A-N: De-lurkinig is always welcome, Kristin! Thanks, Flamingo. I really like Syd too. Makes me wonder where I come up with some of these characters... Ihadanepiphany – What do you think Hanna should do? We'll see what she does soon enough! Thanks, all reviewers/readers! oOo

12. Excuse My Klatchian

Trolls stood with their arms crossed and their feet spread at the bottom of the Ankh's gangplank. There was moss growing on them. It was obvious they weren't long off the mountain. They didn't have weapons because their fists were enough.

No business happened on Maltesi's ships that day. The crews milled around talking softly. They were armed.

Nothing much went on in the shipping office. The clerks were there, but they were mostly drinking coffee in a frightened huddle. A few of the more knowledgeable clerks were quietly burning select files.

The dock workers were in the pubs having an early nip for the health of Anthony Maltesi. If a schnapps raised to the gods would help, then the whole lot of them would have to be dead drunk to save Maltesi. None of them had seen him but they'd heard. Word of mouth had done its work. The dock workers now believed Maltesi had only one eye, three fingers, one kidney and half a leg left.

That sort of thing was all right for a sailor in a fight to the death to defend his ship and treasure at sea. It was a disgrace when it was obviously an ambush on the docks.

Hanna sensed that something wasn't right the moment she got out of the cab. Things were too quiet. People clustered together over steaming coffee or drinkable paper bags and stared at her suspiciously as she passed. It couldn't have been her hair. She was wearing a scarf.

The clerks informed her curtly that Mr. Maltesi wasn't in but they didn't say where he was. She headed down to the Ankh.

The trolls stared at her when she asked politely if she could pass. She asked a second time.

One of the trolls stirred. "Who are you?"

She looked up at the deck of the ship. Armed men paced, their crossbows fitted with arrows.

"What's happened?" she asked.

"Dey's got de boss," said the troll.

She tried to push past, but several hundred pounds of moving stone was an effective block. "Let me through!"

"Sorry. Can't do dat. Orders."

"Whose orders?"

"Ol' Pete."

Hanna stepped back from the gangplank.

"Old Pete!" she shouted. "Pete!"

Some of the armed men squinted down at her, then disappeared. A few moments later, Pete waddled onto the deck and shouted down at her.

"Git out of here, gel! Ye's done enough damage, haven't ye? Eh?"

"What happened?"

"Don't give me that. I ain't the boy. I ain't a fool. A pretty face don't mean a thing to me. Now git on out of here before I have the lads throw ye out."

She tried to push past the trolls again but they held her by the arms. They weren't accustomed to dealing delicately with humans. It was an understatement to say their grip pinched. Hanna had to grit her teeth.

"Let me on!" she shouted.

Pete spat overboard and disappeared.

Anthony Maltesi was in the Captain's bed, where he'd been since the sailors found him slumped against the wall of the barracks the night before. Things weren't quite as bad as his workers thought they were. He was still all in one piece.

He stirred when Pete stepped past the dwarves on guard outside the Captain's door.

"What's the racket?" he asked weakly.

"Nothin. Go back to sleep. Ye need yer strength, boy."

Maltesi was as surprised as anyone else to find that he wasn't dead. When he first woke up that morning, he thought that the afterlife just happened to look like his father's ship. He'd heard Death was like that.

But then Pete was there and the others and slowly, his mind started collating information. He hurt, but not as bad as he should have. Apparently, the powder that the man with the boots had given him was some kind of medicine.

Anthony!

He tried to raise himself on his elbows. The windows were open and the breeze was carrying in sound.

Pete made him lay back down.

"Ye don't have the strength to git up. Have some sense, boy."

Anthony!

Maltesi stared at Pete. Pete shook his head.

"I ain't lettin' her on. If she weren't around distractin' ye, ye'd had time to deal with that bastard Polk. Just say the word and the lads'n me'll give him back some of his own."

"Let her on."

"Ye's a fool, boy! The gel's trouble from beginnin' to last. I musta been dead drunk to allow her to be an honorary member of the cap'n's crew."

"Let her on." Maltesi ran a hand over his face. The bumpy result wasn't promising. "Go on, Pete."

Pete stuck his chest out.

"I ain't gonna do it. Ye's not thinkin' straight, with yer injuries n' all."

"Then I'll have to order you."

"I ain't doin' it."

"This is my ship. I didn't get hit in the head so hard that I forgot that. It's my ship. On my ship, my orders are followed. I order you to let her on."

Old Pete frowned down at Maltesi, then did an exaggerated salute and stomped out.

When she came in, Hanna's mouth dropped open.

"Leave us alone," Maltesi ordered. Pete and the dwarf guards reluctantly left the room. "I look like hell, don't I?"

He tried to smile but it came out looking like a grimace. Hanna sat beside him. It seemed to be a day of bedsides. She'd left Madam weak but stable.

He told her what he knew, what the sailors who found him told him. It wasn't much.

"Nothing's broken," he said. "Looks like he just wanted to rough me up."

"Who?"

"Who do you think?"

"Lord Vetinari wouldn't order something like this. Ever."

"Really?"

"Even if he cared enough about me to be jealous, that sort of thing isn't his style. He'd ruin your business behind your back before he sent thugs to beat you up."

She was saying it and she believed it, but there was a little voice in the back of her mind that sort of...doubted. Jealousy didn't have much to do with love. It had a lot more to do with power and control. And those were things Lord Vetinari cared a lot about indeed.

"Gods," she said. "And I thought things couldn't get worse. Madam Meserole had another collapse last night."

She pulled the treasure map out of her purse. The two pieces were pinned together with straight pins. It was obvious that the treasure lay in the first range of the Carrack Mountains. Which mountain was shown only when the halves were together – a rather knobby little mountain that had, on paper, several symbols on it. A goat, a lightening bolt, some strange echses in circles.

"This morning I found somebody who can guide me into the mountains," said Hanna. "I hope."

Maltesi painfully pulled himself up against the headboard.

"Have you gone mad? You're not going alone."

"You're in no condition to come with me."

"I'll be on my feet tomorrow."

"It's miles and miles of hiking and then the mountain to climb." She put the map away. "I don't expect you to help me anymore. I'm sorry I got you into this to begin with. I think you should--"

"Gods damn it, I didn't do all this to miss out on the end. I'm going with you and if I hear another word about it, I'll..." He considered the condition of his body. "I'll get one of the golems to dunk you overboard till you come to your senses. I'm going with you, you understand? Don't argue with me."

Hanna smiled a little.

"All right. I'll wait till day after tomorrow. But if Madam gets worse, I'll have to leave earlier whether you're ready or not."

He nodded and slid back onto the pillows.

To Hanna, he really was looking sad and pathetic and torn up. She touched his face gently, then kissed him. His lips were still numb enough for him not to feel much.

He didn't really care.

oOo

"Drumknott?"

"Yes, my lord?"

The clerk waited for the Patrician to continue, but Lord Vetinari didn't. His hand hovered over the Djelibeybian section of the map of the Disc spread out on the table in his office. Little yellow bits of paper were stuck here and there with cryptic notes in the Patrician's handwriting. They'd been examining the border disputes with Djelibeybi and its neighbors by plotting out where the borders had been in the past. It wasn't a necessary task in Drumknott's opinion, nothing his lordship needed to do himself. But when the clerk offered to trace out the old borders on separate maps and bring them into the Oblong Office when he was finished, Lord Vetinari insisted on doing it himself despite the thousand and one other things he should be doing.

The silence continued. Drumknott started to worry. He prided himself on knowing what his master was thinking. Lately, he'd lost his bearings. Lord Vetinari seemed more...eccentric than usual.

Frowning, the Patrician straightened up, his gaze moving hubwards along the map to Pseudopolis.

"How upset would you be if I told you that I'd been disseminating rather negative information about you?"

"You've been bad-mouthing me, milord?" asked Drumknott, shocked.

"No, no, no. It's a hypothetical question."

"Well..." Drumknott thought a moment. "Would we be talking about things I've done and want to keep secret, or--"

The Patrician waved a hand. "Nothing like that. Opinions. If I told someone 'Mr. Drumknott is, in my opinion, a foolish young man incompetent at his job...'"

"My lord!"

"I will remind you this is hypothetical. Calm down." Lord Vetinari's frown deepened, which didn't help Drumknott calm at all. "If I said something like that, how upset would you be?"

"Bloody upset, I'll say!"

The Patrician raised an eyebrow. Drumknott colored.

"Excuse my Klatchian, milord."

"Upset enough to leave your post here?"

"Is this still hypothetical?"

"Yes," said the Patrician testily. "I will inform you when we leave the realm of hypothesis."

Drumknott was unfortunate to be caught in a situation in which he didn't want to tell the truth in front of someone who would surely catch him out if he didn't.

"I don't think I could go on working for someone who thought that of me, sir."

"Even if the money and status you earned for staying were compelling?"

"I'm not really paid enough to—"

"Hypothesis, Drumknott..."

"Sorry, sir. Then... I think I'd have to weigh whether the money was worth my self-respect."

The Patrician nodded and bent over the table, a yellow stickie paper in his fingers. He stuck one on the Carrack Mountains. Noted on the paper was one of Lord Vetinari's least liked and least used symbols. A question mark.

"If I told you there was a good reason for saying such untruths about you, would you be so upset then?"

"It seems like the damage would be done already, milord. So yes. Probably."

"Probably," the Patrician murmured.

Drumknott quietly started gathering up papers from the map table. Like everyone else who'd been around Vetinari the past weeks, he was getting nervous about the Patrician's – and this was a word Drumknott never thought he'd use for his master – moodiness. It got worse the longer Lady Hanna was away, though nobody was foolish enough to even whisper of cause and effect. Drumknott was the only person in Ankh-Morpork who knew for a fact the link was there. He sent and received the clacks messages. There were some on the table that he tucked onto the stack of papers in his arms, destined for a fire.

The last one from Madam included: I couldn't know that she would stumble upon them. Your auntie shouldn't have had them to begin with but I do have to look after you, don't I? And for that I need to know what you're up to. I truly had no idea she'd react how she did, with so much hurt pride. If you had to write such hateful things about her, perhaps you could have been more tactful...

"Maybe," the clerk said without looking at the Patrician, "she would understand all this better than I would, milord."

It was a moment when Drumknott knew he was being too smart for his own good. He stared down at his shoes to avoid the stare of his master. It was one of the iciest stares Lord Vetinari was capable of.

Drumknott's shoulders tensed but he struck further out into the glacial waters he'd so foolishly dived into. "I was just thinking, milord. If hypothetically, you had to say such things about her ladyship..." He cringed, but the Patrician did nothing except continue his stare, "...but she knew for a fact you didn't really think that of her, then maybe she'd understand. She'd have to know the reason you're doing it, though. My sister says a couple always has to keep faith with each other." He fell into an embarrassed silence.

"Drumknott?"

"Yes, milord?"

"Are you giving me advice on women?"

"Oh no, milord."

The Patrician frowned for a few long, and for the clerk, agonizing moments. Then the air in the office seemed to thaw suddenly.

"Leaving the realm of hypothesis, I will tell you that you are an excellent clerk."

"Thank you, sir."

"When you do not attempt to give unwanted advice."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

The Patrician went slowly back to his desk, his hands clasped behind his back, his posture slightly stooped as if a lot was weighing on his shoulders. He settled into his chair and rested his elbows on the desktop.

A good deal of ruling Ankh-Morpork involved knowing the levers of the people around him, the little points of character, the needs and wants that motivated them to do what they did. And, if all went well, to do what he wanted them to do. He knew Hanna quite well by now. Excellently, in fact. He knew her levers. She valued money, but less than she always claimed. She valued her professional reputation. She was willful and proud, had a quick temper, inconsistent manners, a morally questionable sense of humor and a talent for unintentionally creating sudden chaos.

In short, she was a Morporkian.

Morporkians were nothing if not practical and self-interested to the extreme. Hanna was also like this. She wouldn't have been such a successful seamstress if she wasn't. If she shook off the pride for one second and looked at things as he did – practically – she would see the practical necessity for his letters to Lady Margolotta.

It was such a small, almost insignificant act, writing what he had. Words were powerful, yes, but these were such teeny tiny stones in a vast mosaic of (mis)information the Patrician carefully planned and laid out and cemented across the Disc. Hanna was only a side show, a single little piece of cut glass – triangular and very sharp, no doubt – that almost disappeared when inserted into the vast pattern. It was all a tapestry, a matrix, a game.

He glanced over at the table where the trolls and dwarfs were arrayed for battle on a slab of stone, a game of Thud in progress versus Uberwald.

Hanna was practical. She would choose self interest over hurt pride. With her, he could always count on that.

He could, couldn't he?

Her levers tipped back and forth in his mind like a see-saw.

"How upset is she?" he asked, irritated that he was still thinking about this one little mosaic stone hopping out of the pattern. It should be content to stay small, to stay part of the whole, to stop bothering him.

Drumknott wasn't sure he'd been addressed, but he answered anyway.

"She's bloody furious probably, my lord," he said. "Excuse my Klatchian."

Drumknott was excused from the Oblong Office with the advice to keep his Klatchian to himself in future. When he was alone, Lord Vetinari leaned back in his chair.

Bloody furious was furious indeed.

Well.

She wasn't the only one.