Hogfather (4 page)

Peachy leaned forward. “You know what?” he said. “I reckon he could be here already. In disguise! Laughing at us! Well, if he’s in here laughing at us—” He cracked his knuckles.

Medium Dave Lilywhite, the last of the five, looked around. There were indeed a number of solitary figures in the low, dark room. Most of them wore cloaks with big hoods. They sat alone, in corners, hidden by the hoods. None of them looked very friendly.

“Don’t be daft, Peachy,” Catseye murmured.

“That’s the sort of thing they do,” Peachy insisted. “They’re masters of disguise!”

“With that eye of his?”

“That guy sitting by the fire has got an eye patch,” said Medium Dave. Medium Dave didn’t speak much. He watched a lot.

The others turned to stare.

“He’ll wait till we’re off our guard then go ahahaha,” said Peachy.

“They can’t kill you unless it’s for money,” said Catseye. But now there was a soupçon of doubt in his voice.

They kept their eyes on the hooded man. He kept his eye on them.

If asked to describe what they did for a living, the five men around the table would have said something like “This and that” or “The best I can,” although in Banjo’s case he’d have probably said “Dur?” They were, by the standards of an uncaring society, criminals, although they wouldn’t have thought of themselves as such and couldn’t even
spell
words like “nefarious.” What they generally did was move things around. Sometimes the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, say, or in the wrong house. Sometimes the things were in fact people who were far too unimportant to trouble the Assassins’ Guild with, but who were nevertheless inconveniently positioned where they were and could much better be located on, for example, a sea bed somewhere.
*
None of the five belonged to any formal guild and they generally found their clients among those people who, for their own dark reasons, didn’t want to put the guilds to any trouble, sometimes because they were guild members themselves. They had plenty of work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B or, of course, to the bottom of the C.

“Any minute now,” said Peachy, as the waiter brought their beers.

Banjo cleared his throat. This was a sign that another thought had arrived.

“What I don’ unnerstan,” he said, “is…”

“Yes?” said his brother.
†

“What I don’ unnerstan is, how longaz diz place had waiters?”

“Good evening,” said Teatime, putting down the tray.

They stared at him in silence.

He gave them a friendly smile.

Peachy’s huge hand slapped the table.

“You crept up on us, you little—” he began.

Men in their line of business develop a certain prescience. Medium Dave and Catseye, who were sitting on either side of Peachy, leaned away nonchalantly.

“Hi!” said Teatime. There was a blur, and a knife shuddered in the table between Peachy’s thumb and index finger.

He looked down at it in horror.

“My name’s Teatime,” said Teatime. “Which one are you?”

“’m…Peachy,” said Peachy, still staring at the vibrating knife.

“That’s an interesting name,” said Teatime. “Why are you called Peachy, Peachy?”

Medium Dave coughed.

Peachy looked up into Teatime’s face. The glass eye was a mere ball of faintly glowing gray. The other eye was a little dot in a sea of white. Peachy’s only contact with intelligence had been to beat it up and rob it whenever possible, but a sudden sense of self-preservation glued him to his chair.

“’cos I don’t shave,” he said.

“Peachy don’t like blades, mister,” said Catseye.

“And do you have a lot of friends, Peachy?” said Teatime.

“Got a few, yeah…”

With a sudden whirl of movement that made the men start, Teatime spun away, grabbed a chair, swung it up to the table and sat down on it. Three of them had already got their hands on their swords.

“I don’t have many,” he said, apologetically. “Don’t seem to have the knack. On the other hand…I don’t seem to have
any
enemies at all. Not one. Isn’t that nice?”

Teatime had been thinking, in the cracking, buzzing fireworks display that was his head. What he had been thinking about was immortality.

He might have been quite, quite insane, but he was no fool. There were, in the Assassins’ Guild, a number of paintings and busts of famous members who had, in the past, put…no, of course, that wasn’t right. There were paintings and busts of the famous
clients
of members, with a noticeably modest brass plaque screwed somewhere nearby, bearing some unassuming little comment like “Departed this vale of tears on Grune 3, Year of the Sideways Leech, with the assistance of the Hon. K. W. Dobson (Viper House).” Many fine old educational establishments had dignified memorials in some hall listing the Old Boys who had laid down their lives for monarch and country. The Guild’s was very similar, except for the question of whose life had been laid.

Every Guild member wanted to be up there somewhere. Because getting up there represented immortality. And the bigger your client, the more incredibly discreet and restrained would be the little brass plaque, so that everyone couldn’t help but notice your name.

In fact, if you were very, very renowned, they wouldn’t even have to write down your name at all…

The men around the table watched him. It was always hard to know what Banjo was thinking, or even if he was thinking at all, but the other four were thinking along the lines of: bumptious little twit, like all Assassins. Thinks he knows it all. I could take him down one-handed, no trouble. But…you hear stories. Those eyes give me the creeps…

“So what’s the job?” said Chickenwire.

“We don’t do jobs,” said Teatime. “We perform services. And the service will earn each of you ten thousand dollars.”

“That’s a lot more’n Thieves’ Guild rate,” said Medium Dave.

“I’ve never liked the Thieves’ Guild,” said Teatime, without turning his head.

“Why not?”

“They ask too many questions.”

“We don’t ask questions,” said Chickenwire quickly.

“We shall suit one another perfectly,” said Teatime. “Do have another drink while we wait for the other members of our little troupe.”

Chickenwire saw Medium Dave’s lips start to frame the opening letters “Who—” These letters he deemed inauspicious at this time. He kicked Medium Dave’s leg under the table.

The door opened slightly. A figure came in, but only just. It inserted itself in the gap and sidled along the wall in a manner calculated not to attract attention. Calculated, that is, by someone not good at this sort of calculation.

It looked at them over its turned-up collar.

“That’s a
wizard
,” said Peachy.

The figure hurried over and dragged up a chair.

“No, I’m not!” it hissed. “I’m incognito!”

“Right, Mr. Gnito,” said Medium Dave. “You’re just someone in a pointy hat. This is my brother Banjo, that’s Peachy, this is Chick—”

The wizard looked desperately at Teatime.

“I didn’t want to come!”

“Mr. Sideney here is indeed a wizard,” said Teatime. “A student, anyway. But down on his luck at the moment, hence his willingness to join us on this venture.”

“Exactly how far down on his luck?” said Medium Dave.

The wizard tried not to meet anyone’s gaze.

“I made a misjudgment to do with a wager,” he said.

“Lost a bet, you mean?” said Chickenwire.

“I paid up on time,” said Sideney.

“Yes, but Chrysoprase the troll has this odd little thing about money that turns into lead the next day,” said Teatime cheerfully. “So our friend needs to earn a little cash in a hurry and in a climate where arms and legs stay on.”

“No one said anything about there being magic in all this,” said Peachy.

“Our destination is…probably you should think of it as something like a wizard’s tower, gentlemen,” said Teatime.

“It isn’t an actual wizard’s tower, is it?” said Medium Dave. “They got a very odd sense of humor when it comes to booby traps.”

“No.”

“Guards?”

“I believe so. According to legend. But nothing very much.”

Medium Dave narrowed his eyes. “There’s valuable stuff in this…tower?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Why ain’t there many guards, then?”

“The…person who owns the property probably does not realize the value of what…of what they have.”

“Locks?” said Medium Dave.

“On our way we shall be picking up a locksmith.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Brown.”

They nodded. Everyone—at least, everyone in “the business,” and everyone in “the business” knew what “the business” was, and if you didn’t know what “the business” was you weren’t a businessman—knew Mr. Brown. His presence anywhere around a job gave it a certain kind of respectability. He was a neat, elderly man who’d invented most of the tools in his big leather bag. No matter what cunning you’d used to get into a place, or overcome a small army, or find the secret treasure room, sooner or later you sent for Mr. Brown, who’d turn up with his leather bag and his little springy things and his little bottles of strange alchemy and his neat little boots. And he’d do nothing for ten minutes but look at the lock, and then he’d select a piece of bent metal from a ring of several hundred almost identical pieces, and under an hour later he’d be walking away with a neat ten percent of the takings. Of course, you didn’t
have
to use Mr. Brown’s services. You could always opt to spend the rest of your life looking at a locked door.

“All right. Where is this place?” said Peachy.

Teatime turned and smiled at him. “If I’m paying you, why isn’t it me who’s asking the questions?”

Peachy didn’t even try to outstare the glass eye a second time.

“Just want to be prepared, that’s all,” he mumbled.

“Good reconnaissance is the essence of a successful operation,” said Teatime. He turned and looked up at the bulk that was Banjo and added, “What is this?”

“This is Banjo,” said Medium Dave, rolling himself a cigarette.

“Does it do tricks?”

Time stood still for a moment. The other men looked at Medium Dave. He was known to Ankh-Morpork’s professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right. He was reliable in a tight spot and, above all, he was honest, because good criminals have to be honest. If he had a fault, it was a tendency to deal out terminal and definitive retribution to anyone who said anything about his brother.

If he had a virtue, it was a tendency to pick his time. Medium Dave’s fingers tucked the tobacco into the paper and raised it to his lips.

“No,” he said.

Chickenwire tried to defrost the conversation. “He’s not what you’d call bright, but he’s always useful. He can lift two men in each hand. By their necks.”

“Yur,” said Banjo.

“He looks like a volcano,” said Teatime.

“
Really
?” said Medium Dave Lilywhite. Chickenwire reached out hastily and pushed him back down in his seat.

Teatime turned and smiled at him.

“I do so hope we’re going to be friends, Mr. Medium Dave,” he said. “It really hurts to think I might not be among friends.” He gave him another bright smile. Then he turned back to the rest of the table.

“Are we resolved, gentlemen?”

They nodded. There was some reluctance, given the consensus view that Teatime belonged in a room with soft walls, but ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars, possibly even more.

“Good,” said Teatime. He looked Banjo up and down. “Then I suppose we might as well make a start.”

And he hit Banjo very hard in the mouth.

Death in person did not turn up upon the cessation of every life. It was not necessary. Governments govern, but prime ministers and presidents do not personally turn up in people’s homes to tell them how to run their lives, because of the mortal danger this would present. There are laws instead.

But from time to time Death checked up to see that things were functioning properly or, to put it another and more accurate way, properly
ceasing
to function in the less significant areas of his jurisdiction.

And now he walked through dark seas.

Silt rose in clouds around his feet as he strode along the trench bottom. His robes floated out around him.

There was silence, pressure and utter, utter darkness. But there was life down here, even this far below the waves. There were giant squid, and lobsters with teeth on their eyelids. There were spidery things with their stomachs on their feet, and fish that made their own light. It was a quiet, black nightmare world, but life lives everywhere that life can. Where life can’t, this takes a little longer.

Death’s destination was a slight rise in the trench floor. Already the water around him was getting warmer and more populated, by creatures that looked as though they had been put together from the bits left over from everything else.

Unseen but felt, a vast column of scalding hot water was welling up from a fissure. Somewhere below were rocks heated to near incandescence by the Disc’s magical field.

Spires of minerals had been deposited around this vent. And, in this tiny oasis, a type of life had grown up. It did not need air or light. It did not even need food in the way that most other species would understand the term.

It just grew at the edge of the streaming column of water, looking like a cross between a worm and a flower.

Death kneeled down and peered at it, because it was so small. But for some reason, in this world without eyes or light, it was also a brilliant red. The profligacy of life in these matters never ceased to amaze him.

He reached inside his robe and pulled out a small roll of black material, like a jeweler’s tool kit. With great care he took from one of its pouches a scythe about an inch long, and held it expectantly between thumb and forefinger.

Somewhere overhead a shard of rock was dislodged by a stray current and tumbled down, raising little puffs of silt as it bounced off the tubes.