The Discworld Tarot:
The Prince of Swords
Also known as the Knight, or the Son, of Swords. A young person of great applied intellect capable of translating thought into action with great effect. Often depicted as a knife-wielding and cloaked mystery figure striking out of the shadows or from the night, this card can represent a sudden lightning-sharp flash of illumination or the resolution of a problem.
But hey, this is the Discworld. One occupational group on the Disc is the walking embodiment of this card. And they come in both sexes… in Snuff, a little detail towards the end is a person called Arachne, with a keen interest in exotic wildlife, who works as a Dark Clerk in the Embassy in Bugarup. It is hinted she has been formally tasked with dealing with the delicate problem of Gravid Rust. Dark Clerks may not all come from the Guild of Assassins. But only an Assassin can take on such a delicate professional task on the fringes of accepted diplomacy.
Arachne has appeared in my tales before. This is another glimpse of her as a student Assassin.
Lord Downey took his time before speaking. He looked gravely at the senior student Assassin who had been sent up to him for the traditional glass of sherry and avoidance of the almond slice. Indeed, a decanter, a small empty glass and a politely declined cake-stand sat on the desk in front of him.
"We would be very keen to ascertain the whereabouts of the Right Honourable Godfrey Selachii." he said, at length. "Before long his parents will be asking awkward questions, and it has in fact been nearly two days since he went missing."
The student bowed her head demurely. She affected glasses with slightly and strangely tinted lenses. Downey felt uncomfortable making eye-contact with her. Other students did not use the term "Four-Eyes" to describe her. Looking through those lenses, four eyes was not nearly enough. Odd internal reflections and refractions suggested there were more there than just the normal two. It was all very disconcerting, as Matron Igorina reported that the girl had normal, in fact excellent, uncorrected vision and did not in fact need glasses of any kind.
"Miss Webber." Downey began. "Let me recapitulate on your record at this School. You first came to our notice over the issue of the pet you were allowed to keep."
He shot a sideways glance at Arachne's House-Mistress, Miss Alice Band, who made a gesture halfway between a shrug and a pained wince.
"Miss Band was not at fault here, as small manageable pets are permitted to fourth-year students as a privilege. She made the not entirely unreasonable assumption that you had a gerbil, perhaps, or a guinea-pig in mind, or perhaps a small fancy rat. Such creatures are not unknown. We permit this as, in moderation, such things teach worthwhile habits of care and cleanliness, as well as being good for morale and the general well-being of the psyche. However, when you assured Miss Band that your chosen companion animal would be small and manageable.."
"…at first, Master." Arachne Webber said, filling the gap.
"Indeed, miss Webber. At first. I do not accuse you of deliberate deceit, but it became clear you were not telling the whole story. The fact the…pet…. in question was at first taken to be a Howondalandian Arboreal Tarantula was disconcerting enough. It rather unsettled the other girls in your dormitory."
"I've always considered arachnophobia is such a silly thing." Miss Webber said, respectfully. "And not letting me keep a small spider as a pet sounded like discrimination. Besides, there was nothing against it in the School Rules!"
"At the time, no." Miss Band agreed. "Miss Smith-Rhodes was asked to give a professional opinion, and she reported that she saw no harm in it provided the creature was kept in a secure habitat suited to its needs."
"Indeed." Lord Downey said, evenly. He sometimes suspected that his principal lecturer in Nature Studies, Ecology and Zoology had a strange sense of humour and that he was, in some obscure way, the punchline to the joke. "Miss Smith-Rhodes is, alas, only human. In her report she provisionally identified it as an Arboreal Tarantula of a species she had not encountered before. She said this species grows no larger than the size of one's hand and eats a diet of grasshoppers, locusts, beetles and other small insects. Even though she was puzzled by what she described as anomalies, we agreed to proceed on that basis and monitor the situation."
"I did keep Felicia in a secure habitat suited to her needs, my Lord." Miss Webber pointed out. Downey nodded.
"And you had to keep rebuilding it every few weeks. Until it occupied the whole of what would have been the adjacent bedspace in your dormitory. Well, it got you full marks for Carpentry and Craft. But when it got to the point where your peers refused to share the dormitory with you, something had to be done,"
"I did apologise to Belinda Myercroft for what happened to her gerbils, sir." Arachne Webber said, meekly.
Downey winced.
"And then it reached the point where gerbils were not enough. I'm not accusing you, but we chose to view it as coincidental that expensive hunting dogs, belonging to a senior student, vanished in mysterious circumstances at this time. " he remarked. "We had to intervene. Especially when Miss Smith-Rhodes re-identified your pet more accurately as the Sloth-Eating Spider of the Tezuman Jungle. Which in its mature form, now it is securely housed at the Animal Management Unit, can grow to ten feet across from claw-tip to claw-tip."
"She's very intelligent, sir." Arachne remarked. "I estimate she has at least troll-level intelligence."
"We requested that there be no repetition." Downey said, remorselessly. "And then you went absent without leave on a Wilderness Expedition to the Ramtops. Your explanation was that you had heard from Matron Igorina that an even larger species of spider existed on the Disc, but did not have scientific provenance. When your tutors tracked you down, you explained your absence by saying you wanted to find this Ungolianta creature and steal an egg-sac you could artificially incubate."
"It would be a massive leap forward for the study of arachnids, sir". Arachne said.
"And, as Lord Vetinari pointed out when he raised the issue with me, the legendary Ungoliant was first bred by the Rogis(1) as a threat-in-being, in order to add an extra level of control to the Orc armies bred during the Dark War. The Orc-Eating Spider, Miss Webber. Orcs in themselves having been bred as lethal killing machines scared of nothing. Lord Vetinari was firmly of the opinion that if any still exist on the Disc, they are best left as a mystery in the dark inaccessible corners of the Ramtop Mountains and Überwald. And expressly not brought to Ankh-Morpork as part of a breeding colony."
"She did display superlative endurance, survival and mountaineering skills, my Lord." Alice Band said, supporting her pupil. "Both Mr Nivor and I were of the opinion that this be recognised, out of fairness. Even though she did put us to a lot of trouble."
Alice glared at Arachne. The fourth person present, the fat and jolly Mr Grune Nivor, smiled benevolently.
"A young woman after my own heart, Master." he said. "You would not believe what she's capable of in terms of the trade skills I teach! Outstanding pupil, my Lord. Outstanding."
Alice Band, whose trade skills overlapped Nivor's, nodded assent.
"And I note from your school reports that even Mr Mericet was moved to near-poetical superlatives when assessing your ability with toxins and venoms." Downey added. "And he only expresses this level of approval for a vanishingly small number of his students."
He read on.
"And then we have the little incident during Madame Deux-Epées' lesson in Practical Stabbing Techniques. I admire Madame for her innovative teaching. Especially her realisation that pork carcasses destined for the school kitchen can usefully be diverted as training aids, to introduce the student to how it feels to stab into an actual body made of muscle and fat and bone. She notes, accurately, that in most circumstances the pig may then go on for butchering in the usual way and end up on our dinner plates."
Downey paused, and looked levelly at Arachne.
"I am assuming the potion you applied to your daggers was some sort of spider-derived venom? Madame was most impressed with the way the pig carcass turned instantly black and necrotic after you stabbed it. But she wishes you had advised her first, rather than saying afterwards that it might not be a good idea to let that one go to the kitchen afterwards. She had to soothe the Chef's nerves at the thought you might have thoughtlessly poisoned the whole School. As I recall, we had a little chat over that one too."
The Master put down the thick file labelled Arachne Webber, Tump House, and closed it. It was a far thicker and bulkier file than most students had.
"Miss Webber, you are clearly an exceptionally gifted student." he said. "And in this school, we find that exceptionally gifted students flourish when given a certain freedom and very careful management. However, even the exceptionally gifted and brilliant are not immune from disciplinary measures. We are lenient with you in order to draw out your exceptional talent. But there has got to be a limit to leniency."
Grune Nivor and Alice Band nodded, unsmiling.
"Godfrey Selachii, Master." Nivor prompted him.
"Oh yes. Mr Selachii. Now I do not need to remind you that School rules expressly and explicitly prohibit pupils from inhuming each other. Whatever the provocation. Now Godfrey was last seen two days ago on a practical Traps and Evasion lesson in the Undercity. You were also a member of that class. As Mr Nivor recalls, you were part of the team tasked with laying traps that the other team had to identify, neutralise or evade. Godfrey was one of the evaders."
"Damn boy doesn't seem to have evaded too brightly." Nivor remarked, snorting.
"And well-founded rumour and report tells me that Godfrey Selachii, who is perhaps not the most cautious of boys, made fun of you as "The Spider-Woman" and taunted you by killing a spider in front of you. I am advised that you did nothing publicly in front of Godfrey and his set, but you turned and walked away."
Alice winced. Godfrey Selachii was an over-confident brash idiot, it was true, with all the arrogance of his noble family, but he was still a pupil who merited some duty of care. She watched Arachne, whose face settled into some sort of serene smile.
"I trust Godfrey is still alive?" Downey asked.
"He is, sir. I was going to retrieve him today and bring him back. I think after two days he will have learnt the lesson about killing my spiders."
"Where is he, Miss Webber?"
"Down in the Undercity, sir. I can lead people there. It may be wise if I did, as there are other little surprises I set just in case he went in other directions."
Downey nodded.
"Mr Nivor, miss Band. Would you accompany miss Webber? Thank you. Take Mr Selachii straight to the Infirmary, if you please, to recover from his over-confidence. This interview is at an end."
And, in a dark dank tunnel a long way below the city, the Right Honourable Godfrey Selachii hung immobile in a silken cocoon laid by a Sloth-Eating Spider (2), and screamed into empty air.
(1) Rogis: the anti-Igors. Igor at Biers is one of the few living examples. Rogis are great at dismantling living things. They can put them back together again afterwards, often in interesting new ways, but largely prefer to leave the job half-finished.
(2) Arachne had harvested the silk from Felicia. It hadn't been terribly difficult to lure Godfrey onto a web-like arrangement of ropes soaked in glue. Once he got stuck there, she had tranquilised him and then wrapped him in yards of spider-silk, leaving him to wake up and draw an appalling conclusion.