"Help me find what I'm looking for," she said. "You'll be protected if you're found temporarily with the...stuff. I guarantee it. I won't get involved with your business in Ankh-Morpork. And I'll reward you. I promise."
"What if we can't find any?"
"We have to try. I told you. Money is no object. But I need a place to start."
"Why do you want it so badly?"
"That's none of your business. Is it a deal?"
A string of maritime curse words welled up inside of him and spilled out in a low, angry litany.
Hanna gave him a nice smile. It wasn't one from her range of seamstress smiles, but it was effective. She didn't look like such a manipulating bitch. She felt rather bad about it all but didn't want to show it too obviously.
"Is it a deal, Mr. Maltesi?"
He rubbed his eyes.
"Any ideas where we can start, Pete?"
"Can always try Syd."
"No Syd."
"Who's Syd?"
"We don't want Syd."
"The stuff is practically treasure," said Pete. "Syd'll know if there's something out on it."
"No Syd!"
Hanna looked from one man to the other. "Why not?"
oOo
The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork ruled the city from a comfy chair behind a large desk in the Oblong Office of the Winter Palace. It was command central, his personal sanctum, the place where it happened, it being the smooth running of the city for the first time in centuries. Lord Vetinari had the knack for getting diverse factions to act selfishly for the public good.
He was finishing up a memo encouraging the Guild of Thieves to act a tad more selfishly in the matter of unlicensed kidnappings when there was a knock on the office door. A whine of disapproval combined with a scent like a moldy bathroom rug wafted up from under Lord Vetinari's desk.
There was another knock. Another whine.
This was irritating for two reasons. First, nobody knocked on the Patrician's door. He summoned people from the waiting room or he was left well enough alone. Second, the Patrician's elderly terrier Wuffles, who spent most of his time flat on his back in a basket under his desk, shouldn't have been disturbed. He needed all the sleep he could get. He was recovering from a short-term delusion involving lumbering after the clerks, his teeth bared, as they hustled back and forth down the hallway like carts in the street. When he caught one, he bit a rear wheel (ankle). He was now under medication, an herb that made him sleepy.
Irritated, the Patrician strode up to the door and yanked it open soundlessly.
"Yes?"
The man was short, filthy and had a runny nose. He was wearing a helmet and knee pads and he had a pack strapped to his back. Suspicious shaped bulges could be seen just under his trouser legs at the ankle and up his sleeves. Knife scabbard shaped bulges. This was obviously not a run-of-the-mill messenger.
In his hand was a small envelope sealed with wax. It looked like it had come a long way. The messenger wiped his nose on his sleeve before handing it over.
"Sorry to er, disturb yer honner, but the clerks looked busy and--"
"Yes, yes, never mind."
Lord Vetinari glanced at the front of the letter. His name was on it, the Palace, no sender. The paper was sealed with black wax. He recognized the imprint, a cursive M. They'd decided to use regular, though well-armed, couriers instead of diplomatic dispatches for correspondence that was less...diplomatic. There was actually less of a chance of the letters being intercepted by third parties because anyone interested in Vetinari's correspondence assumed the Patrician would never send or receive anything of interest through a regular courier. That's why most things of interest were sent by him through a regular courier.
He was smiling when he glanced up and discovered the messenger had a mud-caked hand stretched palm up toward him.
"If yer honner could see yer way to a small donation to help along a poor courier..."
"Indeed. Sterling work. Good man." The Patrician draped his handkerchief over the courier's hand. The door was tipped closed with the heal of his boot.
Muttering, the courier wiped his nose with the handkerchief and wondered if a soiled hanky from the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork had any street value. He went to find Dibbler.
Lord Vetinari had the letter opened and read full through before he reached his desk chair. He read it a second time, then pushed his work out of the way, prepared a new sheet of paper, inked a quill, and started writing a reply.
It was somehow easier to do now, as if Hanna's absence freed him from the tiny jot of guilt that accompanied the pleasure he had when he wrote those letters. Guilt, however minute, had no place in the heart of a politician. It'd be hard to look in the mirror mornings if it did.