And now, seven years on, it was culminating….Alice decided that there was nothing she could do, the dice were cast, and settled down to await her next Candidate. Although she hoped to see both her friend and her valued pupil again come the morning. With a great effort, she cleared her mind again.
Will this night never end? She asked herself. Three more of her Candidates came and went.
The Senior Common Room in Tump House was now empty except for Jocasta. It was three o'clock. She looked out of the window, willing the ordeal to end. She could see from this high up the building that a crowd had gathered in Filigree Street, not yet permitted inside the Guild premises. She also knew that when the last group of Candidates started their Run, the gathering crowd of family and friends would be allowed into the Courtyard and into the Great Hall to either celebrate, or carry on with the agonizing wait. She heard the distant clatter and bustle as Guild servants, volunteers for the night shift, prepared hospitality for an influx of guests.
She wondered what provision was being made for relatives of those who Failed. They would in all probability be discreetly ushered elsewhere to grieve, while senior Assassins moved among them mumbling platitudes and offering the sincerest condolences on behalf of the Guild, whilst no doubt reminding them that every School contract had a built-in disclaimer against this event.
You knew the risks when you signed up. Or rather when you signed your child to this particular school, seven long years ago.
Finally she couldn't stand it any longer, and loafed down to the courtyard where she discreetly watched as numbers Eighty-Three to Eighty-Six were marshalled to their sending off points, four White and four Black.
Just Eighty-Seven to Ninety to go, in about ten minutes, and ten minutes after that , at approximately three-thirty, she would be in the very last group.
There was no drama, no fuss: as far as she could discern, the eight student Assassins were glad to go and get the long wait over with.
I have to walk this lonesome Desert; I have to walk it on my own…. For some reason, the old childhood hymn came back to her. Some religions said that the moment you died, you had to trek across a Desert, alone, to find what was on the other side. This appalled Jocasta, who preferred the pot-luck of reincarnation. At least you'd get family and friends again and start off from new.
Eighty-Seven to Ninety took their places. Lord Downey himself waited with a raised hand, consulting a stopwatch. And then they were off. And at last there were only four, from the one hundred and eighty plus who'd started the night.
"Our deepest apologies that you've had to wait for so long." Downey said to them. "But the luck of the draw, and all that… at least we can offer you a small privilege in compensation. As only four of you are running rather than a full eight, you each have a choice of two alternate routes. It has all been worked out so that both will be equally challenging, but it permits you a modicum of choice over your destiny. Miss Wiggs: left or right? Please select."
"Left,, Master." Jocasta found herself saying. Downey nodded, and ushered her to a full Assassin who courteously took her arm. "I will direct you to your Start point."
If Jocasta had known it, it was the same undercellar from which the invigilating teachers had set off some hours earlier. She was even following, at least for part of the route, in the footsteps of Alice and Johanna.
"I know I'm not supposed to say this," her escort said, diffidently, "but good luck. Keep your wits about you, and it won't be half the ordeal you think it is. Tomorrow, you'll look back on this and laugh!"
"Thank you" Jocasta had replied, genuinely cheered up. A distant whistle blew.
And she was off, following the whispered direction. Down into the Undercity, the dead bones of older Ankh-Morporks, stacked haphazardly one atop the next, where she had journeyed many times before with Miss Band on drainholing lessons and archaeological surveys. She reached her first checkpoint without incident. A couple of thousand years ago, this had been a public baths built by the Latatians in the interests of public cleanliness and good hygiene. This was something a dweller in modern Ankh-Morpork found difficult to believe – that there had been such a thing as public bathing facilities, that they were actually free to all social classes and paid for out of general taxation, and, above all, that the remote ancestors of modern Morporkians actually used them. The Ankh had been cleaner in those days, too, Miss Band had said.
Jocasta looked around her. At the silted-up dead baths, the crusted mud and grime everywhere, and the massive wall carving, in cameo relief, of the Sol Invicta, the Unconquered Sun. It had long since lost its gilding, but still shone down, in a dirty neglected sort of way that to Jocasta seemed highly appropriate for the modern city. Elsewhere, the grime on the walls had been partially cleaned off to reveal frescos of hippopotami – Miss Band had asked the class to note how far back the association of the city with its totemic animal actually went. She shook her head back to the present. Where was the invigilator? She braced herself and called
"Sir. I am here!"
"Very good" said a jovial voice from right behind her left ear. She jumped.
Grune di Nivor.
"You're my last one tonight, so let's get cracking so we can be home soonest, hey?"
She relaxed. Jolly old Grune. One of the masters everybody liked and respected. But this didn't mean he'd be lenient. He'd just be fair.
She got through the sign and the three questions without a tremor – though if you asked her afterwards she would not have remembered – and the amicable fat old teacher grinned amiably.
"Right, Jocasta m'dear. Your next task is at Checkpoint Twenty-Six. That's in undercity level three, just above the Cloaca, in the old pumping house. Off you go, and so do I, to press the flesh back at the Guild!"
Jocasta found herself running on the roof of the Cloaca, where at some distant past, it might have run near to ground level and have been covered in earth and landscaped for concealment, leaving only access points for civil engineers. Any landscaping had since eroded away, leaving only the exposed stone of the roof and watch it, Jocasta!
As the main sewer sloped down towards the Ankh estuary – Jocasta thought it had been done deliberately, to allow the river's waters to drain into it and flush it out periodically – the stonework became slimier and her feet nearly slipped, towards a jagged gash where the roof had actually fallen in for twenty or thirty feet. She heard the roaring of distant waters, which she knew would be a hundred feet below her. Fall through that hole and you're a sure Fail!
She negociated the breach, alert for crumbling stone incapable of taking her weight, and very, very, carefully drainholed a way around it. Was that my Emergency Drop, she thought? Or was it just one of them? I know they programme more than one into every route. It's the one you don't see that gets you, usually.
But there it was, the Pumping House, thought to have been the control point of the old sewer system, long since stripped of its valuable machinery and metals.
She saw her next invigilator, sitting at his ease at the door, leafing through a book and…praying?
"Sir. I am here."
Canon Clement N'Fallibl, the school chaplain and Licenced Assassin, looked up and smiled at her. He put his breviary down.
"Be at ease, my child. Your number?"
"Black, ninety-one"
"Jocasta Wiggs. By grace of the God, my last one tonight. Shall we begin?"
Again, sign and questions.
Black Mass, she thought, gratefully. Two decent teachers, one after the other. This luck can't last.
"You now have a short run down to Checkpoint Twenty-Seven, which is down in the Cloaca. You may access it via these stairs here. And.."
She turned round to look.
"The blessing and good fortune of the God Io attend thee and keep thee safe this night, that we may undoubtedly see each other again in the morning! Remember the God helps those who help themselves, as I know you assuredly can!"
"Amen!" Jocasta said, fervently. Good old Black Mass, finding a way to slip a word of human encouragement in! It might be against the rules for a teacher to actively encourage a pupil, but she couldn't remember anything anywhere about praying for somebody being a breach of exam rules.
Jocasta made her way, very carefully, down a scummy and slippery spiral stair, until she at last came out onto the service walkway above the roaring almost-waters of the Cloaca. She set out at a confident pace for Twenty-Seven, following the same path Alice had walked some hours earlier. Well, it's not gone so badly so far…
___________________________________
Alice Band, waiting anxiously for her twelfth and last Candidate, heard a distant Dopplering cry of "Oh, nooooooo…." tailing off with a splash and then nothing. She closed her eyes and dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands as the silence lengthened. She got caught out by the tilting slab, then…
Finally, she heard a squelching and slopping in the distance, growing nearer and wetter as somebody approached.
"Identify yourself!" she called.
"Black, Ninety-One, ma'am".
Alice studied the dripping, woebegone, mud-caked apparition in front of her. She shook her head with equal parts disapproval and relief, and said, in defiance of approved examination form:.
"Jocasta Wiggs. You really are a mucky puppy, aren't you?"
Anyone looking at Jocasta Wiggs would perhaps see an averagely pretty teenage girl, with shoulder-length brown-blonde hair tending to the curly. They might register a slightly eager-to-please air about her, and a slightly worried look indicating that at any given moment, she is half-expecting the world to stop her and tell her she's doing it wrong. Who, like Sybil Ramkin, is fated by life to be one of the cheerful optimistic ones, even in the face of the evidence. They might be right, but if they were to stop there and think that's all there is to Jocasta, they'd be dead wrong.
When the tilting slab tilted and sent her falling into the almost-water of the Cloaca, Jocasta had the wit to take the deepest possible breath as she went in. The speed of her thought processes would also have surprised an observer who only saw easy-going, eager-to-please, and slightly worried.
Miss Band warned me about this… she got caught out here… stuck underwater with the mud halfway up her boots…if I go in feet-first I'll stick too…oh Hells Bells, there's no remedy for it, this is going to hurt and it'll be messy…
She twisted and flattened out in the air, so as to impact the liquid flat on her back as opposed to feet-first. She winced: hitting the dubious waters with her arms and legs extended in the starfish position certainly did hurt, but from twenty feet up it was just about survivable with bruises only. She trod water and tested arms and legs and things. Everything still worked. And it could have been worse, as Emergency Drops go. She laboriously and carefully climbed back up to walkway level, trying not to think of what the water she was soaked with had been carrying. She squelched towards Checkpoint Twenty-Seven and recognized the silhouette of the teacher there, which restored a little of her confidence and cheerfulness. Three of the nice ones, one after the other. .
__________________________________________
"Jocasta Wiggs. You really are a mucky puppy, aren't you?"
She saw Miss Band shake her head, with that amused half-smile she'd known for the last seven years, the amused half-smile that had once sent her on a field mission to get close enough to Sam Vimes to deliver a killing blow, and landed her in the Ramkin dunnikin.
"Better get this over with, then. This sign is?"
Jocasta got through the spot tests quickly, and Miss Band smiled.
"Make your way down the Cloaca and you will see the way out is clearly signposted. Take the route towards Scoone Drive and you will come out in the garden of a private house where you will find your next – and I believe last – checkpoint." She paused. Then said simply "Jocasta" and squeezed her hand . They exchanged eye contact, all they could safely do.
"Thank you, miss" Jocasta said, and ran off, trying to ignore the cold and the soaked soiled clothing.
Up there it's a summer night. I might dry out a bit better. I'll still stink, though.
She followed the sewer, and like Emilia before her, noticed Harry King's boys had been here to trace and label the tributaries leading to various destinations in the richer part of the city.
And like Emilia, she came out in a garden, very carefully replacing the manhole cover and quickly leopard-crawling into the cover of a shrubbery. She used the cover and the shadow to get her bearings. Somewhere around here was her last checkpoint where she'd have to…no, don't even think about that yet. But where? She tuned into sounds around her. Marching feet. Studded sandals. Watchmen.
She settled more deeply into cover as the feet stopped nearby. Very near. Less than a foot away from her head.
"All clear, sir. They did say the last of them were leaving the Guild at oh-three-thirty hours. It's oh-four-forty now. I doubt there'll be many more of them"
Somewhere beyond the speaker, a match flared into life. As the flarer inhaled and lit his cigar, Jocasta saw to her horror exactly whose garden she'd landed in.
And he's seen me! Jocasta gibbered inside, as Sam Vimes stared directly at her.
"And you're absolutely sure there are no more ? That we've had them all?"
"All we're ever going to get, sir. There probably isn't an Assassin within a mile of here that we haven't caught and booked!" Fred Colon said, confidently.
Vimes still looked directly at her.
"Yes, we have had a good night, haven't we? A bumper crop of student Assassins. I'm really looking forward to the debrief with Downey tomorrow."
Vimes looked down at Jocasta again.
How has he not seen me? And I'm within six inches of Fred Colon's feet afer he's been tramping the beat all night. I deserve Assassin status, just for keeping in cover with those two offences to public hygiene so close to my nostrils.
"So you're absolutely sure there are no more Assassins anywhere in the grounds?"
"Absolutely positive, sir!" Colon said, confidently.
"OK, Fred. Go and start standing people down. Two men in every three. Thank the Specials for turning up, and tell the regulars they can go and grab some sleep, but I'll still expect to see them in the debriefing session at the Yard at one. How's Lance-Constable Huxtable?"
"He'll mend, sir. But that vicious little bitch definitely intended to kill. She put three crossbow bolts into Reg."
"Typical Rust. Vicious and thick. Most people might cotton on that if you shoot somebody in the heart once with a crossbow and they keep on coming at you, they're Undead and any more shots are going to be wasted."
Vimes shook his head. Colon, dismissed, marched off, leaving a dwindling aroma of over-worked feet behind. Vimes stepped forward to where Colon had been standing, and took a long reflective drag of his cigar.
"If there were to be an assassin nearby, and my most experienced Sergeant has just assured me there isn't, so I'm talking to myself, must be getting old. . It occurs to me that while Colon is standing the men down, a girl who's quick on her feet could dash through that hedge and turn sharp right onto the lawn, where she'll see the old summerhouse. There she'll find that vicious sociopathic man- hating old curmudgeon, Joan Sanderson-Reeves, who'll do whatever it is you people do to make an Assassin. Then she can just walk out with her pass certificate, but gods help her after that, if she ever enters this garden again without an invitation. Which, by the way, Lady Sybil may well extend by way of congratulations for passing. Jocasta. "
Vimes tossed the cigar butt away, and walked off, after a nod in Jocasta's direction.
He knew! And he's helping me!
She didn't stop to wonder, but just followed directions.
"Ma'am? I am here."
"Step forward. Identify yourself."
Miss Sanderson-Reeves, the Domestic Science and Elocution teacher, known to the pupils as "Mrs Mericet".It was thought she was the female counterpart of the veteran Poisons master, and the fact she taught Domestic Science only helped this impression.
Black, Ninety-One"
"Wiggs, Jocasta. And I'd be very keen, sometime in the future, to find out exactly how many of you knew to call me "ma'am", even before seeing me."
She laughed, briefly.
"Right, you're the last one. Let's get this over with then I can pack up and go back to the Guild. This sign?"
The last batch of question-and-answer passed quickly.
"Now step forward. Follow me. I'm your fourth checkpoint. You are fully aware what that means?"
"Yes, ma'am" Jocasta gulped. She followed "Mrs Mericet" into the summerhouse. In the dim lamplight, she saw a shape under a blanket.
"In your own time, Miss Wiggs".
Jocasta steadied herself, and reasoned that this as only symbolic, right? It's a dummy under there, it always has been…
And then it started writhing and moaning. Jocasta jumped and yelped, but steadied the crossbow, praying it still worked after her Drop.
"I'm sorry" she said, and fired. The body jumped and stopped and went quiet. Deathly quiet.
She stood, mouth open, contemplating the enormity of it. Then Miss Sandrson-Reeves tapped her on the shoulder and said "well done."
Jocasta took the pink slip without a word. The teacher grinned, mirthlessly, and pulled back the blanket.
"The Guild got Tuttle Scropes, the leather and clockwork man, to design and build these. Jolly clever, aren't they? Think yourself lucky, m'dear. In my graduation year they used live pigs. Ugggh".
Jocasta saw it was just a clever dummy. But it was dressed in the uniform of Commander of the Watch. She thought that was oddly appropriate.
Joan snorted. "For such a cultured man, Lord Downey can show a warped sense of humour, can't he? He insisted on this."
She stepped forward. "Well, Jocasta, it appears you've passed. Jolly well done."
She extended a hand. Jocasta stepped forward, unsure as to what to do.
"I warn you now, I'm not one of life's huggers. A simple handshake will suffice."
"Thank you, miss" They shook hands.
"In the circumstances, you can call me Joan. You're not a pupil any more. Right, give me ten minutes to clear up. Lady Ramkin has offered me one of her coaches to get safely back to the Guild. Apparently she thinks it's unsafe for a woman on her own to walk across town at this time of night, and she positively insisted."
They both paused, and Jocasta wondered how desperate a mugger would need to be.
You might as well tag on , although in the circumstances… do you mind awfully riding on the outside?"
Jocasta Wiggs, Licenced Assassin, said, through her crust of what she hoped was only mud and grime "Understood perfectly….Joan. And thank you."