Chapter 4

Waleed knocked on the visitors' entrance of Unseen University. A bledlow slid a wooden panel open and looked out at him.

"Friend or foe?" asked the bledlow. Clearly, he was new to the job; a foe wouldn't knock on the door, and even if he did, a foe certainly wouldn't have said Foe.

"Cut that out, Wilfred," said Waleed. "You know who I am. Waleed Sahaffy, here to see Professor Nizam. Tell him it's urgent."

"Love to, mate, but you see, he isn't in. Went down to a Klatchian coffeeshop to buy some Desert Orakh for the next University banquet. Shop's right up the street, though."

Waleed went up the street. Sure enough, there was a tiny coffeeshop. When he went in, he saw Professor Nizam, sitting at a table, a case of bottles of Desert Orakh at his feet and a plump, dark-skinned woman with her hair in a loose bun across the table from him.

"Professor Nizam! I'm terribly sorry to bother you but there's KMRC business! And who's she?"

"Waleed, this is Mona, a woman from my village who also happens to be the only Desert Orakh importer in all of Ankh-Morpork. Mona, this is Waleed, an Assassin who helped me establish the KMRC. What is the business, Waleed?"

"A Klatchian boy joined the Watch!"

"And? That's hardly news, Waleed, people join the Watch every day. Invite him to the next meeting."

"But Professor Nizam, what if Vimes starts thinking he doesn't need us as consultants anymore?"

"There are plenty of other agencies in the city that do. Waleed, you need to stop acting as if everything is the end of the world. Trust me, if it was the end of the world, it would involve more locusts."

Waleed shuddered. He hated bugs.

"By the way, did you ever manage to get that merchant inhumed?"

"I sort of can't. You know that my father has been consistently denied entry to the Merchants' Guild?"

"Yes."

"Well, by a bizarre coincidence, the merchant who denies his applications is the one I was asked to kill. True, the Watch would find the Guild paperwork, but the entire city isn't the Watch and they'd only hear 'Waleed Sahaffy done it!' and they'd think that the KMRC had turned violent."

"Ah. I see. And you think that they'll believe that a man who is known to be an assassin went against everything his school taught him and did, in fact, mortifi sine lucre?"

"A Klatchian one? Quite possibly. And nobody really likes Assassins anyway, apart from a certain type of young lady. And nobody likes us, Professor Nizam, the KMRC I mean, not Klatchians in general. They'll just think you hired me and we'd be back at square one."

"Can assassins hire other assassins?" asked Mona.

"Of course we can. I popped off a nobleman for my friend Tayeb Yehia once when he took ill…of course! Mona, you're brilliant! Yehia still owes me a favor! I'll just have him inhume Morris! And he's not KMRC and he doesn't know my father, so it'll look like a normal assassination!"

"So it's settled then. The Klatchian watchman will be at our next meeting, your merchant will end up dead without reflecting badly on us, and I'll get the wizards so drunk on Desert Orakh that they'll have to approve my idea for a study abroad program in Al-Khali."

"I want Mona at the next meeting too," said Waleed.

"Sadly, either you get Mona or you get Ponder Stibbons," said Nizam. "I don't want any of the wizards finding out."

"Finding out…oh. Oh. I see. I have to say, Nizam, out of all the wizards, you're probably the one I'd think least likely to be carrying on a relationship with a woman in defiance of all the laws of wizardry."

"Wizards, with the notable exception of Nizam, are daft creatures," announced Mona.

"So do you truly lose your powers or not?" asked Waleed.

"Any wizard who can't do magic after sex is in that state psychosomatically," said Nizam. "There is not a genuine physiological effect on occult ability. In layman's terms, Mr. Sahaffy, no."

"As for the other problem, breeding Sourcerers, I'm too old to have any children and even if I wasn't I could always buy a packet of Sonkies," said Mona.

"Is Nizam the eighth son of an eighth son? I know not all wizards are eighth sons of eighth sons, but all eighth sons of eighth sons are wizards."

"I am, technically, the eighth son of an eighth son. Most of my brothers and some of my father's brothers did not survive. I wonder if you have to be the eighth living son for it to qualify."

After he finished his coffee, Waleed decided to stop in at Pseudopolis Yard and see about this Klatchian boy who'd joined the Watch.

Corporal Nobbs was on duty.

Excellent, Waleed thought. Nobby would let you in to see Vimes himself if you could give him some money, food, or smokes. What Vimes would say about it was "Damn Nobby!" but Nobby would let you in.

"Good afternoon, Corporal Nobbs," said Waleed, making sure a packet of cigarettes was visible in his pocket and in a position where it could easily slide onto the desk in front of Nobbs. "I heard a young man of Klatchian descent has taken the King's Shilling, and I am making inquiries after his location."

What Waleed remembered about Nobbs was that he was easy to bribe. What Waleed forgot about Nobbs was that he was as thick as a very thick thing. (Waleed liked metaphors, but he knew Vetinari occasionally amused himself by enforcing the laws against them, and it paid to be careful.)

"Wot?" the diminutive corporal asked.

"A wog's joined the Watch, where is he?" asked Waleed after turning down his brain function to come up with something Nobbs would be able to respond to.

"Dunno, but our consultant wouldn't like you saying that about Lance-Constable Diwani. He's an Assassin. The consultant, I mean, not Lance-Constable Diwani. Nothing against Klatchians, normal ones, but Assassins are shifty buggers."

Waleed contemplated saying "You'd fit right in, then," but he really wouldn't. The Assassins, after all, were shifty buggers with style.

"You must not have been here when I was appointed. I am your consultant. Waleed Sahaffy." He almost added "at your service" before realizing Nobbs would take him literally and ask for a beer.

"Sorry for what I said, sir, but why'd you say what you said?"

"I thought you wouldn't understand me otherwise. I think I went a bit too far in the other direction."

"Thinking I wouldn't know the right word is Klatchian, what would the Watch be coming to if we didn't know a simple thing like that. Anyway, Diwani is on patrol up by Scoone Avenue."

"Where nobs—er, not you, lower-case N and only one B—live? That Vimes's idea?" asked Waleed.

"I believe so. When Colon was working on the schedule, Vimes said, 'Colon, I don't like Klatchians any more than I like Morporkians, but I know I can't stand those rich buggers, so put Diwani up there and see what the smarmy assassin thinks of that.' I didn't know who the smarmy assassin was, so I asked and Vimes told me about you. Didn't expect to see you so soon, Diwani only joined yesterday."

"I'll go and see him," said Waleed. He found his way to Scoone Avenue easily. Some of his family's best customers—and one or two of his own—lived there.

Near the entrance to the avenue a man in Watch uniform was idly walking back and forth. Waleed called out, "Oi! You there!" The Watchman approached him.

"Are you Lance-Constable Diwani?" Waleed asked.

"Yes, sir. You're an Assassin. Bugger off."

Ah. Vimes—in spite of his own personal opinions—had made great strides in keeping ethnic and species prejudice out of the Watch, but clearly, certain professional antagonisms were still passed on. Oh well, Waleed thought. It wasn't as bad, it wasn't as if he'd been born an Assassin, but most were actually rather nice people when they weren't working, and Waleed thought Vimes just hadn't gotten to know them well enough.

"I'm Waleed Sahaffy of the Klatchian-Morporkian Relations Committee."

"Oh! What's going on? I've been interested in the committee but haven't had the chance to get to meetings."

"I'm negotiating a deal at the Museum of Antiquities to give some wrongfully acquired Klatchian artifacts back. Seems there's a professor in Al-Khali who's vehement about it."

"Hope you can get the artifacts home, sir. I love Ankh-Morpork but you can't deny it made a bit of an arse of itself abroad in the past."

"Anyway, I'm here to check in with you. Any trouble with other watchmen?"

"There've been some jokes, but Sergeant Angua says they find a way to tease all the new recruits, even the white ones, sir, so I'd look like a prat if I complained. But the people up here, they're a different story. Did you know, sir, one clacksed the Watch house to ask for a watchman? They got Angua, and actually told her to go arrest that Klatchian who's pretending to be a watchman. Only Angua told me afterwards they didn't exactly use the word 'Klatchian'. And they weren't so happy about Angua, either."

"Some people take the word 'watchman' a bit too literally," said Waleed. "They don't like trolls and dwarfs, either. Or that zombie. Or Angua, even though she's an ordinary and reasonably attractive woman from what I've seen. I'm surprised they don't comment on Nobbs, gods only know what he is."

"Vimes warned me about that."

"That's what gets me. It's always the rich digging their heels in. It's like they know they didn't get where they are by talent and if someone really leveled the playing field they could be at the bottom. That's what Nizam says, anyway. I've seen some people really down on their luck and sure, they've called me a raghead or whatever, but they don't have the sort of sustained, thinking, plotting disdain the people up here have. They just have anger. I'd take a flash of anger from a drunk in Dolly Sisters a thousand times over before I'd take the oily, polite contempt of Lord Rust and his ilk."

"I've read about some of the things Nizam says in the Times. Is he a good leader?"

"He likes to think of himself as our philosophical leader, not our political one."

"Well, he seems like a good one," said Diwani. "I'll have to stop in. I take it you're the political leader?"

"I'm the one that has to talk to people like Vimes and de Worde and those daft buggers at the Museum of Antiquities, so I suppose I am."

"I can see you were thrust into this position. Anyway, I've got a tip for you if you've got something for me."

Waleed sighed and pulled a bottle of Winkle's Old Peculiar out of his satchel. Trying to bribe watchmen with money was a very bad idea, but some of them still accepted food and drink.

"For the record, don't drink it on duty and don't tell anyone you told me something for it," he said. "Might be bad for your prospects. Might be considered taking bribes."

"Why did you bring a bribe with you?"

"Because of Nobby. Luckily I was able to get away with him only taking some cigarettes off me."

"I see, sir. Anyway, the word on the street is that some people aren't happy about me joining the Watch. They aren't happy about the whole Klatch thing in general really. They're livid that Lord Vetinari stopped the war."

"That is what I will never understand. The man walks into an encampment of armed men by himself, unarmed, knowing both sides won't be happy to see him, and comes out not only alive but ahead. I'm sure if he'd killed someone he'd be a hero, but instead he stops the whole bloody war before it starts and people complain about it. More heroism happened that day than in Lord Rust's whole damn pedigree, Diwani!"

"Well, it's sort of small-minded people," said Diwani. "They wanted an excuse to attack Klatchians. A war would've done that. Good old Lord V getting one over on the dastardly foeman is, while all very well and good for political people, not a reason they can hurt anyone for, because the dastardly foeman is now a very long way away."

"But surely it proves Ankh-Morpork's superiority of thinking?"

"No, it proves Lord Vetinari's a devious bastard. Morporkians knew that already."

Waleed pinched his nose. This was an unpleasant development. Oh, he knew the war hadn't been a boon to the Klatchians living in Ankh-Morpork, but this sounded worse. Sounded like the Morporkians were against the Klatchians because you couldn't be against Lord Vetinari and expect to get very far. Projection. Gods damn psychology, he thought (he'd studied it at the Guild school). Gave you enough knowledge to know what was going on in people's heads, didn't give you enough to do anything about it. And he, by definition, had to do something about it.

Sometimes he really wished he could assassinate people for free, despite the obvious contradiction in terms. But he knew he never would. It wasn't simply a matter of being punished by the Guild (and when they said they were terminating your membership, they meant it.) It was a matter of, well, not deep-seated goodness, because deep-seated goodness would stop him wanting to kill people at all—but deep-seated Assassinship. Even in his new position, Waleed thought like an Assassin. And while even an Assassin might have fleeting thoughts of killing some personal enemy, he would be able to stop himself from doing it.

It was rather like wizards and magic. The wizards' main role was to, knowing they could do magic, refrain from doing so. An Assassin knew he could kill anyone—except trolls—very easily, and could probably even kill trolls if given enough notice and the right equipment (like a bomb, or a really good dwarven mining axe). So he didn't.

"Does the Watch have any evidence there's stronger than usual anti-Klatchian sentiment in the city?"

"I do! Someone threw an egg at me! And not some riffraff who just wanted to hit any copper, either, because they shouted words of opprobrium as well!"

Diwani was well-educated for a watchman, Waleed thought. Words of opprobrium? What copper talked like that?

"Troubling, but I was thinking of something more serious."

"You'll want the man who ended up in the Watch House with his arm in a sling after getting in a fight with a Klatchian. The Klatchian hasn't turned up, but we have reason to believe she's staying at Miss Slump's Boardinghouse for Young Ladies. Visiting from Al-Khali, sir."

"A Klatchian woman beat someone up?" asked Waleed. He knew that the desert tribes raised everyone to be fighters, and that some of Klatch's most famous warlords had been, in fact, warladies, but he thought regular women from Al-Khali wouldn't fight.

"Yes. We think she's an Assassin, Mr. Sahaffy. The man said she was tall and wearing all black and had a funny looking crest on her dress. Could you go talk to her?"

"Certainly," said Waleed. If only to put the incident in his in-progress report of mistreatment of Klatchian-Morporkians. He was going to finish the report and make sure Commander Vimes and Lord Vetinari saw it at the end of the year.

"Maybe you could tell her it gives people the wrong impression if we beat up Morporkians?"

"I'm not going to tell someone not to defend herself, Diwani. And if she's an Assassin, she could have done much worse. Oh, she wouldn't kill him, in self-defense we stop just short of killing because nobody's paid us, but it looks like she stopped quite a bit short of killing." Technically, Assassins were allowed to kill in self-defense, but Waleed was right in saying that most did stop short of it. It was considered wasted effort to kill someone for free if you could just knock them down and flee the area.

"Well, I'm not going to say someone is certainly an Assassin based on someone's description, but it is a possibility."

"The thing is, I don't remember any female Klatchian Assassins from school."

"Would you?"

"Oh, yes. Our dormitories are separated, but our classes aren't, and I always liked to spend time with Assassin girls. They were much more level-headed. Didn't fall all over themselves for an Assassin, because they saw them every damn day."

"I see. Well, I'm sure you can find out who she is. We think she's at Mrs. Slump's because the fight was in the vicinity."

"Thank you, Diwani, for the lead. I have to be going now. Do try to come to the next meeting and keep me informed."

"I will, sir. Goodbye."

Diwani went back to patrolling Scoone Avenue, and before turning away Waleed thought he could see the young watchman roll his eyes at a woman who was eying him suspiciously through her curtains.

When he got to Mrs. Slump's, the eponymous landlady opened the door.

"I don't rent to blokes. Go away."

"I'm not looking to rent, ma'am. I'm looking for a young lady that I think is staying here."

"Oh. Come in, then. Who is it you're looking for? Care for a cup of tea?"

"Oh, yes, please," said Waleed, sinking into one of the pink armchairs. In fact, pink was one of the predominant colors of the room, white being the other. Mrs. Slump, or whoever she'd hired to decorate, had had an editing eye, however; the room wasn't tacky in the least. It didn't look like a little girl's room. It looked like a parlor for grown women who just happened to like the color pink.

When Mrs. Slump handed him the tea—in a white teacup with a border of pink roses—she asked, "Who was the girl you're here to see? I don't believe you've told me yet."

"I'm not positive she's here, but I'm looking for a recently-arrived Klatchian woman, who's tall and dressed in black. We think she might be an Assassin, and she got in a fight and the other fellow came off worse."

"We have Shiara Sahaffy staying here, sir, but she's not an Assassin. She's a clerk of the Genuan Prime Minister in Ankh-Morpork on government business."

"A clerk," said Waleed blankly.

"Yes, sir."

"Fetch her anyway."

Shiara was ushered in, and much to Waleed's surprise, he recognized her. Waleed had quite a large family, full of more cousins, nephews and nieces than he could keep track of. Shiara was from the Al-Khali branch of the family, and he'd rarely seen her, but he still knew who she was. This time, she was taller than him, had her brown hair cropped to chin-length, and wore diamond-shaped spectacles.

"Shiara? The last time I saw you was before I went to the Assassins' school!"

"You went to the Assassins' school? Congratulations. I myself went to Vizier Academy." Shiara had a deep oily voice with a questionable accent. Of course, she'd learned Morporkian at school, Waleed thought, and a fine upstanding place like—what in the world did she say?

"A school for evil viziers? Why would anyone make that? Why would anyone hire you?"

"It isn't the Evil Vizier Academy, Waleed."

"But all viziers are evil."

"Not Academy ones. The Academy was founded after that unpleasantness in Al-Khali with the sourcerer. We are duty-bound to only overthrow rulers who are acknowledged by the international community as deserving it. Mostly, it's about being just the right amount of evil. We're like Assassins, really."

"I can see that, you've ripped off our crest." The Academy crest on Shiara's lapel carried a similar double-cross to the Assassin crest, on a gold field. There was a ribbon above the crest bearing the words Lingua Vermicula.

"Anyway, what is it you wanted to see me about?" Shiara asked. She hadn't sat down, though she had taken a cup of tea.

"I heard you got into a fight and sent a man to the Watch House with his arm in a sling."

"You taken up with the Watch or something? Betraying noble Assassin principles already? Why d'you want to know?"

"I run an organization that represents the concerns of the Klatchian community in Ankh-Morpork. If someone attacked you, I want to know. I won't go to the Watch, but I want the details for a report."

"I'm going to the Watch myself later today, but here's what you need to know. This fellow came up to me and started rambling about wogs taking jobs from honest Morporkians. I told him I was not only employed in Genua but was extremely dishonest, but he was not assuaged and took a swing. I believe he was inebriated. Regardless, I showed no mercy and, after kicking his leg out from under him, gave him a little something to remember me by."

"If you kicked his leg, why was his arm in a sling?"

"He must have injured it when he hit the ground. Did the Watch tell you about the cut on his cheek?"

"No. They must not have seen it as pertinent."

"Pity." She flipped her hand in what looked like an idle motion, and revealed a knife hidden between her sleeve and her arm. "What, what are you looking so shocked for? You haven't got one of these?"

"I'm not that kind of Assassin."

"Whatever. You ought to put in your report that some of us Klatchian women are armed, might make the thugs think twice."

"Er, possibly," said Waleed. "Look, would you be interested in coming to the next meeting?"

"No, thank you. I'm only here briefly and I have plenty of work to do. I'm seeing one of the dark clerks for dinner and an exchange of information. I do hope I don't inadvertently receive true information, all of mine is faulty."

"Lord Vetinari is involved. You will receive only the finest of faulty information."

"Oh, good," said Shiara. "Is there anything else you need to know?"

"No. I think I'll be going. Please write to me from Genua when you get back. I've always wanted to know more about the city."

"Their Assassins' Guild is back in operation. Has been for some time, even though they all left when that witch came around. You ought to ask about their exchange program. You could learn about Genua first-hand."

"I would love to. Maybe once my organization is better equipped, I'll be able to take a vacation. Until then, I'll have to settle for hearing from you."

"I'll make an effort to write to you, then."

"Goodbye, Shiara."

"Goodbye, Waleed. I hope we'll meet again."

Waleed left the boardinghouse and went on home, stopping by the Guild to explain the situation the merchant's contract had left him in and get it reassigned, preferably to Yehia, who by a marvelous coincidence was at the Guild at the moment. He also invited Yehia to the KMRC—though advised him it would be better all round if he arrived after inhuming the problematic merchant—and then went home to plan out the next meeting.