GC22 – Rejoicing and thanks
After dealing with Jocasta Wiggs, Alice Band methodically gathered her paperwork and messenger rats together, and took the quickest possible route back to the Guild. She made sure to pass Checkpoint Twenty-Five on the way. There was no sign of Johanna, but neither was there any sign of a fight or a struggle. She fervently hoped Johanna would be back at the Guild by now. And Precious, who was after all a Tump House girl and a relative of an important foreign ambassador. And of the head of State. And of the Guild Chaplain. It's all great big happy families with the Kwa'Zulu, she thought. The Paramount Chief at the last count had twenty-three wives and, ooh, a hundred and forty-five children? And they all get Government posts when they're old enough, even if it's only Ceremonial Sweeper-Up of the Royal Buffalo Shit. That one must be a spectacularly dense child…
She re-emerged in the cellar from where they'd all started off, what felt like a lifetime ago. In the far distance, she could hear the sound of laughter, lots of people, occasional cheers, and pent-up anxiety spending itself as relief. She knew she ought to be up there talking to her former pupils – her first set of graduate pupils – and shaking hands with families and friends, but a wave of tiredness swept over her. She slumped against a wall, and realized she wasn't alone in there.
Bill Bradlofrudd, another of the Mature Students class of eight years previously, was also slumped against a far wall, looking equally tired, smoking a cigarette.
"Alice." he said, by way of acknowledgement.
"Bill." she replied, and declined the offer of a smoke. He grinned, wanly.
"I know I've got to go up there. See how many of my lads failed to return. Just can't face it yet."
"Likewise". she agreed.
"I passed one of yours, by the way. Emilia Mountjoy-Standish. Outstanding Candidate. "
Alice smiled. One home run, twenty-nine to go.
"When I started out in teaching I never thought I'd end up here. Did you?"
Alice laughed. "I never thought I'd end up teaching! But it's always puzzled me. You know my story. What did you do to end up here?"
"I started out in teaching at Hugglestones. Out on the moors. A long way out in the country. You must know it? Games and swordsmanship. I liked what I was doing. But the more I learnt about the school, the more sinister it got. Professor handhold, the Headmaster, made the mistake of recruiting his deputy Head from this school." 1 (3)
"Oh dear" Alice said. "Ambitious, was he?"
"And clever" Bill confirmed. "Doctor Garrotte made sure I found out about things that were going on. About the reason why they founded the school way out in the wilds, where nobody was sure if Quirmian law or Ankh-Morpork law governed. Which from the point of view of the school trustees, made taxation just a theoretical liability. As well as other laws. I just didn't realize I was being manipulated into a confrontation with Handhold. Not just the tax evasion, but his particular affection for the prettier fourth-form boys. As a PE teacher, you have to run the boys through the showers after Games, and you get to see where somebody hasn't just been laying on six of the best. More like twenty-four or thirty-six. That isn't discipline, that's brutal assault. Or worse." He added, darkly.
"I was going to go to one of the old boys with a file of what I'd found out. William de Worde at the Times". Bill paused, and shook his head.
"Then I made the big mistake. Garrotte found the incriminating evidence and said he'd handle things. Never saw it again. The bastard suggested I have it out with Handhold. And I did, up in his study. It got… heated. He fell out of the window. No, that's not right. I threw him out of his office window. From eighty feet up. Then Garrote came in, forged a suicide note, and said he'd square things. Well, the school trustees were relieved, as there'd been talk Handhold was screwing the fees as well as particularly pretty boys. Embezzlement as well as bad publicity. They accepted it was suicide, and the new Headmaster, Doctor Garrotte, got me a big pay rise. But what I didn't know was that the bastard was covering his tracks. He'd also told the Assassins' Guild I'd accepted a substantial pay rise from the trustees in return for faking the Headmaster's suicide. That is, I'd accepted a fee to inhume him. The next thing I knew, there were two Assassins telling me to pack an overnight bag, as I had an appointment to see the Master of the Guild. The rest of my things would be sent on. They hustled me to a black coach down in the yard, I ended up here, Downey read me a fulsome reference from Garrotte, and the rest you know. I never went back to Hugglestones."
Alice nodded. She'd heard things whispered about Hugglestones, too. It sounded like the male equivalent of QCYL.
"I tell you, Alice, when I've got the experience, I'm going after Garrotte."
"Good luck" she said, looking at his steely-set face. She didn't doubt it. For want of something to say, she asked
"Remember our Final Exam?"
"How can I forget!"
Whgen it had finally happened, Alice had found the Final Run something of an anticlimax. She'd done so much edificeering and drainholing around Ankh-Morpork during the previous year that most of the standard routes were like a run in the park: she'd even evolved a set of strategies for what to do in case any familiar crossing or roof-jump suddenly became an Emergency Drop.
At a peak of physical fitness, being a natural-born edificeer, and having absorbed more than enough of the rest of the curriculum to satisfy her examiners, Alice had sailed through her test. Well, there'd only been one examiner, really, in the old-fashioned Guild manner. She'd drawn Lady T'Malia, and had been quietly vexed and consternated by the way T'Malia managed to be at the next checkpoint long before Alice reached it. She must be pushing sixty, Alice raged. How does she do it? And she's not exactly dressed for edificeering…
"I'll leave you now, my dear" T'Malia had said at the last checkpoint, "as what happens next isn't really to my taste. You will make your way by all speed to the Shambles and to Gerhardt Sock's slaughter-yard. Your final test happens there. Off you go!"
Alice had arrived to be directed into a shed stinking of blood and death, where the Compte de Yoyo and Mr Mericet were waiting for her.
De Yoyo indicated a shape, vaguely that of a fat human, under a blanket.
"In your own time, miss Band."
Alice took a deep breath, thinking a dummy is probably too much to hope for, and wondered whether to use her sword or a pistol crossbow. She decided on the sword: if she had to kill it would be up close and personal, or she'd never know the value of what she was taking away.
Twenty thousand dollars, probably. But it goes to the Orphans and Widows Fund. That's traditional.
She stepped forward, drawing her sword. Then the thing under the blanket set up a high-pitched almost human screaming that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Enough of the blanket dislodged for her to look into the eyes of a terrified pig.
Cold anger surged through her. She remembered what her lover Mercedes de Toleda had told her about the corrida. Alice decided to make a spectacle of it. She'd make it stylish, alright, but without this poor creature needing to suffer any more.
Placing one foot behind the other, she reversed the sword, taking it not by the hand-grip but by the cross-guards. She took aim and plunged it into the animal's neck with all her force, splitting spine, muscle and blood vessels and killing it instantly. Then she withdrew the sword, ignoring the spurt of blood coming from behind it, brandished it at the two senior Assassins, bowed, and said, loudly, "Olé!"
She then turned her back on them to clean the blade on the blanket before resheathing it, surreptitiously checking the pig was dead.
See the great señorita Band, the incomparible cochoneadora!
De Yoyo and Mericet looked at each other. Then de Yoyo extended to her the all-important pink slip.
"It appears that you have passed, miss Band". he said. "But then I never had the slightest doubt about you at any time!".
"A bit flashy, one feels" Mericet sniffed. "I cannot discuss the examination with you, Miss Band. But I do disapprove of these flashy foreign methods. Please leave by the far door."
As Alice left, she heard "A bit harsh, mr Mericet. Have you never been to Toledo and seen the bullfight? Such grace and style!"
As she left, two of Sock's stockmen, acting on a cue, entered to retrieve the carcass and replace it with a new one. They treated her with respect and turned fearful eyes on her.
"Ellice. Ellice, Ellice, Ellice, Ellice!" Johanna Smith-Rhodes, her face a mass of tears, throwing herself into Alice's arms. Alice, who needed a bit of comforting herself by then, wrapped her arms around her.
"Thet was horrible!"
"Quite tasteless." Joan Sanderson-Reeves agreed. "But it seems we've all passed. We're just waiting for Emmanuelle now, then perhaps we can go for a bite of supper somewhere"
More of the mature class joined them in the waiting area. They knew by sound when a new arrival was imminent: a pig would scream loudly and be silent. Bill Bradlofudd joined them, looking pale and shocked, his usual ruddy outdoor face ghostly pale.
"It could have been lambs, people. It could have been worse. Imagine the silence of the lambs, hmmm? Ah, Emmanuelle. We've been waiting for you!"
"Roast lamb à la grecque, I think. With fava beans and a Brindisian red!" Emmanuelle said, trying to clean blood off her face. "But I believe I am off pork. Possibly for life."
In the end, twenty-one of the mature students passed out as Assassins. Nearly a third of their number had died during training or failed Finals. But there, then, and on that night, Alice Band was alive. That was enough. And poor old uncle Hughnon waiting for her at the Guild gates, along with Scrote Jones, Mrs Whitlow and the Howondalaandian Ambassador… and had a troll laughed out there in the dark somewhere?
They had laughed and hugged with friends who were delighted to see them alive, and Scrote had discreetly passed a package to Emmanuelle.
Not so discreetly that Joan didn't notice.
"Look, I am a Gambler's Guild member!" the Quirmian girl had protested. "So I have the little side bet, yes?"
"And you win thousands of dollars on, let me see, the old lady confounding everyone's expectations and surviving? Well, you're paying everyone's bill tonight, m'dear!"
And Emmanuelle did, without complaint.
Alice smiled at the memory.
"Let's go upstairs, shall we, Mr Bradlofrudd?" And the two teachers sought the light of day and the last few tasks that needed to be done. They stopped at the Examinations Office and surrendered their paperwork and messenger rats Then stepped into the milling throng outside. {to be continued!}
1 See short story Choosing a School.