Another re-editing of a two year old story.
"Black, twenty-seven!"
At last, Alice's particular assignment. She took the large oilskin-sealed packet and signed Wimvoe's list, then returned to her seat with a sinking feeling. It contained a clipboard, two of the new Leonard of Quirm designed write-anywhere! LEQU pens(1), and several sealed, labelled, packets of papers. One was labelled ON SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION and the instruction was Sign pink top copy and give to successful candidate. Remind them you are not allowed to discuss any aspect of the test, but at this point modest and seemly congratulations may be in order. Retain white bottom copy for Guild files.
Another packet was labelled IF THE CANDIDATE IS SERIOUSLY LATE FOR A CHECKPOINT IN YOUR SECTOR:-
She opened this. The top sheet was a list of instructions.
This is not a timed test. Speed and punctuality are desirable, of course, but haste makes for errors.
The desired objective is that the Candidate completes the test, not that they complete it in the fastest time.
The timings you have been given for encounters with Candidates in your sector are therefore approximate, but have been deemed reasonable for a Candidate undergoing the Test along that vector.
You may be required to monitor the progress of Candidates through your sector at more than one different location. You will therefore need to move swiftly, frequently and silently between these points. One hour will be allowed for you to familiarize yourself.
A Candidate may not move on until an invigilator has ascertained their identity and completed all relevant paperwork at that checkpoint. You may return from dealing with one Candidate in a sub-sector for which you are responsible, to find one or more waiting for you at a different sub-sector point.
Be vigilant! You know there is a School rumour that a Candidate who manages to inhume their examiner has passed the test on the spot. However we seek to squash this erroneous perception, it still recurs annually, like a weed. Be alert for attempts on your person. Should a Candidate make an overt move, you are fully entitled to employ any or all means of self-defence and are to award a FAIL grade.
Should a Candidate be more that 45 minutes late at your checkpoint, you are to fill in the attached form. (Candidate Absence Report) You may assume the Candidate has been awarded a FAIL grade at an earlier point on the Test.
Do not under any circumstances interrupt the smooth flow of the Test to search for a delayed Candidate or to look for evidence of their having Failed themselves. You are not to concern yourself with this administrative detail, as dedicated follow-up squads will check the various vectors on the following day, and if possible recover tangible evidence.
You are to return to Filigree Street no later than seven in the morning. You are to hand in all completed paperwork at the Examinations Office, and be prepared to make a full report on any candidates to whom you have been forced to issue a FAIL grade.
Alice read on.
Your Emergency Drop is located at…. This point will be monitored from time to time, although not by you, for evidence of over-confidence.
The Vivat Voce:- you are to ask each Candidate three questions, the answers to which are drawn from the Concordat. Two correct answers is an acceptable pass mark. Mark each Candidate's sheet with ticks or crosses as indicated for collation later. Remember a Candidate passes or fails on the evidence of their practical work, and may not be failed by you on the basis of the Vivat. Your question sheets are attached. These have been worked out to allow each Candidate a full and fair examination along the course of their Test and may not be amended or substituted by you. However, it is permissible to put a Candidate under pressure by asking an unexpected supplementary question which you may devise yourself. It is not permissible to discuss the results of the Vivat with the Candidate.
Alice sighed and replaced the paperwork into the waterproof pouch. The list of pupils who would pass through her sector wasn't known yet: this was still being decided, by lottery, in the Great Hall. She hoped they'd all be from other Houses, or mainly boys, rather than her own girls. It would feel easier that way.
But all that was known at the moment, and indeed had been meticuluously planned, was that Candidate X would at four approximately-timed points on their Run encounter members of teaching staff A,B,C, and finally D, who would administer the final test of all. Alice was not listed to oversee any of the the final inhumations. She wondered what form it would take this time - the thing with the dummy under the blanket was just too well known - and shuddered, thinking back to the surprise that had awaited her at the culmination of her Run as an adult entrant. That had added horror to stress and pumping adrenaline.
Seeking to calm herself, old memories surfaced, unbidden. Her mind went back and reflected on events of nearly ten years previously.
She had had a disastrous and somewhat embarrassing archaeological field trip to Lancre. This had included a nasty brush with Elves, being flung into a river by NacMacFeegle who had strenuously objected to her excavating in their mound, and worst of all, incurring the suspicion of the Lancre Witches. Whilst being soaked to the skin by the Feegle had earned her Nanny Ogg's sympathy and tickled her sense of humour, Alice had felt it was best to cut her losses, and she spent what was left of the summer in Borogravia, dodging a war in the service of archaeology, and, once deported, in Überwald. The words of the other witch, the truly frightening one, still echoed in her memory: You will become an Assassin and be welcomed into their family. But there's still more good than wickedness in you, girl.
And, she recalled, the Queen of the Elves had also said as much.(2) But the Guild only recruited men, didn't it? Her Assassin brother had said as much. A puzzle. But she'd heard Granny Weatherwax, when she cared to make a prediction to somebody for the good of their soul, was never wrong.
In Überwald, ,whilst excavating in what might have been the earliest proto-Vampire settlement, an Iron Age hill fort showing clear signs of vampire habitation, desperate villagers mistook the practically black-clad archaeologist for an Assassin, and begged her to take away the curse that was Compte Guiles de Rhais.(3)
She listened to them, and her face set in grim serious lines. As de Rhais was definitely not a nice man and was known to have abducted village children from miles around to serve nameless pleasures, she knew what she has to do. Vampires are one thing: a psychopathic human with a blood lust is quite another.
The village people were proud. They might be poor, but they had in their eyes engaged an Assassin, and honour insists that she must be paid.
Although she would have done this job for nothing, Alice reluctantly accepted a token $40 – all the villagers were able to raise – and settled down to watch and observe and make plans. On a night where two other children went missing, she silently entered the castle, using all her skills in Stealth Archaeology. She made her way to the gallery above the great hall, and from hence, undetected, to the chandelier looking down on De Rhais, two missing children, and acolytes of a death cult who were drawing a magick pentagram.
As the chandelier rotated on its chain, she unshouldered the Hublandish double-recurved short hunting bow she carried, and methodically started to shoot dead the thirteen members of the dark coven. She had no pity and no hesitation about her actions: creatures like this should not be allowed to live. De Rhais began to intone a curse; she shot him through the throat, and as an afterthought, again in the chest. Then she collected the terrified children, and escaped, pausing only to set fires as she left.
The castle was purified by fire as they galloped back to the village. Alice sighed: the $40 would barely replace the arrows she had expended. Had it been worth it?
A month or two later she was in Ankh-Morpork. An advantage of her father having been a bishop in the Ionian faith is that she could always stay with the man she knew as Uncle Hughnon, who always had a spare room waiting for her in the Chief Priest's Palace. Her father and Hughnon Ridcully were old friends, and latterly rivals for the Chief Priest's position.
One night she awakened abruptly from sleep. There were two dark shrouded figures in her room.
"You have an appointment with the Master." one said.
She nods: she knew this was coming. Out of courtesy, the Assassin escort turned its back as she dressed.
She considered killing them and fleeing, but there was no point: the Guild would only send others. And they would be angry.
"I am ready. Escort me, gentlemen".
She was taken to the Assassins' Guild on Filigree Street, a building complex she will come to know very well. Tonight, it is new and unfamiliar to her: her escort led her up several flights of stairs and knock on an office door. Alice is invited to sit in front of a desk. She sensed other people in the room: the escort who brought her are standing guard at the door. The three important people are on the other side of the desk, one centrally behind it, the two others sitting deferentially to right and left. The desk was positioned in the centre of the office, with a stone pillar rising at each corner.
"Miss Band? Do please be seated. I am Dr Cruces, Master of the Guild. My associates here are Doctor Downey and Lady T'malia."
Alice nodded: a gentle-faced man who could have been a clergyman, and a woman who she instinctively knew was not to be written off as an empty-headed aristocratic bimbo. And Alice knew her clergymen: the most gentle-faced could be the most ruthless, ambitious and callous.
"You caused this Guild a certain… inconvenience, Miss Band" Cruces remarked, pleasantly. "You have recently inhumed thirteen people. Of whom eleven had current Guild contracts on their heads. This has caused a certain amount of irritation on the part of Guild members who have seen a large amount of money disappear, owing to the actions of an admittedly gifted, but all the same, non-Guild, freelance practitioner. And I believe you did what you did for…. forty dollars? Remarkable!"
"Would you rather I had let them live?" Alice asked. "They tortured and murdered children. For fun."
Cruces shrugged, as if the distasteful but all the same, private, peccadilloes of the nobility did not concern him, at least not until they became cause for opening a contract.
"It occurs to me that the problem you present could be resolved by not letting you live." He said. "Tell me why I should do otherwise."
Knowing she was arguing for her life, Alice thought quickly. She wasn't going to beg, that was for sure.
"You've gone to a lot more trouble than merely killing me would have needed. Because if you simply wanted me dead, the two gentlemen who escorted me here could just as easily have killed me then, rather than politely waiting for me to wake up. Perhaps you find me interesting. Perhaps you might be considering other uses for me."
Cruces nodded. A ghost of a smile played at his mouth. Lady T'malia spoke.
"We've found out what we can about you, my dear." she said. "You come from good family. You have talents. You have integrity. And like Doctor Cruces, I don't believe in needless killing either. So wasteful, for one thing!"
T'Malia ticked the points off on her fingers, but very carefully. Alice noted the rings, and the suspicion grew that they were not just there for ornament.
"You got into that castle where so far, five Assassins had failed. That presumes native ability. You disabled the guards rather than killed them. You inhumed only those for whom you were contracted. You did it with style. The only thing you lack is that you are not, officially at least, one of us. That can be rectified."
Downey offered drinks. He decanted sherry into three glasses, from which he, Cruces and T'malia all ostentatiously drank.
"I'm sorry, Miss Band. I forget my manners. A drink?" He produced a fourth glass. Alice stepped forward to the desk, picked up the offered glass, and ran her finger round the inside. She inspected the fingertip of her black glove and noticed the crystalline white powder, glittering in the candlelight.
"Not from this glass, my Lord!"
The three senior Assassins looked at each other and nodded: Alice wondered if she'd just passed some twisted test.
Cruces spoke again. "I have a proposition for you, Miss Band. In a year's time, the Assassins' School goes co-educational and will admit girl pupils. We're having trouble in attracting suitable female members of teaching staff. I safely believe I speak for the interview panel here in that we believe you would be a sterling recruit for the staff. You have relevant skills, you have inhumed, and you have the nerve and good sense to refuse a drink from Doctor Downey. You can also think well under pressure. Will you join us? And I fully expect that in the next year, you will, as a mature entrant, train and learn hard so as to pass the Black Syllabus, which then entitles you to full Assassin status." He paused, and added: "The alternative is, of course, death".
Alice accepted. What else could she do? She read and signed the offered papers, and the three senior Assassins welcomed her to the Guild family.
"Our associates will escort you back to the Chief Priest's Palace, if you so wish." Cruces said, pleasantly. "You will be contacted. Oh, and Miss Band? You were quite wise to refuse the offer of a drink."
Downey theatrically wiped a finger inside the wine glass Alice had refused, picking up a coating of the white crystals. He raised his finger to his mouth and licked it, then smiled at her.
"Common sugar." said Cruces. "It would have given a good sherry an unpleasantly sickly aftertaste".
Alice joined in the laughter, although in a hollow and unconvincing way.
And now Alice was facing her biggest test since graduating... she looked round to Emmanuelle and Joan and Johanna, who had become her friends, and to two late arrivals, Doctor Davinia Bellamy(4) (Botany) and Gillian Lansbury (Art), who were products of a later Mature Students' Class. She knew both to be sound people and capable Assassins, who had undergone the same training and ordeals as she had. She would not count either as close friends in the same way, but she liked both. In the company of five other women teachers, she felt a little easier about the night to come.
(1)Think BIRO, but designed by LEonard of QUirm.
(2) See my story The Lancre Caper, in which a young graduate archaeologist who is yet to become an Assassin suffers from over-confidence and learns exactly why archaeology is not popular in Lancre.
(3) Based on Roundworld mass-murderer Compte Giles de Rais, a man who fought alongside Joan of Arc, who got a taste for blood and sadistic killing, and is reputed to have returned to his estate in Brittany and slain five hundred peasant children. He was so blatant about this that he was taken to court and found guilty by his peers, even of the murder of peasants…. The fact he nearly precipitated a Peasants' Revolt might have had to do with their decision to execute him.
(4) see my story Murder most 'Orrible. Davinia also has a cameo in The Discworld Tarot, which also introduces Gillian Lansbury and the circumstances of her joining the Guild. (Who also appears in Whys and Weres).