"One, two, three, four, one, two, one, two, one, two, pause, three, one, pause, two, three, four..."

Lord Vetinari counted under his breath as he strode at an odd gait down the corridor, every now and then taking a couple of steps back, swerving violently from side to side, or taking a lengthy jump to an oddly-shaped brown stone, which was indistinguishable from the oddly-shaped brown stones surrounding it. A normal man might have judged him drunk. A mildly perceptive man, however, might have known Lord Vetinari wasn't a man for drinking, and wondered what he was doing. A more perceptive man might have noticed the slabs beneath his feet shifting and sliding slightly as he stepped on them.

Vetinari concentrated. The master architect hadn't messed around when he was building this corridor. This wasn't an "if you step one of the trick tiles the swinging blade comes down, which incidentally you can roll under" sort of corridor. This was an "if you step on any tile other than the right one the whole floor collapses and plunges you into the scorpion pit" sort of corridor.

"...one, two, pause, three, four, five, six, pause, seven, pause, eight, nine, pause, pause, ten."

He reached the end of the corridor, and turned the corner to Leonard's room.

"Leonard? Leonard?"

"He won't answer you," someone said. "He's drawing."

Vetinari whirled around, and the someone raised his hands defensively.

"Easy, my Lord. Alvin Quickwhittler. Palace Guards – Special Corps. Or don't you remember?"

A memory sparked in Vetinari's mind. This had been another idea of Drumknott's, if he recalled.

"Yes, yes. I remember. Quickwhittler. Live down on Nonesuch Street?"

Quickwhittler looked a little uneasy.

"That's...that's right, sir. How did you know?"

"It's my business to know things, Quickwhittler. No ruler ever got by on ignorance."

At least, not for very long, he thought privately. People like him generally made sure of that.

"Anyway, how's Leonard?"

"Fine. Still drawing, though. Just hit him over the head – that usually snaps him out of it."

Quickwhittler advanced, followed closely by Vetinari, and raised his hand to strike Leonard, but Vetinari noticed Leonard's drawing, and said,

"No!"

Quickwhittler hesitated for a moment, lowering his hand a little, and said dismissively,

"He's nothing particularly special, Lord. Just good at drawing and stuff, that's all."

He raised his hand again, and a bony fist grabbed his wrist and tightened. Quickwhittler whirled around, already unsheathing his sword despite his assailant, and wondering how such a fragile old man could be so strong. His sword was halfway out of its scabbard when he heard Vetinari say conversationally,

"I've got two daggers pointed at your back. One is tipped with the venom of the deep-sea blowfish. It'd try to make all of your cells swell to ten times their normal size. That doesn't really work on such a complex creature as the human being – it'd kill you. The other is coated with the secretions of the liver of the Ambiguous Puzuma. It'd do rather the opposite in some respects – it'd try to reduce you to a two-dimensional object. Needless to say, that doesn't really work on people either, and again, it'd kill you. There are two options. Either you sheath your sword, and leave right now, or I'm going to stab you with both of these and see what the effect is. It'd be quite interesting to watch, don't you think? Well, not from your perspective, of course, but as I'm a poisons man, it'd quite frankly be a rather fascinating experience for me."

Quickwhittler, after barely a moment's thought, re-sheathed his sword, and Vetinari's vicelike grip on his wrist relaxed. Once he was free, he ran as quickly as he could towards the only exit available to him. Vetinari made a half-hearted move to stop him, but before he could, there was a pattering of feet, a crash, a few screams, and then silence.

Vetinari pressed one of the many buttons on Leonard's desk. There was a sharp crackle, and then,

"Speaking-without-tubes-device 1 speaking. How can I help you, speaking-without-tubes-device 5?"

"Drumknott? It's Vetinari. Could you reset the floor in the corridor? Quickwhittler missed a step and unfortunately fell into the scorpion pit."

"Should I get him out?"

Vetinari paused for a moment.

"No. Leave him in there for a while. After all...he's nothing particularly special."

"My Lord?"

"Nothing, Drumknott."

"Er...sir...was that missed a step, or 'missed a step'?"

Another pause, and then, in a voice completely devoid of emotion,

"I fail to see the difference, Drumknott."

"Ah. Thought so. I'll get the floor back up, sir."

"Thank you, Drumknott."

Vetinari pressed the button to turn the machine off, and turned around to face a beaming Leonard.

"Ah, Leonard!" Vetinari said, smiling. "Your drawing finished, then?"

Leonard nodded.

"Indeed. You like the speaking-without-tubes-device, my Lord?"

"It is certainly very helpful, Leonard. But the name needs some working on."

"You didn't like it?"

"It…lacked finesse."

"Ah. I thought so too, but what sort of name could one possibly give to a device offering inter-room communication?"

"What sort of name indeed? Changing the subject, just out of interest –"

He pointed at the drawing Leonard had just finished.

"Is that design feasible?

"Oh, yes," Leonard said. "All of my designs are feasible, my Lord. Coffee?"

"What?"

"Very-fast-coffee. I've finally got the machine working. The idler device was interfering with the jockey wheel on the milk pulley. Milk and sugar?"

"Two sugars – no milk."

"Very well, my Lord."

Leonard pressed a series of buttons on the front of the machine. It whirred a bit, gave out a few worrying noises, and then an empty mug dropped down into the opening at the front. There was a smashing sound, and Leonard quickly replaced it with a new one.

"Haven't quite been able to perfect the folding on the paper ones yet," he said apologetically, as the new mug filled with coffee. After a while, the Patrician remarked,

"The mug's overflowing."

"It should stop soon," Leonard said. After a while, he pressed a button on the top. The machine gave out a small, almost apologetic noise, and the flow of coffee stopped. He took the mug, wiping the excess coffee off with a handkerchief, and handed it to Vetinari.

"Haven't got the stopping mechanism right yet either," he said.

Vetinari took a sip. His face, which he could normally keep straight in any crisis, contorted.

"Leonard…this tastes nothing like coffee."

"…Again, that's something that needs to be worked on."

Vetinari decided not to go on any further, instead returning back to Leonard's sketch.

"And this device…you're sure it would work?"

"Well, it's probably the idler device again. If I could get that sorted out, I could possibly…"

"Not the coffee machine – this!"

He gestured again at Leonard's drawing.

"Like I've said, my Lord, I'm certain that the principle is sound. I haven't had time to test it yet in full size."

"I would have thought that it would have been too heavy to stay up for any length of time."

"It's all about lift, my Lord. If you take a look at my observations on the wing structures of the red-necked Morporkian spoonbill and the Ankhian straight-ruffled falcon, I've just cross-applied the principles to my new design."

"Leonard…both the red-necked spoonbill and the Ankhian falcon are extinct in the Circle Sea region. They haven't been seen around here for decades."

Leonard paused for a moment.

"I can't see how that would affect my results, my Lord."

Vetinari gave one of his rare smiles, and then said,

"What do you call it?"

"Well, my Lord, as it travels on an aerial plane…"

He waggled his eyebrows.

"I've called it a going-up-in-the-air-device."

Vetinari sighed. Some things never change.