A-N: Yes, very interesting iconographs, hm? Here's the next bit... From chap 7, things start going boing. oOo

6. Sentiment for Beginners

Madam was a businesswoman, but she didn't tell Hanna exactly what kind of business had kept her roving around the Disc for decades.

"My business interests are diverse," she said after dinner. "You could say I have a finger in every pie."

They were relaxed in the Awfully Orange Drawing Room. Madam hadn't had another collapse, but she was still very weak. A mug of champagne was at her elbow at all times. Hanna had spent the day with her, talking gossip about Ankh-Morpork mostly. New guild presidents, changes on the City Watch, the new Uberwaldean ambassador Count de Magpyr, who arrived right after Hanna left the city.

Now Madam settled back with a large, locked book in her lap.

"I heard you were a seamstress," said Hanna.

"It's a convenient thing to have people think."

"Is it true?"

Madam held up a finger, then opened the drawer in the cabinet beside her. She took out an iconograph. It was from the earliest days of iconographs, fifty years old at least. The iconograph itself was preserved only because it was under a slightly concave glass sheet and mounted on a thick frame.

It was Roberta Meserole before she acquired the title of Madam. She wore a skirt as wide as the iconograph and a corset that must have permanently altered Madam's internal organs. She stood with a tall walking stick, for show obviously, a stiff riding hat on her dark ringlets. Her face was pleasant but it was extraordinary for the expression. She looked like she'd just heard a piece of information that was going to make her a lot of money.

"Lovely," said Hanna.

"I was quite young then. Twenty-five or so." She sighed. "Time is merciless and brutal."

"I know."

"Not yet, my dear." Madam reached out to touch Hanna's cheek. "You're still young. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If anyone brings up that ridiculous figure of 35 as the appropriate retirement age for a seamstress, tell them from me that a good woman is good for life. I tell my nephew that all the time." She smiled. "And when I say good, it has nothing to do with bourgeois morality."

"I didn't think it did."

Madam wiped a smudge off the iconograph with her sleeve.

"This was taken several years after I met Stanwyck, Havelock's father. He was an arrogant piece of work. He tormented the ladies at the Palace balls and when he got bored with that, he taught the gray hairs a thing or two in the political circles. He inserted the most piercing, brilliant bits of insight into their discussions. He had a natural gift. I had my own modest talent, of course, but in those days, the gentlemen didn't look kindly on ladies invading their realm."

Madam had a faraway look on her face.

"The first time we met at one of these circles, the discussion centered on, oh, an old problem at the time in Klatch, and I'd been making a private study of it for my own reasons. I dared to make a comment and I believe it was Lord Rust – that's the father of the one you know – who scolded me for coming to the wrong conclusion on the question. Stanwyck said, and I will never forget this, 'There are no right or wrong positions, only points of view founded on careful study and rational analysis. If this lady can add to the prism of political thought, she should be allowed in this distinguished circle.' The gentlemen were not prepared to allow me full membership, mind you, but I had the chance to prove myself. That is something else I learned from Stanwyck: create the proper conditions, then allow someone to rise to the challenge. Or sink, as the case may be."

To Hanna, it sounded a lot like Lord Vetinari's philosophy.

Madam set the picture aside and opened the book on her lap. "I didn't mean to talk about that tonight. There's nothing worse than an old woman talking about the old days. We were all beautiful, brilliant and exciting back then, hm?"

"I don't mind listening."

"You're a good girl. But now I want to talk about my nephew. He always tells me to destroy his letters but I just can't bring myself to do it." She stroked the pages of the letter book, turning them one by one. "Cecil sews them together for me. A book of my nephew's thoughts. I look at it often."

She found the page she was looking for, paused, and smiled at Hanna.

"I'm curious. How long do you think Havelock knew about you before you met on that fateful Hogswatchnight?"

Lord Vetinari hooked Hanna into the contract on a Hogswatchnight that was eventful less for what happened in a Palace bed than for the blackmail they practised on each other. Hanna wondered how much Madam knew about that.

"It was a while, I think" she said. "A few months at least."

"Do you honestly think my nephew would spend only a few months investigating a woman he intended to spend the next three years with?"

"Six months?" Hanna guessed.

Madam shook her head. Hanna straightened in her chair.

"A year?"

Madam was still smiling.

"More?"

"My nephew is a very careful, thorough man, as you well know. This was not the kind of decision he was going to make lightly. He appealed to his dear auntie to help him. At the time he said he needed an objective eye on the matter. He was" Madam smiled warmly at Hanna, "afraid that his own objectivity could not be counted on."

"Why not?"

"I know, my dear. He gave you practical, self-interested reasons to enter a contract with him. There was some Hogswatch unpleasantness that night, I understand, though I don't have all the details." She held up a hand. "You don't need to tell me about it. I respect the confidentiality between a seamstress and her client. I thought you might like to know, though, that a full year before you officially met, my nephew asked me to review your file."

"He had a file on me back then. Wonderful."

"He's very cautious, as I said. My task was to find a reason for him not to engage you. I'm convinced his mind was made up already, but as I said before, he feared he wasn't objective enough about the situation."

"You haven't told me why."

Madam smiled.

"He liked you."

"He didn't know me. We were introduced once at a guild reception and we talked for all of three seconds. That was pretty much it before Hogswatchnight."

"Oh, before your arrangement, you were at the same social occasions more often than you realize. He's quite good at lurking in the shadows where no one can see him. I told you the story about Mr. Orange Marmelade. Havelock was a great believer in learning about ladies through long, patient observation."

She tapped the book.

"He wrote this a year before you officially met: 'I had another opportunity to observe Miss Stein, at the annual wine tasting hosted by the vintners. She made a witty speech about the superior qualities of beer before moving on to praise the Domina grape, accenting every mention of the name with a mock cracking of a whip. Lord Selachii did not seem to understand what she referred to. She is quite wasted on him.'"

Hanna tried to remember the occasion, but it was fuzzy. Three years ago was long enough, and she'd been to wine tastings since then. No, she'd had no idea the Patrician was around.

"I can't believe he was there."

"He doesn't like to be the center of attention." Madam carefully turned to another page of the book. "He was troubled by your age for a long time. Older women were his preference, and here he was interested in a lady thirteen years younger than him. Robbing the cradle, hm? I eased his mind on the subject when I pointed out that the city would interpret you as the expression of a mid-life crisis. If he painted his carriage red, shaved his beard and cruised the streets with you beside him, people would be relieved that he too has human foibles."

Hanna laughed.

"His carriage is still black. And I like his beard. You know that old saying: A kiss without a beard is like soup without salt."

"My dear, I invented that saying."

They laughed together.

"What else did he write about me?"

"Here he mentioned some of your little jokes. I particularly like this one: 'Is that a de Quirm steam-powered rocket in your pocket or are you happy to see me?'"

They were still laughing. Madam took a drink of champagne and found a new page in the book.

"And here, he said that he was concerned about an illness. You apparently had a very bad flu. Do you remember getting a surprise gift?"

Hanna looked confused for a moment, then gasped. "No. That wasn't from"

She didn't get sick often. A seamstress who couldn't work was a woman without income. But six weeks or so before her first Hogswatchnight with the Patrician, she'd come down with something so violent that she'd considering severing her head. At least then her lungs could get some air through the stump of her neck, and the headache would be taken care of.

The doorbells jangled one night, and there was the basket on her doorstep. Her sister Lotte carried it in for her. There was imported fresh fruit out of season and Agatean mint oil, powerful enough to unplug the most stubborn sinus. There were a couple of new history books and fresh-pressed orange juice and a loaf of full grain bread with aromatic, sinus-busting cheese and a sachet of medicinal bath salts. And orchids. The little card said 'Get Well Soon' but it wasn't signed. As a seamstress who got around in Ankh-Morpork society, Hanna just assumed it was from one of her clients and sat back to enjoy the spoils.

"I can't believe that was from him," she said.

"He can be very thoughtful when he wants to be." Madam closed the book. "So you see why he asked my advice on the matter. Your prominent clientele made you dangerous, of course, and it was a good reason for my nephew to neutralize your career. It was the original plan. The extra step to engage you himself came about more slowly. It took some time to formulate official reasons for doing it -- the knowledge you have about your clients, what they feel you tell him and so on."

Madam waved a hand.

"It's all bollucks, really. Truth is, he just didn't have the heart to destroy you."

Hanna shook her head. "I don't believe it. He doesn't do anything based on sentiment."

"Exactly. We were both quite pleased with the more rational reasons we came up with."

oOo

Maltesi read in his office by candlelight. He'd got a message from Hanna that the visit to Daneloo Sparks should be put off till tomorrow. It was all right. He had work to do. Pay packets were due out soon. The repair costs of a few of his ships in dry dock were starting to get worrying, must speak to the mechanics about that, and of course, there were orders for prawns. And there were preparations for the deathday party in a few weeks.

It didn't make sense to sailors in the Pseudopolis tradition to celebrate the birthday of someone who was dead. What was the point? The deceased didn't age anymore, and that calculation was the only thing a birth date was good for. A death date was a lot more useful. In a few days, when the beer was flowing and the accordian wheezing on the deck of Maltesi's largest ship, everyone would know that his father Captain Maltesi had died exactly 20 years before. You only get that kind of precision with a death date. Nobody cared that the Captain would have been 70-something years old if he was still alive. He wasn't still alive. What was the point of wondering how old he'd be?

Anthony Maltesi had been 19 when the Captain died, old enough to keep the image frozen in his head of a thick-chested, big-voiced man with a peppery beard, a Klatchian sabre stuck in his belt. Anthony grew up under the Captain's command. He was treated just like any other crew member, except that he had a tutor and every once in a while, the Captain sat alone with him in his quarters and talked for an hour or so about Pseudopolis and Anthony's mother. Even when he was informed that she'd died, Anthony was never told exactly who she was.

This didn't really bother him. He concentrated on honouring his father. It was the reason he gave up sailing and turned to gathering his own fleet of ships. He had a knack for commerce. And his father's name was known in every port on the Disc. It was good for business. The Captain's 20-year deathday was a bit like the 20th anniversary of the Maltesi Shipping Co.

Yawning, Maltesi took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He'd intended to check the cannons on a few of his ships – all of them were armed, for obvious reasons; if you didn't want to be a victim of pirates, you had to be a bit of a pirate yourself. But it was dark and he'd worked enough for one day.

He put out the candles and headed home.

He walked fast and thought about work because if he kept the image of ships and cargo and supplies in his mind, it might just push out the memory of Hanna in the sauna. Better not to think about that. It was the kind of thing that could get him buried on three continents courtesy of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Better to remember how she'd got him into this mess to begin with. Manipulative little hussy. She was pretty, all right. Intelligent, fair enough. Noble, officially. Wealthy, well...yes.

But so what? Pretty, intelligent, wealthy noblewomen grew on trees, didn't they? They were falling at his feet in droves. Yep. Yes, they were.

He sighed and crossed the last few feet along the docks.

Home was called the Ankh. His father's ship, 450 years old, a classic schooner, 90 feet long, fast and flexible on the water. Maltesi kept it in perfect condition. He slept in the Captain's quarters. He hadn't changed much in it since his father died except for the hammock he'd added at one side of the room. He slept better in one of those than in a bed. He'd practically grown up in one.

He was halfway up the gangplank before he noticed something wasn't right.

It was obviously fresh paint; the red letters dripped, which made it look like someone had written on the side of the ship in blood.

Werkers of the docks unite! Ye have nothen to loose but yer chins!

The spelling was too creative even for Maltesi's lads. It was clear whose people had done it.

Maltesi muttered something about "that effing Polk" and stomped up to the warehouse to look for a bucket and brush.

oOo

That effing Polk wasn't far away. He sat in his shipping office on the other side of the docks, a slice of apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a plate in front of him. The ice cream was melting already because he wasn't eating very fast. Phineas Polk was listening.

The drab man across from him finally stopped talking.

"The Quantum Weather Book," said Polk.

The man nodded. It was Lester. He looked tired.

"You're sure?" asked Polk.

"Absolutely sure."

At least Lester had something to show for his long session with Syd. The skin on his face glowed. Syd's special exfoliating face mask. It had felt like being scrubbed with a hogs hair brush. Only after enduring that and various other beauty experiments did Lester get from Syd the map Maltesi and Lady Hanna bought.

Polk picked up his fork and took a thoughtful bite of pie. The fleet of the Polk Shipping Co. was larger than Maltesi's, but they shared a common problem of all sailors and shipping merchants: the weather. It was so darn unpredictable. The in-sewer-ants costs of sending a shipload of anything were getting astronomical these days. Merchants wanted to be sure that a storm at sea wouldn't sink their merchandise. Who carried the most risk? Polk.

Maltesi as well, but Polk didn't mind him having difficulties. It was the reason for the guild idea. Competition. Free enterprise. They were always looking for an edge.

And now Maltesi appeared to have found one. It was said that the Quantum Weather Book, if it existed, laid out the rituals sailors could do to assure their ships had fine weather on any waterway in the world. If it worked, and if it got out that Maltesi's ships were protected, that would be the end of Polk.

He scooped up some ice cream and sucked it off his finger.

The book probably didn't exist. Half of Syd's maps were forgeries or frauds. Polk hadn't even thought of looking there. Maybe he should have.

No matter.

"Keep up the good work, Lester," he said. "From now on, we will refer to the item as 'the treasure.' I don't want word of it getting out." He took another swipe of ice cream. "Don't let Anthony and Lady Hanna out of your sight. If anything good comes, clacks me in Ankh-Morpork."

oOo

The guild system was evidence of the Patrician's genius, but there was one problem with encouraging members of various professions to band together in duly organized groups: Everybody did it. These days, the guildless were considered either hopelessly stubborn asocials or hopelessly unemployable. And so when Lord Vetinari accepted his second cup of tea at the Inaugural Reception of the brand new Guild of Feline Maintenance (in charge of kibble, sparkly toys, claw pairing and litter box management), he got the impression that things may be getting out of hand. A tart, ammoniac smell wafted through the hall. Mysterious fluffs of fur bounced in the draft or rolled slowly out from under the tables. And there were, of course, cats. A dozen of them strutted through the crowd, sampled the refreshments or attempted to shred the curtains.

A fluffy white Klatchian Mau sauntered up and fixed the Patrician with a wide, green-eyed stare.

"Meow," she said.

The Patrician frowned, then moved toward a window to get some fresh air. The cat followed.

"Meow."

"The ham buns are over there," said the Patrician, waving his tea cup in the direction of the refreshments table.

The cat decided to make a pass at him. Her back arched, her head dipped and she leaned against his leg. Snuggly things happened. There was a festival of purring and the rubbing of white fur onto the Patrician's black robe. So much of it rubbed off that the Patrician was amazed the cat wasn't now bald. She sat at his feet and stared up at him with adoring, reflective eyes. The Patrician tried to push her away with a gentle nudge of his boot. Purring, she rubbed up against him again. He was playing with her, wasn't he?

"I see Fanny likes you, yer lordship!" said Bedlow, the vice president of the guild, who came bustling up in a cloud of suspiciously muffy fumes. He was a cat litter specialist.

"A charming creature," said Lord Vetinari.

"Cats got minds of their own. They do what the want and us, we're lucky if they give us the time of day, ain't I right, little pooky cutie-kins?" Bedlow knelt and scratched Fanny's chin. Fanny rewarded him by butting her head against his knee.

"You do like cats, don't you, yer lordship?"

"I have a dog."

A sudden shocked silence settled over the reception. Everyone knew the Patrician had a dog, but the "d" word was not to be spoken at the guild.

Bedlow scooped Fanny up into his arms. "Well, yer lordship, some of us need a relationship with our companions based on dominance, and some of us prefer a relationship of equals." He hustled away holding Fanny as if saving her from the evil machinations of the dog-loving Patrician.

Lord Vetinari sighed and finished his tea and considered that this was the kind of thing Hanna was good at sorting out. She always turned up the charm just when the Patrician's patience at tedious social occasions began to flag. It was teamwork refined over two years.

He felt a pang of something he couldn't identify, a kind of sinking feeling that spread over his stomach.

He assumed it was the ham buns.