Nothing to it, really!
Having just been in hospital for a while and having come out feeling weak as a kitten and tired as a sloth. Six out of ten on the life-threatening scale, but dealt with to everybody's satisfaction. I may write about it sometime as the hospital I was sent to (Stepping Hill, Stockport) was and possibly remains centre of an investigation into the mysterious deaths of patients. Apparently one or more rogue nurses was bumping people off. Allegedly. My gut feeling is that no actual murder happened at all and it was down to sloppy record-keeping, people covering their arses after nicking controlled drugs, and general bad management. But I'm here and alive and my rogue pneumo and pleurises have settled down.
It's simple. You just need to fill in forms SMP (i) and SMP(ii) and then complete MATB1(b) in triplicate. The difficulties of being a young expectant mother in Ankh-Morpork.
18 Spa Lane, Ankh.
It was black, leathery, slightly sticky to the touch and smelt of dark dank places. Johanna winced and steeled herself. The taste wasn't completely unpleasant. It was mainly reminiscent of elderly mushrooms, the sort which, when a day or two past their best, manage to shrivel and go slightly slimy at the same time. It had overtones of garlic. Perhaps a hint of deep-down mined treacle. There was a deep earthy smell reminiscent of gardener's peat moss. This carried over to the taste.
She tried to make herself think of it as an exotic biltong from an animal not normally used for the purpose, put it in her mouth, and forced herself to chew. She shuddered, but at the same time felt the beginnings of a delicious all-over bodily shudder as something deep inside her acknowledged that this was exactly what she needed. She wondered if this was how an addict felt when getting the hit.
She chewed. It was just her bad luck that her taste buds had been out-voted by all her other bodily systems when the pregnancy craving had come along. And she decided that when all this was over she would never, ever, absolutely never, touch a Klatchian Migratory Bog Truffle again, so long as she lived.
The craving had come along towards the end of the third month. It had begun as an indefinable sense of something missing from her diet. The specific something had been hard to pin down. Davinia, the experienced mother, had warned her that a craving of some sort would inevitably come along. It was just a matter of finding out what it was for and then accepting the inevitable.
Davinia herself had developed a craving for spearmint leaves. Gods damn her. Johanna loved the taste and savour of mint. She'd have been happy with a mint craving. But trying to work it out with Ponder, they'd got as far as hazarding a guess that maybe it was something in the mushroom or edible fungus line. Dorothea, the cook, had toured produce markets, bringing back new and different sorts of edible mushroom for the baas-lady to try. Davinia Bellamy had found samples of some rarer ones. Agatean Oyster Mushrooms had been promising, but her body still craved something, and couldn't tell her what it was.
And then Ponder had taken her to lunch at an upscale Quirmian restaurant. Emmanuelle de Lapoignard had joined them, and the two expectant mothers had traded their respective woes about pregnancy, work, domestic life and having to let their weapons-belts out by yet another notch. Ponder had asked for another bottle of Quirmian beer and left them to it.
"I tell you, chère amie. It is already hard to keep my sword belt up and in place. The ferrule of my scabbard drags at the ground. It is getting scratched." Emmanuelle complained.
She sipped her wine.(1) Johanna scowled down at the flavoured mineral water which she had been told(2) would be as strong as it would get for nine months.
Ponder kept silent. He had tentatively suggested that, just perhaps, in the circumstances, they could, er, leave the weapons-belts off, as they were getting harder and harder to fasten and retain in place and this was only going to get worse as the months wore on. Surely the Guild would understand, and make allowances?
No, he wasn't going to raise that one again. He shuddered at the reaction he'd provoked.
And there had been a hint of a smell in the air, fighting for attention in a thousand other food smells. She had known instinctively that this was the one. Heightened senses picked out the one suddenly delicious smell. It seemed to come from several tables away. The maitre d' was discreetly summoned. Emmanuelle spoke to him in Quirmian. Both looked at Johanna. The Head Waiter took in her pregnancy bulge and nodded, understanding.
"May I recommend, for madame, the pommes de terre boulangere avec des cepes fricassées"?
Johanna had nodded, comprehending only that there were potatoes and perhaps mushrooms in it.
And when it arrived at the table, she was slightly disappointed to note that all the avec heralded a plate of lightly sautéd sliced potatoes arranged around a sauce speckled with black blobs and shavings. Exquisitely arranged fried potato slices, certainly, fried just so, and precisely served on the plate in a way that said "this is going to cost you, mon ami", with a side of exquisitely shaped mounds of spinach, another vegetable she had never been ecstatic to see on her plate. It also occurred to her that Spud-You-Might-Like, a new proletarian eaterie on Peach Pie Street, would serve you recognisably the same for a lot less money, albeit not as beautifully presented. The cepes fricassées, on examination, were pretty much what you'd get on a Full Morporkian Breakfast at Harga's House of Ribs, only with exotic mushrooms that she suspected were going to cost her thirty times as much. Johanna had always suspected her tastes inclined to proletarian. But she sighed, thanked Emmanuelle for her consideration, and set to.
Vegetarian food with no meat anywhere was a foreign concept in Rimwards Howondaland. Culinary philosophy at home held that you piled your plate high with as much named meat as possible, even if the meat had names like boerewois, vleis, bobotie, ostrich, skilpadjies, sosetie, or droëwors.
But she knew, deep down, that something on her plate was exactly what her body had been screaming at her to provide. The sensation of relief even overcame the intermittent taste of something horrible in her mouth, something unspeakable, something that was a harsh note among the rather bland flavours of the vegetables.
At Ponder's prompting, she tried to analyse what the agent was, taking things in small single notes. The mushrooms were strongly flavoured and went part of the way. But with a mounting sense that the universe was playing a practical joke in her, she narrowed it down to the black speckles and shavings in the béarnaise sauce, otherwise bland and buttery.
"Ah, oui." Emmanuelle said, observing. "I believe that is le truffe migrateur klatchien hors de la tourbière, chère amie."
Johanna looked politely blank. Ponder frowned.
"A sort of truffle? From Klatch ? "
Emmanuelle clapped her hands, delightedly, and praised him on his Quirmian comprehension.
"You have a cultured husband, chère amie." she said, with approval.
Johanna, with mixed feelings about the bad taste and the surge of endorphins that was sweeping her along, frowned suspiciously. She knew her old friend's sense of humour, and suspected they had only got a partial translation.
The Head Waiter was summoned again and another Quirmian conversation ensued, with side glances at Johanna and Ponder. He went to the kitchen, reappearing again with a depressingly small jar of black blobby things swimming in some sort of preserving oil or brine, set on a silver salver with a doily underneath it. He set this down at Johanna's side with a flourish that spoke the word "Voila!" loudly. It was very specialised mime artistry of a sort only ever seen in expensive restaurants. it would have won awards at the Fools' Guild.
"I believe, Madame, that la Comptesse has identified the substance you require to assist you through your condition de la grossesse soif." he said, gravely. He stood back, expectantly.
"Une grossesse soif is what you would call a craving in pregnancy." Emmanuelle translated, helpfully.
"Fortunately, the chef had a sufficiency in the kitchen, and we would be pleased to sell you a quantity of the foodstuff in question." The Head Waiter added, smoothly. "It will appear as an item on l'addition at the end of your meal."
Johanna checked the label on the jar. It was in Quirmian and announced the contents were the produce of the Trousseau trufficulturie from the Vaucluse département of Quirm, and had been pronounced as fit and unadulterated by the Bureau des Appelations Contrôlées de Quirm (section des truffes).
Ponder read the unspoken subtext and a certain expectancy on the part of the Head Waiter, and sighed inside. Ah well. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University and benefited from a salaried position with tenure. Several salaried positions with tenure, in fact. Many unpopular and unwanted academic positions had been voted to him by the lazier members of the Faculty, who hadn't stopped to reflect that quite a few of them carried cash bequests and stipends. In many cases they reflected the cost of living of several centuries ago, had never seen a Review Board to update the salary rate, and if he had to rely on only one of them for a living wage, he'd be in desperate trouble. But the accumulation of twenty or thirty sub-living-wage stipends was a different story entirely.(3)
Therefore he could tip the maitre d' with a ten dollar note and request another one went to the Head Chef, without too many winces.
"Obligé, monsieur le mage." The Head Waiter said, spiriting the notes away and bowing gracefully.
"Noblesse oblige." Ponder said, awkwardly, to his two dining companions. Both smiled and assured him he had done the correct thing.
But this was slightly before he was presented with one of the most expensive restaurant bills he'd ever seen in his life. Most of it down to that one absurdly small jar of Klatchian Migratory Bog Truffles. Emmanuelle commiserated, and chipped in five hundred dollars as her share of the bill, forty to cover her meal and the rest being a gesture to one of her dearest friends in the time of her need. She didn't mind the expense: after all, her mother- in-law was paying, may the Gods speed her soul to its appropriate post-mortem destination. Johanna looked at the bill, saw the implications, and winced. Ag, they said motherhood is expensive….
"I don't suppose you've developed a craving, Emmie?" she said, pointedly.
Emmanuelle-Marie les Deux-Epées, Comptesse de Lapoignard, smiled contentedly.
"Only to fine wine and good cheroots, chère amie". she said, contentedly.
Johanna glared at her. Emmanuelle shrugged.
"My mèdecin said it will be alright." she said, mildly. "He pointed out many generations of Quirmian women have smoked and drunk wine in moderation during pregnancy, and the children are born perfectly normally and are healthy. You see, Johanna? I have taken medical advice, and I am content to go with what my doctor recommends!" (4)
As the three diners left the restaurant and hailed a cab, across the city Lord Havelock Vetinari looked up and frowned. Even today, over two years on from the business in the Shires and the Battle of the Tobacco Farm, there were still loose ends to be tidied up from the whole wretched business. Gravid Rust was dead, as was his father. Lady Regina Rust had inherited the family title. He now had to contend with her presence at City Council meetings. He was only partly comforted by the fact she had three younger sisters, all of whom were graduates of the Guild of Assassins and all of whom were as power-crazed as the old Latatian noble ladies. And with the same sort of family values that saw siblings as inconvenient obstacles to advancement.
Lucinda was in exile on a distant tropical island following her part in the tobacco farm business. He could trust the Guild of Assassins to ensure she remained there. But that left two Rusts with a Guild education. He wondered how long Regina would hold the title. Her education predated the admission of girls to the Guild School. She had had to be content with the Quirm Academy for Young Ladies. But the idea of dealing with Lady Deborah Rust was scarcely any better. Worse, in some respects.
He pondered the disputed area of the Shires. Vetinari was perfectly happy for it to go to Quirm. He would lose a little taxation revenue, that was true. But the whole area being under somebody's undisputed control and hegemony would tidy the political map immeasurably. The problem was as always the Old Lords, who would be sure to react viscerally to Ankh-Morpork surrendering territory, as they saw it, without firing so much as a shot. And a war with Quirm over a hundred or so square miles was unthinkable. Why was it so difficult to get them to grasp that in this day and age, the colours of the flag that flew over a region were immaterial? Quirm depended on Ankh-Morpork, the economic superpower. The city could exert dominance in so many subtle ways regardless of whose flag flew. We didn't need the Shires. But the Shires needed firm and unambiguous government. Quirm could provide that, with its gendarmerie that modelled itself on Samuel Vimes' City Watch, and be welcome.
The fact so many nations were involved had also un-necessarily complicated one issue. Vetinari had advocated for a fast, public, trial of the men captured on the Tobacco Farm, followed by quick, humane, and above all, public, execution.
But the fifteen or so surviving slave guards were still here. Incarcerated for the moment in what he had been assured was a high-security prison in Quirm, as five nations squabbled still over who should try them and dispose of them. Ankh-Morpork felt it had an interest. As did Quirm. And Rimwards Howondaland. As did the three or four interim governments which had tried to make sense of and restore order to Matabeleland, that benighted chaotic state. Prince Gabriel was a sincere man who was doing his best, but Vetinari felt he was fighting a losing battle in trying to reform his nation. Some habits were too deeply engrained. And the Low Kingdom of the Dwarfs remained affronted that a deep-down people who preferred underground living had been subject to maltreatment and slavery.
Ankh-Morpork claimed an interest as the initial crime had happened in the Shires and had been uncovered due to persistent and diligent police work on the part of the Duke of Ankh. Ankh-Morporkian representatives had fought at the Tobacco Farm to defend the principle of freedom and liberty for goblins and to keep the slave overseers imprisoned to meet due Justice. Trying them in the City and hanging them at the Tanty was only right by way of closure.
Quirm claimed an interest as the initial crime had happened in the Shires – its territory, despite what Ankh-Morpork claimed - and such crimes were repugnant and a stain on the honour of Quirm. The criminals, when found guilty, would be briefly introduced to Madame Guillotine in the main square in Quirm City, so that justice might be seen to be done.
Rimwards Howondaland claimed it was their right to try and hang the criminals, as the slave farm had been established in its sovereign territory and was a black blot on their nation's honour.
Matabaleland pointed out the region in which the slave farm was established was disputed and could be seen as its territory. A Royal Prince, now deceased, had been corrupted by the lure of easy money, and the new Prince Gabriel wished to expunge the shame and demonstrate to his own people that his reign represented a new era. Public execution of the criminals, both white and black, would be a salutary lesson to criminal elements in his own nation. The very public Execution Pits, with their unparalleled grandstands and terraces, were being held in readiness for this moment.
The Low Monarch had offered some of the Royal Dwarf Guard, who kept very sharp axes, to act as executioners.
And while the debate rumbled on, the prisoners were in secure detention in Quirm. Vetinari had not been happy about this, suggesting the remote Rimwards Howondalandian offshore fastness of Gogga Island, from which no man had ever escaped. But the Quirmian Ambassador had smiled, and assured the other delegates that we have got better…
The prisoners had been sent, not to the Bastille in Quirm City, but to the feared penal colony of Astfgl's Island, several miles off the Quirm coast. Merely escaping from the island would be the start of a prisoner's woes. The nearest landfall was the Neverglades Swamps, a formidable wilderness, a Gods-forsaken region some claimed was left over from the Mage Wars and the Dark Wars of antiquity.
Having been assured by the Quirmians that the risk of any prisoners successfully escaping from Astfgl's Island was pretty nearly a million to one, Vetinari sat back, and decided he could do nothing until the inevitable happened.
And today he had received the confirmation of his fears. Four men, all slave guards from the Tobacco Farm, had escaped from Astfgl's Island.
He steepled his fingers and summoned Drumknott. There were people he needed to consult. And others who deserved to be warned.
Peter Bellamy, assistant governor and principal prison officer at the Tanty, put his copy of The Times down, reached for his coffee mug, and shook his head. He felt eternally glad the Tobacco Farm Fifteen, a whole basket of political hot potatoes if ever he'd seen one, had not been committed to the Tanty. Working at just the level where the simple everyday duties of running a prison interfaced with satisfying political directives from the Administration, he had been aware they represented trouble for somebody in his profession. He was uneasy about the whole idea of political prisoners, for one thing. He had been too young to have been in the Service at the time of Patricians Snapcase and Winder, but the old hands who had trained and educated him in the skills necessary to manage convicts had remembered those days. The Prison Service he had joined had been a miasma of bad habits and corruption left over from Snapcase days. Old hands had described, usually on night shifts, the shambling broken human wrecks released to them by the Cable Street Particulars, those unfortunate souls to whom Snapcase and Winder had "shown clemency" and commuted death sentences to life imprisonment, or long years of solitary confinement in the loathsome dungeon cells.
"Oh, not that a life sentence meant much more than a few weeks or months for most of them, lad." one old hand had said. "Not after Swing's boys were done with them. We just made it as easy as we could. Except for people like Bellyster."
That was over now, and most of the dungeon cells were used as storerooms, pantries, coldstores and other purposes. The prison laundry was housed down there. Only a few of the better underground cells were still in use, as punishment accommodation for recidivists.
Bellamy felt the usual fellow sympathy for the guards at Astfgl's Island, the ones who had slipped up and who would be carrying the can. He also put up a heartfelt prayer of thanks to the God Of Prison Warders, if there was one, (5) that it hadn't happened here, on his watch. He speculated on how it had happened. Guards who themselves had fouled up somewhere else and been sent on what was to them a punishment posting. Not the best human material to begin with. Who were then told, complacently, that the prison they staffed was impregnable. Who had then relaxed and got lazy. Poor management allowing them to get complacent. And so four prisoners watch, look for loopholes, plan, plot, and eventually steal a boat. Which along with the cons had not yet been found. And the crew of the boat, a skiff used to ferry supplies and the odd new inmate in, were also missing. Probably never to be found, the bodies weighted down and thrown overboard.
He sighed. If the politicians had only tried and hanged them straight away, instead of putting them on Death Row and haggling over who got to pull the hangman's lever and where. Or guillotined them. Or decapitated them. Or tied them to stakes in the Execution Pit, filled the pit with water to neck-height, and then released a shoal of man-eating fish who hadn't been fed for a week.
Desperate men with nothing to lose had been left to their own devices. Guards told to watch them for every second of the day had relaxed their vigilance after perhaps a year, maybe even, as inevitably happens, started to see them not as villainous criminal thugs but as human beings. Bribery? A guard who bonds with a prisoner, hears a plausible hard-luck story, and deliberately one night leaves a couple of doors unlocked, to give a fellow a fair go? It had happened. Bellamy found himself liking some of his cons as individuals. But you didn't make friends with them. And you didn't leave men on Death Row for well over a year. That was asking for trouble.
No. Bellamy would have put them on lockdown as Category A prisoners on special measures. Alongside the child molesters, the rapists, and those Watchmen and prison officers who themselves had fallen from grace. Strict segregation, guards changed regularly. Only trusties allowed to bring food and laundry in and waste out.
Again he thought of Bellyster. A hated prison guard notorious for bullying, thuggery, pettiness and generally being nasty. Dismissed from the service and jailed himself by Vetinari, for aiding and abetting an escape. He'd been a nuisance to the smooth running of the Prison until he had successfully petitioned The Dame to let him out on a working party. Just to see open skies again, he had pleaded.
Sent on the traditional rock-breaking hard labour at a nearby quarry, a large quantity of rock higher up the cliff had mysteriously detached. Right above his head. Bellyster had indeed been broken by the rocks. The prison's Igor had pronounced death by crushing. Both the guards detailed to keep him safe from other cons had pronounced bafflement. Bellamy, remembering they too had been victims of Bellyster's bullying, had not pressed the point. Nobody else had been injured, after all. A cursory Watch investigation at first dismissed Bellyster's death as "suicide" but later amended it to "misadventure", for the look of the thing. The case had duly been closed and life for the Tanty community continued without too many ripples.
Peter Bellamy privately thought the escapees from the Island would be lucky to get past the Neverglades. Davinia had described her recent trip there. It did not sound like the kind of place for a family holiday. Even for a family where, in the case of the Bellamys, Mum was a fully licenced and articled Assassin and two out of three sons were Assassins' Guild School students.
He turned his mind to other things and asked for a chat with Probationary Officer Cullen to discuss a few little concerns. He wondered if Cullen was fit to be a prison officer. Not his fault, poor chap, but there were worries.
Johana and Ponder were worried by the bills. She was wealthy, certainly, her career as Assassin having accumulated cash in her bank accounts and augmented by shrewd investments. Her other role as Zoo director also paid a modest stipend. She hadn't wanted to take it, but the Zoo Trust had insisted, having pointed out to her that money had been set aside, it would unbalance the pay and differentials structure for Zoo employees if she didn't, and could she bank this draft for accumulated back pay at her earliest convenience? Ponder was a man who had let his wage packets pile up in a desk drawer,(6) having all his living expenses met gratis by the University and who had consequently had only occasional need of hard cash. His work at the H.E.M. and the need to be continually at Mustrum Ridcully's beck and call had meant he could plead he was too busy to open a bank account. Johanna had practically had to march him at crossbow point to the Royal Bank, with a borrowed Golem to escort quite a few thousand dollars of accumulated pay, pointing out that he'd better make the bleddy time to open a deposit account.
But there it was in black and white on the page. The yearly costs of maintaining a staff of servants at current Ankh-Morporkian rates.
$AM 1680. Round that up to $1700. Costs of keeping them housed, fed and in decent clothing. Add another $300, perhaps. Two thousand a year. Money set aside if any of them require medical treatment. Mossy Lawn insists employers of domestic staff pay full cost. As well he should. Set aside $1500 in a contingency fund.
Our family of goblins. They don't cost much, but common decency dictates we pay them a wage of some kind. Eight goblins, dwelling in the cellar and sub-cellar. We keep them fed and provide such clothing and other essentials as they need. They seem happy with twenty dollars a month to be shared between them. And they know they can come to me if they're in genuine need. That's another $240 a year. $300, if you take sundries into account. money against their medical needs, whatever they might be for goblins.
Costs of essential upkeep of house and grounds… top floor of which is occupied by servants. I need to demonstrate to the Embassy that I am providing segregated living quarters for black staff, even though this is Ankh-Morpork where apartheid law does not apply. This keeps them happy and Verkramp off my case. I can do without BOSS complaining that I do not respect the Racial Separation Laws. And cellar, where not used for larders, cold-room and storage, and sub-cellar, the province of our Goblins. Ponder and I – and our child, and our house-guests when we have them, restricted to the two floors in between servants and goblins. In our own house. Ah well. Aunt Friejda meant well.
And now the ruinous cost of this verdamte pregnancy craving. Why can my body not crave something cheaper than those foul truffles at nearly eighteen hundred dollars for a small jar?
"You're looking worried." Ponder said, sympathetically.
"Ja. Being merried, end running the sort of household thet other people think we should run, is not cheap. We could menege this life for perhaps five or six years, Ponder. But to be secure, I fear I will need to eccept a Guild contrect or two."
Ponder winced. She reached out and squeezed his hand.
"They ere not ell to do with inhumation." she reminded him. "I cen pick up good money for security consultancy. Bodyguarding. Distraint werrents. Bomb disposal. Bounty-hunting."
"Bomb disposal." Ponder said, doubtfully. He'd once witnessed her dealing with a bottle of rogue wow-wow sauce at the University. The controlled detonation had still broken a lot of windows and brought down an insecure chimney stack.(7)
"Perfectly safe…" she paused. "Well, safe. If you know whet you ere doing."
"But even so…" he protested, feebly. "Does it have to be now?"
"Et Guild rates, it is still worth considering." she said. "End there must be a Guild contrect I cen consider, even while pregnant."
Ponder looked at his wife. Nearly four months in with a visible bulge beginning to show, Matron Igorina had ordered her to cease and desist from physical activities in her teaching at the Guild, and to be very careful and selective about the sorts of animal-wrangling she normally did at the Zoo.(8) He'd known her for long enough to know the signs of restlessness. And he was sensitive enough to be aware that living a quiet life, free from excessive physical activity, was driving her nuts.
"Well, it can do no harm to look, I suppose." he said, reluctantly.
She smiled.
"Thenk you, Ponder" she said.
Commander Sam Vimes passed around the iconographs and the descriptions that had arrived from the Sûreté in Quirm. Commandant Fournier had apologised for the inconvenience, and lamented the fact that because the prison service, le Direction de l'Administration Pénitentiaire, had been so lax as to allow them to escape, the police force now had the task of capturing them for a second time. He hoped it would not unduly spoil your day, Sam, but we have reason to believe that if the fugitives escape through the Neverglades, they may be heading your way.
"Makes sense." Vimes said. "Big city. They can disappear here. Go underground."
Captain Carrot studied the iconography, committing the face to memory.
"Rimwards Howondalandian." he said. "If nothing else, that's an accent that's hard to hide."
He passed the iconography along to Cheery Littlebottom. Vimes nodded acknowledgement.
"Has the Embassy been informed, sir?" Carrot asked. Vimes nodded.
"Yes. Ambassador van der Graaf wasn't happy. Said many unflattering things about the Quirmians. But he's sicking that little weasel Verkramp on it and has ordered the good Lieutenant to co-operate fully with us and to share any information his network of eyes and ears might pick up in the White Howondalandian community. Which brings to mind."
Vimes looked at Cheery.
"I hope you're keeping your axe sharp. This object du Plessis was heard in prison to mouth off threats against people he can identify as having been on the Tobacco Farm business. One such was, and I quote his words, a bloody lawn-ornament with an axe. You were the most prominent Dwarf there and he saw you face-to-face on a few occasions. Mr van der Graaf is also a subject of his dire threats. As are those bleddy keffir women walking around as if they were white people. By which I presume he means Sergeant Jolson and Miss Ruth N'Kweze."
"The Guild of Assassins have been informed, sir?" Angua von Uberwald asked.
"As priority." Vimes confirmed. "Especially since the scalp he really wants is one with striking red hair. Who, according to reports, humiliated du Plessis by making him wash the crocks as if he were some sort of kaffir house-girl, then threw one in his face because she thought it hadn't been washed well enough. Something of a berserk button that got pressed there. He's hell-bent on making her pay for it."
"I was there." Cheery said. "Alice Band warned Johanna to watch her back around him. If there hadn't been a lot of sharp things pointing his way I really think he'd have gone for her there and then."
"Shame he didn't." Vimes said, drily. "And normally, Johanna is capable of having him for breakfast, gutted, dried, and smoked, like a piece of that bloody awful meat jerky they like so much."
"Biltong, sir." Carrot offered. Vimes scowled.
"But right now, I would venture to think she's not quite her usual self. Quite possibly, if I may use the unfamiliar word in conjunction with the name of Mrs Johanna Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons, she is vulnerable. And she's a Watch Special."
Vimes paused to let this sink in.
"Despite being a bloody Assassin, she is also one of us. That matters."
"As are several other names on his hit-list. Inspector Pessimal. Cheery. Precious. Ruth." Angua said.
"So if this gentleman and his associates are coming here, we identify them. Find them. Pull them in. And they will not escape from MY cells. Put the word out!"
Lord Downey addressed the Dark Council. They had gathered to discuss the new threat.
"So we're agreed, then." he said. "There is a very clear and present danger to several Guild members from these men, who are possibly on the way here and vowing vengeance. They have nothing to lose so we can assume they are prepared to die trying to settle a perceived score. Which makes them dangerous."
"We also have to assume the greatest threat is to Johanna." Lady T'Malia said, gravely. "But Miss Band, Miss Wiggs, Miss van Kruger, the Comptesse de Lapoignard and Miss N'Kweze were also present and identifiable. Six people."
"I will authorize the following." Downey said. "The political situation dictates that if possible, these four men are to be neutralized, and brought in alive to face justice at an international level. Inhumation must only be a very last resort. Shall we say. Ten thousand, without Guild tax, for each escaped criminal brought in alive. A standard bounty-hunting contract. If, regrettably, they can only be brought in dead, the completion fee drops by two-thirds. An incentive, to make it more likely we detain living clients. So that I can report to Lord Vetinari that the delicate political balance has not been upset and we can hand over living men to face trial and justice."
The Compte de Yoyo laughed. Downey looked across sharply.
"I apologise, master. But there is something ironic in the idea of a Guild contract paying three times as much if the client is alive. As opposed to inhumed."
"We live in surprising times, Compte." Downey said. "And I also suggest that operatives, taking care to respect her privacy where this is essential, discreetly monitor Doctor Smith-Rhodes. And observe for who may be in the vicinity watching her."
"Just as the Watch will be doing." Joan Sanderson-Reeves said. "Half the suspicious people following Johanna are going to be Cable Street Particulars, you do know that?"
Downey sighed, heavily. He'd been hoping to avoid this.
"I shall speak to Samuel Vimes." he said, wearily. "In the meantime, Joan, could you discreetly brief Johanna? I want no misunderstandings. Try, if you can, to dissuade her from taking this contract. I understand she is getting rather bored with her confinement."
1 Emmanuelle had aced this one by consulting a Quirmian doctor. Who had told her a small amount of alcohol would be most medicinal to an expectant mother and that he could, zut alors, see no harm in it, unlike those puritanical Morporkians. But let us be sensible and show restraint, ma Comptesse. No more than a bottle a day, peut-être?
2 By Matron Igorina. Who was not Quirmian.
3 Ridcully knew this full well, but was minded to be generous and not to investigate too closely. After all, the other fellows hadn't bothered to check what they were handing young Stibbons on a plate, and their bone-idleness had given the lad a very useful 51% controlling interest in Faculty decisions. And the lad earnt his money, you couldn't fault him. The pay had to go somewhere, I mean, hell's bells, it's in the budget, it's accounted for, and where better, in Ridcully's mind, than to a hard-workin' decent young lad just married and now startin' a family?
Lots of buckets of coal were also involved. The University's coal porter saw no reason to stop just because, in an unprecedented move, a senior wizard had chosen to marry and live outside the University. Ponder was expected to deal with this.
4 Still pretty much current wisdom in France. And French kids are not noticeably impaired for it…
5 As the priests at Small Gods could have told him after consulting Holy Writ, there was Barracluf, Gaoler of the Gods. A kindly easily fooled deity who was not cut out for his job, Barracluf had been asked by Hoki, the Prankster God, on his eternal bed of granite upon which the venom of a serpent dripped, to "slacken off these chains a bit, as they're chafing my ankles?" Reassigned to guarding the First Thief, Fingers Mazda, chained to a rock for all eternity and visited daily by his probation officer, an eagle on a strict liver diet, he swore afterwards that he'd only nipped away for five minutes for a quick smoke. Returning to find broken chains, and empty rock, and a dying eagle croaking "where were you, you bastard?" (Refer to The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett for the canonical story, which involves Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde). Barracluf now guards the Portal of Eternity behind which are the Dark Lord Mogwrath and the immortal essences of assorted would-be Dark Emperors, cast out into the Void behind the Circles of the World for their crimes. This is held to be part of the Ineffable Plan, you know, the one which cannot be effed, for the Last Days of the Apocralypse.
6 He had this in common with a unique intellectual mind he'd encountered on the Roundworld, an unworldly academic in California called Doctor Sheldon Cooper. Advert: see my Discworld/The Big Bang Theory crossover fic The Many worlds Interpretation.
7 More blatant self-promotion: see my story Hear Them Chatter On The Tide.
8 "Just stick to the small ones, Johanna." Igorina had said. "Mice. Rats. Otters, maybe. Let other people wrangle lions and tigers."