TERRY PRATCHETT - PYRAMIDS (A Discworld Novel)

[ISBN 0-552-13461-9]

BOOK I

The Book of Going Forth

Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn’t bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. This is the gulf between universes, the chill deeps of space that contain nothing but the occasional random molecule, a few lost comets and . . .

. . . but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective, and what was apparently the awesome distance of interstellar wossname becomes a world under darkness, its stars the lights of what will charitably be called civilisation.

For, as the world tumbles lazily, it is revealed as the Discworld - flat, circular, and carried through space on the back of four elephants who stand on the back of Great A”tuin, the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, a turtle ten thousand miles long, dusted with the frost of dead comets, meteor-pocked, albedo-eyed. No-one knows the reason for all this, but it is probably quantum. Much that is weird could happen on a world on the back of a turtle like that.

It’s happening already.

The stars below are campfires, out in the desert, and the lights of remote villages high in the forested mountains. Towns are smeared nebulae, cities are vast constellations; the great sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, for example, glows like a couple of colliding galaxies.

But here, away from the great centres of population, where the Circle Sea meets the desert, there is a line of cold blue fire. Flames as chilly as the slopes of Hell roar towards the sky. Ghostly light flickers across the desert. The pyramids in the ancient valley of the Djel are flaring their power into the night.

The energy streaming up from their paracosmic peaks may, in chapters to come, illuminate many mysteries: why tortoises hate philosophy, why too much religion is bad for goats, and what it is that handmaidens actually do.

It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive today. People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modern society, they ask, would they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course this misses a fundamental point. What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: “Why is it so dark in here?”

In the cool of the river valley dawn the high priest Dios opened his eyes. He didn’t sleep these days. He couldn’t remember when he last slept. Sleep was too close to the other thing and, anyway, he didn’t seem to need it. Just lying down was enough - at least, just lying down here. The fatigue poisons dwindled away, like everything else. For a while.

Long enough, anyway.

He swung his legs off the slab in the little chamber. With barely a conscious prompting from his brain his right hand grasped the snake-entwined staff of office. He paused to make another mark on the wall, pulled his robe around him and stepped smartly down the sloping passage and out into the sunlight, the words of the Invocation of the New Sun already lining up in his mind. The night was forgotten, the day was ahead. There was much careful advice and guidance to be given, and Dios existed only to serve.

Dios didn’t have the oddest bedroom in the world. It was just the oddest bedroom anyone has ever walked out of.

And the sun toiled across the sky.

Many people have wondered why. Some people think a giant dung beetle pushes it. As explanations go it lacks a certain technical edge, and has the added drawback that, as certain circumstances may reveal, it is possibly correct.

It reached sundown without anything particularly unpleasant happening to it* (* Such as being buried in the sand and having eggs laid in it.), and its dying rays chanced to shine in through a window in the city of Ankh-Morpork and gleam off a mirror.

It was a full-length mirror. All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.

Teppic examined himself critically. The outfit had cost him his last penny, and was heavy on the black silk. It whispered as he moved. It was pretty good.

At least the headache was going. It had nearly crippled him all day; he’d been in dread of having to start the run with purple spots in front of his eyes.

He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them on. Another box held a set of knives of Klatchian steel, their blades darkened with lamp black. Various cunning and intricate devices were taken from velvet bags and dropped into pockets. A couple of long-bladed throwing tlingo’s were slipped into their sheaths inside his boots. A thin silk line and folding grapnel were wound around his waist, over the chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached to its leather thong and dropped down his back under his cloak; Teppic pocketed a slim tin container with an assortment of darts, their tips corked and their stems braille-coded for ease of selection in the dark.

He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his right shoulder, to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an afterthought he opened his sock drawer and took a pistol crossbow, a flask of oil, a roll of lockpicks and, after some consideration, a punch dagger, a bag of assorted caltraps and a set of brass knuckles.

Teppic picked up his hat and checked its lining for the coil of cheesewire. He placed it on his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at himself in the mirror, turned on his heel and, very slowly, fell over.

It was high summer in Ankh-Morpork. In fact it was more than high. It was stinking.

The great river was reduced to a lava-like ooze between Ankh, the city with the better address, and Morpork on the opposite bank. Morpork was not a good address. Morpork was twinned with a tar pit. There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification.

Most of the river bed was a honeycomb crust of cracked mud. Currently the sun appeared to be a big copper gong nailed to the sky. The heat that had dried up the river fried the city by day and baked it by night, curling ancient timbers, turning the traditional slurry of the streets into a drifting, choking ochre dust.

It wasn’t Ankh-Morpork’s proper weather. It was by inclination a city of mists and drips, of slithers and chills. It sat panting on the crisping plains like a toad on a firebrick. And even now, around midnight, the heat was stifling, wrapping the streets like scorched velvet, searing the air and squeezing all the breath out of it.

High in the north face of the Assassins” Guildhouse there was a click as a window was pushed open.

Teppic, who had with considerable reluctance divested himself of some of the heavier of his weapons, took a deep draught of the hot, dead air.

This was it.

This was the night.

They said you had one chance in two unless you drew old Mericet as examiner, in which case you might as well cut your throat right at the start.

Teppic had Mericet for Strategy and Poison Theory every Thursday afternoon, and didn’t get along with him. The dormitories buzzed with rumours about Mericet, the number of kills, the astonishing technique . . . He’d broken all the records in his time. They said he’d even killed the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Not the present one, that is. One of the dead ones.

Maybe it would be Nivor, who was fat and jolly and liked his food and did Traps and Deadfalls on Tuesdays. Teppic was good at traps, and got on well with the master. Or it could be the Kompt de Yoyo, who did Modern Languages and Music. Teppic was gifted at neither, but the Kompt was a keen edificeer and liked boys who shared his love of dangling by one hand high above the city streets.

He stuck one leg over the sill and unhitched his line and grapnel. He hooked the gutter two floors up and slipped out of the window.

No assassin ever used the stairs.

In order to establish continuity with later events, this may be the time to point out that the greatest mathematician in the history of the Discworld was lying down and peacefully eating his supper.

It is interesting to note that, owing to this mathematician’s particular species, what he was eating for his supper was his lunch.

Gongs around the Ankh-Morpork sprawl were announcing midnight when Teppic crept along the ornate parapet four storeys above Filigree Street, his heart pounding.

There was a figure outlined against the afterglow of the sunset. Teppic paused alongside a particularly repulsive gargoyle to consider his options.

Fairly solid classroom rumour said that if he inhumed his examiner before the test, that was an automatic pass. He slipped a Number Three throwing knife from its thigh sheath and hefted it thoughtfully. Of course, any attempt, any overt move which missed would attract immediate failure and loss of privileges*. (* Breathing, for a start.)

The silhouette was absolutely still. Teppic’s eyes swivelled to the maze of chimneys, gargoyles, ventilator shafts, bridges and ladders that made up the rooftop scenery of the city.

Right, he thought. That’s some sort of dummy. I’m supposed to attack it and that means he’s watching me from somewhere else.

Will I be able to spot him? No.

On the other hand, maybe I’m meant to think it’s a dummy. Unless he’s thought of that as well . . .

He found himself drumming his fingers on the gargoyle, and hastily pulled himself together. What is the sensible course of action at this point?

A party of revellers staggered through a pool of light in the street far below.

Teppic sheathed the knife and stood up.

“Sir,” he said, “I am here.”

A dry voice by his ear said, rather indistinctly, “Very well.”

Teppic stared straight ahead. Mericet appeared in front of him, wiping grey dust off his bony face. He took a length of pipe out of his mouth and tossed it aside, then pulled a clipboard out of his coat. He was bundled up even in this heat. Mericet was the kind of person who could freeze in a volcano.

“Ah,” he said, his voice broadcasting disapproval, “Mr. Teppic. Well, well.”

“A fine night, sir,” said Teppic. The examiner gave him a chilly look, suggesting that observations about the weather acquired an automatic black mark, and made a note on his clipboard.

“We’ll take a few questions first,” he said.

“As you wish, sir.”

“What is the maximum permitted length of a throwing knife?” snapped Mericet.

Teppic closed his eyes. He’d spent the last week reading nothing but The Cordat; he could see the page now, floating tantalisingly just inside his eyelids - they never ask you lengths and weights, students had said knowingly, they expect you to bone up on the weights and lengths and throwing distances but they never- Naked terror hotwired his brain and kicked his memory into gear. The page sprang into focus.

“”Maximum length of a throwing knife may be ten finger widths, or twelve in wet weather”,” he recited. “”Throwing distance is-“

“Name three poisons acknowledged for administration by ear.” A breeze sprang up, but it did nothing to cool the air; it just shifted the heat about.

“Sir, wasp agaric, Achorion purple and Mustick, sir,” said Teppic promptly.

“Why not spime?” snapped Mericet, fast as a snake. Teppic’s jaw dropped open. He floundered for a while, trying to avoid the gimlet gaze a few feet away from him.

“S-sir, spime isn’t a poison, sir,” he managed. “It is an extremely rare antidote to certain snake venoms, and is obtained-” He settled down a bit, more certain of himself: all those hours idly looking through the old dictionaries had paid off- “is obtained from the liver of the inflatable mongoose, which-”

“What is the meaning of this sign?” said Mericet.

“- is found only in the. . .” Teppic’s voice trailed off. He squinted down at the complex rune on the card in Mericet’s hand, and then stared straight past the examiner’s ear again.

“I haven’t the faintest idea, sir,” he said. Out of the corner of his ear he thought he heard the faintest intake of breath, the tiniest seed of a satisfied grunt.

“But if it were the other way up, sir,” he went on, “it would be thief sign for “Noisy dogs in this house”.”

There was absolute silence for a moment. Then, right by his shoulder, the old assassin’s voice said, “Is the killing rope permitted to all categories?”

“Sir, the rules call for three questions, sir,” Teppic protested.

“Ah. And that is your answer, is it?”

“Sir, no, sir. It was an observation, sir. Sir, the answer you are looking for is that all categories may bear the killing rope, but only assassins of the third grade may use it as one of the three options, sir.”

“You are sure of that, are you?”

“Sir.”

“You wouldn’t like to reconsider?” You could have used the examiner’s voice to grease a wagon.

“Sir, no, sir.”

“Very well.” Teppic relaxed. The back of his tunic was sticking to him, chilly with sweat.

“Now, I want you to proceed at your own pace towards the Street of Book-keepers,” said Mericet evenly, “obeying all signs and so forth. I will meet you in the room under the gong tower at the junction with Audit Alley. And - take this, if you please.”

He handed Teppic a small envelope.

Teppic handed over a receipt. Then Mericet stepped into the pool of shade beside a chimney pot, and disappeared.

So much for the ceremony.

Teppic took a few deep breaths and tipped the envelope’s contents into his hand. It was a Guild bond for ten thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars, made out to “Bearer”. It was an impressive document, surmounted with the Guild seal of the double-cross and the cloaked dagger.

Well, no going back now. He’d taken the money. Either he’d survive, in which case of course he’d traditionally donate the money to the Guild’s widows and orphans fund, or it would be retrieved from his dead body. The bond looked a bit dog-eared, but he couldn’t see any bloodstains on it.

He checked his knives, adjusted his swordbelt, glanced behind him, and set off at a gentle trot.

At least this was a bit of luck. The student lore said there were only half a dozen routes used during the test, and on summer nights they were alive with students tackling the roofs, towers, eaves and colls of the city. Edificing was a keen inter-house sport in its own right; it was one of the few things Teppic was sure he was good at - he’d been captain of the team that beat Scorpion House in the Wallgame finals. And this was one of the easier courses.

He dropped lightly over the edge of the roof, landed on a ridge, ran easily across the sleeping building, jumped a narrow gap on to the tiled roof of the Young Men’s Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth Association gym, jogged gently over the grey slope, swarmed up a twelve foot wall without slowing down, and vaulted on to the wide flat roof of the Temple of Blind Io.

A full, orange moon hung on the horizon. There was a real breeze up here, not much, but as refreshing as a cold shower after the stifling heat of the streets. He speeded up, enjoying the coolness on his face, and leapt accurately off the end of the roof on to the narrow plank bridge that led across Tinlid Alley.

And which someone, in defiance of all probability, had removed.

At times like this one’s past life flashes before one’s eyes. . .

His aunt had wept, rather theatrically, Teppic had thought, since the old lady was as tough as a hippo’s instep. His father had looked stern and dignified, whenever he could remember to, and tried to keep his mind free of beguiling images of cliffs and fish. The servants had been lined up along the hall from the foot of the main stairway, handmaidens on one side, eunuchs and butlers on the other. The women bobbed a curtsey as he walked by, creating a rather nice sine wave effect which the greatest mathematician on the Disc, had he not at this moment been occupied by being hit with a stick and shouted at by a small man wearing what appeared to be a nightshirt, might well have appreciated.

“But,” Teppic’s aunt blew her nose, “it’s trade, after all.”

His father patted her hand. “Nonsense, flower of the desert,” he said, “it is a profession, at the very least.”

“What is the difference?” she sobbed.

The old man sighed. “The money, I understand. It will do him good to go out into the world and make friends and have a few corners knocked off, and it will keep him occupied and prevent him from getting into mischief.”

“But. . . assassination. . . he’s so young, and he’s never shown the least inclination . . .” She dabbed at her eyes. “It’s not from our side of the family,” she added accusingly. “That brother-in-law of yours-

“Uncle Vyrt,” said his father.

“Going all over the world killing people!”

“I don’t believe they use that word,” said his father. “I think they prefer words like conclude, or annul. Or inhume, I understand.”

“Inhume?”

“I think it’s like exhume, O flooding of the waters, only it’s before they bury you.”

“I think it’s terrible.” She sniffed. “But I heard from Lady Nooni that only one boy in fifteen actually passes the final exam. Perhaps we’d just better let him get it out of his system.”

King Teppicymon XXVII nodded gloomily, and went by himself to wave goodbye to his son. He was less certain than his sister about the unpleasantness of assassination; he’d been reluctantly in politics for a long time, and felt that while assassination was probably worse than debate it was certainly better than war, which some people tended to think of as the same thing only louder. And there was no doubt that young Vyrt always had plenty of money, and used to turn up at the palace with expensive gifts, exotic suntans and thrilling tales of the interesting people he’d met in foreign parts, in most cases quite briefly.

He wished Vyrt was around to advise. His majesty had also heard that only one student in fifteen actually became an assassin. He wasn’t entirely certain what happened to the other fourteen, but he was pretty sure that if you were a poor student in a school for assassins they did a bit more than throw the chalk at you, and that the school dinners had an extra dimension of uncertainty.

But everyone agreed that the assassins” school offered the best all-round education in the world. A qualified assassin should be at home in any company, and able to play at least one musical instrument. Anyone inhumed by a graduate of the Guild school could go to his rest satisfied that he had been annulled by someone of taste and discretion.

And, after all, what was there for him at home? A kingdom two miles wide and one hundred and fifty miles long, which was almost entirely under water during the flood season, and threatened on either side by stronger neighbours who tolerated its existence only because they’d be constantly at war if it wasn’t there.

Oh, Djelibeybi* (* Lit. “Child of the Djel”.) had been great once, when upstarts like Tsort and Ephebe were just a bunch of nomads with their towels on their heads. All that remained of those great days was the ruinously-expensive palace, a few dusty ruins in the desert and - the pharaoh sighed - the pyramids. Always the pyramids.

His ancestors had been keen on pyramids. The pharaoh wasn’t. Pyramids had bankrupted the country, drained it drier than ever the river did. The only curse they could afford to put on a tomb these days was “Bugger Off”.

The only pyramids he felt comfortable about were the very small ones at the bottom of the garden, built every time one of the cats died.

He’d promised the boy’s mother.

He missed Artela. There’d been a terrible row about taking a wife from outside the Kingdom, and some of her foreign ways had puzzled and fascinated even him. Maybe it was from her he’d got the strange dislike of pyramids; in Djelibeybi that was like disliking breathing. But he’d promised that Pteppic could go to school outside the kingdom. She’d been insistent about that. “People never learn anything in this place,” she’d said. “They only remember things.”

If only she’d remembered about not swimming in the river .

He watched two of the servants load Teppic’s trunk on to the back of the coach, and for the first time either of them could remember laid a paternal hand on his son’s shoulder.

In fact he was at a loss for something to say. We’ve never really had time to get to know one another, he thought. There’s so much I could have given him. A few bloody good hidings wouldn’t have come amiss.

“Urn,” he said. “Well, my boy.”

“Yes, father?”

“This is, er, the first time you’ve been away from home by yourself”

“No, father. I spent last summer with Lord Fhem-pta-hem, you remember.”

“Oh, did you?” The pharaoh recalled the palace had seemed quieter at the time. He’d put it down to the new tapestries.

“Anyway,” he said, “you’re a young man, nearly thirteen-”

“Twelve, father,” said Teppic patiently.

“Are you sure?”

“It was my birthday last month, father. You bought me a warming pan.”

“Did I? How singular. Did I say why?”

“No, father.” Teppic looked up at his father’s mild, puzzled features. “It was a very good warming pan,” he added reassuringly. “I like it a lot.”

“Oh. Good. Er.” His majesty patted his son’s shoulder again, in a vague way, like a man drumming his fingers on his desk while trying to think. An idea appeared to occur to him.

The servants had finished strapping the trunk on to the roof of the coach and the driver was patiently holding open the door.

“When a young man sets out in the world,” said his majesty uncertainly, “there are, well, it’s very important that he remembers . . . The point is, that it is a very big world after all, with all sorts. . . And of course, especially so in the city, where there are many additional . . . “ He paused, waving one hand vaguely in the air.

Teppic took it gently.

“It’s quite all right, father,” he said. “Dios the high priest explained to me about taking regular baths, and not going blind.”

His father blinked at him.

“You’re not going blind?” he said.

“Apparently not, father.”

“Oh. Well. Jolly good,” said the king. “Jolly, jolly good. That is good news.”

“I think I had better be going, father. Otherwise I shall miss the tide.”

His majesty nodded, and patted his pockets.

“There was something. . . “ he muttered, and then tracked it down, and slipped a small leather bag into Teppic’s pocket. He tried the shoulder routine again.

“A little something,” he murmured. “Don’t tell your aunt. Oh, you can’t, anyway. She’s gone for a lie-down. It’s all been rather too much for her.”

All that remained then was for Teppic to go and sacrifice a chicken at the statue of Khuft, the founder of Djelibeybi, so that his ancestor’s guiding hand would steer his footsteps in the world. It was only a small chicken, though, and when Khuft had finished with it the king had it for lunch.

Djelibeybi really was a small, self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of Frog*. (*It was quite a big frog, however, and got into the air ducts and kept everyone awake for weeks.)

That evening, when they were well outside the delta of the Djel and heading across the Circle Sea to Ankh-Morpork, Teppic remembered the bag and examined its contents. With love, but also with his normal approach to things, his father had presented him with a cork, half a tin of saddlesoap, a small bronze coin of uncertain denomination, and an extremely elderly sardine.

It is a well-known fact that when one is about to die the senses immediately become excruciatingly sharp and it has always been believed that this is to enable their owner to detect any possible exit from his predicament other than the obvious one.

This is not true. The phenomenon is a classical example of displacement activity. The senses are desperately concentrating on anything apart from the immediate problem - which in Teppic’s case consisted of a broad expanse of cobblestones some eighty feet away and closing - in the hope that it will go away.

The trouble is that it soon will.

Whatever the reason, Teppic was suddenly acutely aware of things around him. The way the moonlight glowed on the rooftops. The smell of fresh bread wafting from a nearby bakery. The whirring of a cockchafer as it barrelled past his ear, upwards. The sound of a baby crying, in the distance, and the bark of a dog. The gentle rush of the air, with particular reference to its thinness and lack of handholds.

There had been more than seventy of them enrolling that year. The Assassins didn’t have a very strenuous entrance examination; the school was easy to get into, easy to get out of (the trick was to get out upright). The courtyard in the centre of the Guild buildings was thronged with boys who all had two things in common - overlarge trunks, which they were sitting on, and clothes that had been selected for them to grow into, and which they were more or less sitting in. Some optimists had brought weapons with them, which were confiscated and sent home over the next few weeks.

Teppic watched them carefully. There were distinct advantages to being the only child of parents too preoccupied with their own affairs to worry much about him, or indeed register his existence for days at a time.

His mother, as far as he could remember, had been a pleasant woman and as self-centred as a gyroscope. She’d liked cats. She didn’t just venerate them - everyone in the kingdom did that - but she actually liked them, too. Teppic knew that it was traditional in river kingdoms to approve of cats, but he suspected that usually the animals in question were graceful stately creatures; his mother’s cats were small, spitting, flat-headed, yellow-eyed maniacs.

His father spent a lot of time worrying about the kingdom and occasionally declaring that he was a seagull, although this was probably from general forgetfulness. Teppic had occasionally speculated about his own conception, since his parents were rarely in the same frame of reference, let alone the same state of mind.

But it had apparently happened and he was left to bring himself up on a trial and error basis, mildly hindered and occasionally enlivened by a succession of tutors. The ones hired by his father were best, especially on those days when he was flying as high as he could, and for one glorious winter Teppic had as his tutor an elderly ibis poacher who had in fact wandered into the royal gardens in search of a stray arrow.

That had been a time of wild chases with soldiers, moonlight rambles in the dead streets of the necropolis and, best of all, the introduction to the puntbow, a fearsomely complicated invention which at considerable risk to its operators could turn a slough full of innocent waterfowl into so much floating pâté.

He’d also had the run of the library, including the locked shelves - the poacher had several other skills to ensure gainful employment in inclement weather - which had given him many hours of quiet study; he was particularly attached to The Shuttered Palace, Translated from the Khalian by A Gentleman, with Hand-Coloured Plates for the Connoisseur in A Strictly Limited Edition. It was confusing but instructive and, when a rather fey young tutor engaged by the priests tried to introduce him to certain athletic techniques favoured by the classical Pseudopolitans, Teppic considered the suggestion for some time and then floored the youth with a hatstand.

Teppic hadn’t been educated. Education had just settled on him, like dandruff.

It started to rain, in the world outside his head. Another new experience. He’d heard about it, of course, how water came down out of the sky in small bits. He just hadn’t expected there to be so much of it. It never rained in Djelibeybi.

Masters moved among the boys like damp and slightly scruffy blackbirds, but he was eyeing a group of older students lolling near the pillared entrance to the school. They also wore black - different colours of black.

That was his first introduction to the tertiary colours, the colours on the far side of blackness, the colours that you get if you split blackness with an eight-sided prism. They are also almost impossible to describe in a non-magical environment, but if someone were to try they’d probably start by telling you to smoke something illegal and take a good look at a starling’s wing. The seniors were critically inspecting the new arrivals.

Teppic stared at them. Apart from the colours, their clothes were cut off the edge of the latest fashion, which was currently inclining towards wide hats, padded shoulders, narrow waists and pointed shoes and gave its followers the appearance of being very well-dressed nails.

I’m going to be like them, he told himself.

Although probably better dressed, he added.

He recalled Uncle Vyrt, sitting out on the steps overlooking the Djel on one of his brief, mysterious visits. “Satin and leather are no good. Or jewellery of any kind. You can’t have anything that will shine or squeak or clink. Stick to rough silk or velvet. The important thing is not how many people you inhume, it’s how many fail to inhume you.”

He’d been moving at an unwise pace, which might assist now. As he arced over the emptiness of the alley he twisted in the air, thrust out his arms desperately, and felt his fingertips brush a ledge on the building opposite. It was enough to pivot him; he swung around, hit the crumbling brickwork with sufficient force to knock what remained of his breath out of him, and slid down the sheer wall.

“Boy!”

Teppic looked up. There was a senior assassin standing beside him, with a purple teaching sash over his robes. It was the first assassin he’d seen, apart from Vyrt. The man was pleasant enough. You could imagine him making sausages.

“Are you talking to me?” he said.

“You will stand up when you address a master,” said the rosy face.

“I will?” Teppic was fascinated. He wondered how this could be achieved. Discipline had not hitherto been a major feature in his life. Most of his tutors had been sufficiently unnerved by the sight of the king occasionally perched on top of a door that they raced through such lessons as they had and then locked themselves in their rooms.

“I will sir,” said the teacher. He consulted the list in his hand.

“What is your name, boy?” he continued.

“Prince Pteppic of the Old Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Sun,” said Teppic easily. “I appreciate you are ignorant of the etiquette, but you should not call me sir, and you should touch the ground with your forehead when you address me.”

“Pateppic, is it?” said the master.

“No. Pteppic.”

“Ah. Teppic,” said the master, and ticked off a name on his list. He gave Teppic a generous smile.

“Well, now, your majesty,” he said, “I am Grunworth Nivor, your housemaster. You are in Viper House. To my certain knowledge there are at least eleven Kingdoms of the Sun on the Disc and, before the end of the week, you will present me with a short essay detailing their geographical location, political complexion, capital city or principal seat of government, and a suggested route into the bed- chamber of the head of state of your choice. However, in all the world there is only one Viper House. Good morning to you, boy.”

He turned away and homed in on another cowering pupil. “He’s not a bad sort,” said a voice behind Teppic. “Anyway, all the stuffs in the library. I’ll show you if you like. I’m Chidder.

Teppic turned. He was being addressed by a boy of about his own age and height, whose black suit - plain black, for First Years - looked as though it had been nailed on to him in bits. The youth was holding out a hand. Teppic gave it a polite glance.

“Yes?” he said.

“What’s your name, kiddo?”

Teppic drew himself up. He was getting fed up with this treatment. “Kiddo? I’ll have you know the blood of pharaohs runs in my veins!”

The other boy looked at him unabashed, with his head on one side and a faint smile on his face.

“Would you like it to stay there?” he said.

The baker was just along the alley, and a handful of the staff had stepped out into the comparative cool of the pre-dawn air for a quick smoke and a break from the desert heat of the ovens. Their chattering spiralled up to Teppic, high in the shadows, gripping a fortuitous window sill while his feet scrabbled for a purchase among the bricks.

It’s not that bad, he told himself. You’ve tackled worse. The hubward face of the Patrician’s palace last winter, for example, when all the gutters had overflowed and the walls were solid ice. This isn’t much more than a 3, maybe a 3.2. You and old Chiddy used to go up walls like this rather than stroll down the street, it’s just a matter of perspective.

Perspective. He glanced down, at seventy feet of infinity. Splat City, man, get a grip on yourself. On the wall. His right foot found a worn section of mortar, into which his toes planted themselves with barely a conscious instruction from a brain now feeling too fragile to take more than a distant interest in the proceedings.

He took a breath, tensed, and then dropped one hand to his belt, seized a dagger, and thrust it between the bricks beside him before gravity worked out what was happening. He paused, panting, waiting for gravity to lose interest in him again, and then swung his body sideways and tried the same thing a second time.

Down below one of the bakers told a suggestive joke, and brushed a speck of mortar from his ear. As his colleagues laughed Teppic stood up in the moonlight, balancing on two slivers of Klatchian steel, and gently walked his palms up the wall to the window whose sill had been his brief salvation.

It was wedged shut. A good blow would surely open it, but only at about the same moment as it sent him reeling back into empty air. Teppic sighed and, moving with the delicacy of a watchmaker, drew his diamond compasses from their pouch and dragged a slow, gentle circle on the dusty glass. . .

“You carry it yourself,” said Chidder. “That’s the rule around here.”

Teppic looked at the trunk. It was an intriguing notion. “At home we’ve people who do that,” he said. “Eunuchs and so on.

“You should of brought one with you.”

“They don’t travel well,” said Teppic. In fact he’d adamantly refused all suggestions that a small retinue should accompany him, and Dios had sulked for days. That was not how a member of the royal blood should go forth into the world, he said. Teppic had remained firm. He was pretty certain that assassins weren’t expected to go about their business accompanied by handmaidens and buglers. Now, however, the idea seemed to have some merit. He gave the trunk an experimental heave, and managed to get it across his shoulders.

“Your people are pretty rich, then?” said Chidder, ambling along beside him.

Teppic thought about this. “No, not really,” he said. “They mainly grow melons and garlic and that kind of thing. And stand in the streets and shout “hurrah”.”

“This is your parents you’re talking about?” said Chidder, puzzled.

“Oh, them? No, my father’s a pharaoh. My mother was a concubine. I think.”

“I thought that was some sort of vegetable.”

“I don’t think so. We’ve never really discussed it. Anyway, she died when I was young.”

“How dreadful,” said Chidder cheerfully.

“She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile.” Teppic tried politely not to be hurt at the boy’s reaction.

“My father’s in commerce,” said Chidder, as they passed through the archway.

“That’s fascinating,” said Teppic dutifully. He felt quite broken by all these new experiences, and added, “I’ve never been to Commerce, but I understand they’re very fine people.”

Over the next hour or two Chidder, who ambled gently through life as though he’d already worked it all out, introduced Teppic to the various mysteries of the dormitories, the classrooms and the plumbing. He left the plumbing until last, for all sorts of reasons.

“Not any?” he said.

“There’s buckets and things,” said Teppic vaguely, “and lots of servants.”

“Bit old fashioned, this kingdom of yours?”

Teppic nodded. “It’s the pyramids,” he said. “They take all the money.”

“Expensive things, I should imagine.”

“Not particularly. They’re just made of stone.” Teppic sighed. “We’ve got lots of stone,” he said, “and sand. Stone and sand. We’re really big on them. If you ever need any stone and sand, we’re the people for you. It’s fitting out the insides that is really expensive. We’re still avoiding paying for grandfather’s, and that wasn’t very big. Just three chambers.” Teppic turned and looked out of the window; they were back in the dormitory at this point.

“The whole kingdom’s in debt,” he said, quietly. “I mean even our debts are in debt. That’s why I’m here, really. Someone in our house needs to earn some money. A royal prince can’t hang around looking ornamental any more. He’s got to get out and do something useful in the community.”

Chidder leaned on the window sill.

“Couldn’t you take some of the stuff out of the pyramids, then?” he said.

“Don’t be silly.”

“Sorry.”

Teppic gloomily watched the figures below.

“There’s a lot of people here,” he said, to change the subject. “I didn’t realise it would be so big.” He shivered. “Or so cold,” he added.

“People drop out all the time,” said Chidder. “Can’t stand the course. The important thing is to know what’s what and who’s who. See that fellow over there?”

Teppic followed his pointing finger to a group of older students, who were lounging against the pillars by the entrance.

“The big one? Face like the end of your boot?”

“That’s Fliemoe. Watch out for him. If he invites you for toast in his study, don’t go.”

“And who’s the little kid with the curls?” said Teppic. He pointed to a small lad receiving the attentions of a washed-out looking lady. She was licking her handkerchief and dabbing apparent smudges off his face. When she stopped that, she straightened his tie.

Chidder craned to see. “Oh, just some new kid,” he said. “Arthur someone. Still hanging on to his mummy, I see. He won’t last long.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Teppic. “We do, too, and we’ve lasted for thousands of years.”

A disc of glass dropped into the silent building and tinkled on the floor. There was no other sound for several minutes. Then there was the faint clonk-clonk of an oil can. A shadow that had been lying naturally on the window sill, a morgue for blue-bottles, turned out to be an arm which was moving with vegetable slowness towards the window’s catch.

There was a scrape of metal, and then the whole window swung out in tribological silence.

Teppic dropped over the sill and vanished into the shadow below it.

For a minute or two the dusty space was filled with the intense absence of noise caused by someone moving with extreme care. Once again there was the squirting of oil, and then a metallic whisper as the bolt of a trapdoor leading on to the roof moved gently aside.

Teppic waited for his breath to catch up with him, and in that moment heard the sound. It was down among the white noise at the edge of hearing, but there was no doubt about it. Someone was waiting just above the trapdoor, and they’d just put their hand on a piece of paper to stop it rattling in the breeze.

His own hand dropped from the bolt. He eased his way with exquisite care back across the greasy floor and felt his way along a rough wooden wall until he came to the door. This time he took no chances, but uncorked his oil can and let a silent drop fall on to the hinges.

A moment later he was through. A rat, idly patrolling the draughty passage beyond, had to stop itself from swallowing its own tongue as he floated past.

There was another doorway at the end, and a maze of musty storerooms until he found a stairway. He judged himself to be about thirty yards from the trapdoor. There hadn’t been any flues that he could see. There ought to be a clear shot across the roof.

He hunkered down and pulled out his knife roll, its velvet blackness making a darker oblong in the shadows. He selected a Number Five, not everyone’s throwing knife, but worthwhile if you had the trick of it.

Shortly afterwards his head rose very carefully over the edge of the roof, one arm bent behind it but ready to uncurl in a complex interplay of forces that would combine to send a few ounces of steel gliding across the night.

Mericet was sitting by the trapdoor, looking at his clipboard. Teppic’s eyes swivelled to the oblong of the plank bridge, stored meticulously against the parapet a few feet away.

He was certain he had made no noise. He’d have to swear that the examiner heard the sound of his gaze falling on him.

The old man raised his bald head.

“Thank you, Mr Teppic,” he said, “you may proceed.”

Teppic felt the sweat of his body grow cold. He stared at the plank, and then at the examiner, and then at his knife. “Yes, sir,” he said. This didn’t seem like enough, in the circumstances. He added, “Thank you, sir.”

He’d always remember the first night in the dormitory. It was long enough to accommodate all eighteen boys in Viper House, and draughty enough to accommodate the great outdoors. Its designer may have had comfort in mind, but only so that he could avoid it wherever possible: he had contrived a room that could actually be colder than the weather outside.

“I thought we got rooms to ourselves,” said Teppic.

Chidder, who had laid claim to the least exposed bed in the whole refrigerator, nodded at him.

“Later on,” he said. He lay back, and winced. “Do they sharpen these springs, do you reckon?”

Teppic said nothing. The bed was in fact rather more comfortable than the one he’d slept in at home. His parents, being high born, naturally tolerated conditions for their children which would have been rejected out of hand by destitute sandflies.

He stretched out on the thin mattress and analysed the day’s events. He’d been enrolled as an assassin, all right, a student assassin, for more than seven hours and they hadn’t even let him lay a hand on a knife yet. Of course, tomorrow was another day . . .

Chidder leaned over.

“Where’s Arthur?” he said.

Teppic looked at the bed opposite him. There was a pathetically small sack of clothing positioned neatly in its centre, but no sign of its intended occupant.

“Do you think he’s run away?” he said, staring around at the shadows.

“Could be,” said Chidder. “It happens a lot, you know. Mummy’s boys, away from home for the first time-”

The door at the end of the room swung open slowly and Arthur entered, backwards, tugging a large and very reluctant billy goat. It fought him every step of the way down the aisle between the bedsteads.

The boys watched in silence for several minutes as he tethered the animal to the end of his bed, upended the sack on the blankets, and took out several black candles, a sprig of herbs, a rope of skulls, and a piece of chalk. Taking the chalk, and adopting the shiny, pink-faced expression of someone who is going to do what they know to be right no matter what, Arthur drew a double circle around his bed and then, getting down on his chubby knees, filled the space between them with as unpleasant a collection of occult symbols as Teppic had ever seen. When they were completed to his satisfaction he placed the candles at strategic points and lit them; they spluttered and gave off a smell that suggested that you really wouldn’t want to know what they were made of. He drew a short, red-handled knife from the jumble on the bed and advanced towards the goat-

A pillow hit him on the back of the head.

“Garn! Pious little bastard!”

Arthur dropped the knife and burst into tears. Chidder sat up in bed.

“That was you, Cheesewright!” he said. “I saw you!” Cheesewright, a skinny young man with red hair and a face that was one large freckle, glared at him.

“Well, it’s too much,” he said. “A fellow can’t sleep with all this religion going on. I mean, only little kids say their prayers at bedtime these days, we’re supposed to be learning to be assassins-”

“You can jolly well shut up, Cheesewright,” shouted Chidder. “It’d be a better world if more people said their prayers, you know. I know I don’t say mine as often as I should-”

A pillow cut him off in mid-sentence. He bounded out of bed and vaulted at the red-haired boy, fists flailing.

As the rest of the dormitory gathered around the scuffling pair Teppic slid out of bed and padded over to Arthur, who was sitting on the edge of his bed and sobbing.

He patted him uncertainly on the shoulder, on the basis that this sort of thing was supposed to reassure people.

“I shouldn’t cry about it, youngster,” he said, gruffly.

“But - but all the runes have been scuffed,” said Arthur. “It’s all too late now! And that means the Great Om will come in the night and wind out my entrails on a stick!”

“Does it?”

“And suck out my eyes, my mother said!”

“Gosh!” said Teppic, fascinated. “Really?” He was quite glad his bed was opposite Arthur’s, and would offer an unrivalled view. “What religion would this be?”

“We’re Strict Authorised Ormits,” said Arthur. He blew his nose. “I noticed you don’t pray,” he said. “Don’t you have a god?”

“Oh yes,” said Teppic hesitantly, “no doubt about that.”

“You don’t seem to want to talk to him.”

Teppic shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, “not here. He wouldn’t be able to hear, you see.”

“My god can hear me anywhere,” said Arthur fervently.

“Well, mine has difficulty if you’re on the other side of the room,” said Teppic. “It can be very embarrassing.”

“You’re not an Offlian, are you?” said Arthur. Offler was a Crocodile God, and lacked ears.

“No.”

“What god do you worship, then?”

“Not exactly worship,” said Teppic, discomforted. “I wouldn’t say worship. I mean, he’s all right. He’s my father, if you must know.”

Arthur’s pink-rimmed eyes widened.

“You’re the son of a god?” he whispered.

“It’s all part of being a king, where I come from,” said Teppic hurriedly. “He doesn’t have to do very much. That is, the priests do the actual running of the country. He just makes sure that the river floods every year, d’you see, and services the Great Cow of the Arch of the Sky. Well, used to.”

“The Great-”

“My mother,” explained Teppic. “It’s all very embarrassing.”

“Does he smite people?”

“I don’t think so. He’s never said.”

Arthur reached down to the end of the bed. The goat, in the confusion, had chewed through its rope and trotted out of the door, vowing to give up religion in future.

“I’m going to get into awful trouble,” he said. “I suppose you couldn’t ask your father to explain things to the Great OM?”

“He might be able to,” said Teppic doubtfully. “I was going to write home tomorrow anyway.”

“The Great Orm is normally to be found in one of the Nether Hells,” said Arthur, “where he watches everything we do. Everything I do, anyway. There’s only me and mother left now, and she doesn’t do much that needs watching.”

“I’ll be sure and tell him.”

“Do you think the Great Orm will come tonight?”

“I shouldn’t think so. I’ll ask my father to be sure and tell him not to.”

At the other end of the dormitory Chidder was kneeling on Cheesewright’s back and knocking his head repeatedly against the wall.

“Say it again,” he commanded. “Come on - “There’s nothing wrong-““

“”There’s nothing wrong with a chap being man enough-“ curse you, Chidder, you beastly-”

“I can’t hear you, Cheesewright,” said Chidder.

“”Man enough to say his prayers in front of other chaps”, you rotter.”

“Right. And don’t you forget it.”

After lights out Teppic lay in bed and thought about religion. It was certainly a very complicated subject.

The valley of the Djel had its own private gods, gods which had nothing to do with the world outside. It had always been very proud of the fact. The gods were wise and just and regulated the lives of men with skill and foresight, there was no question about that, but there were some puzzles.

For example, he knew his father made the sun come up and the river flood and so on. That was basic, it was what the pharaohs had done ever since the time of Khuft, you couldn’t go around questioning things like that. The point was, though, did he just make the sun come up in the Valley or everywhere in the world? Making the sun come up in the Valley seemed a more reasonable proposition, after all, his father wasn’t getting any younger, but it was rather difficult to imagine the sun coming up everywhere else and not the Valley, which led to the distressing thought that the sun would come up even if his father forgot about it, which was a very likely state of affairs. He’d never seen his father do anything much about making the sun rise, he had to admit. You’d expect at least a grunt of effort round about the dawn. His father never got up until after breakfast. The sun came up just the same.

He took some time to get to sleep. The bed, whatever Chidder said, was too soft, the air was too cold and, worst of all, the sky outside the high windows was too dark. At home it would have been full of flarelight from the necropolis, its silent flames eerie but somehow familiar and comforting, as though the ancestors were watching over their valley. He didn’t like the darkness.

The following night in the dormitory one of the boys from further along the coast shyly tried to put the boy in the next bed inside a wickerwork cage he made in Craft and set fire to him, and the night after that Snoxall, who had the bed by the door and came from a little country out in the forests somewhere, painted himself green and asked for volunteers to have their intestines wound around a tree. On Thursday a small war broke out between those who worshipped the Mother Goddess in her aspect of the Moon and those who worshipped her in her aspect of a huge fat woman with enormous buttocks. After that the masters intervened and explained that religion, while a fine thing, could be taken too far.

Teppic had a suspicion that unpunctuality was unforgivable. But surely Mericet would have to be at the tower ahead of him? And he was going by the direct route. The old man couldn’t possibly get there before him. Mind you, he couldn’t possibly have got to the bridge in the alley first . . . He must have taken the bridge away before he met me and then he climbed up on the roof while I was climbing up the wall, Teppic told himself, without believing a word of it.

He ran along a roof ridge, senses alert for dislodged tiles or tripwires. His imagination equipped every shadow with watching figures.

The gong tower loomed ahead of him. He paused, and looked at it. He had seen it a thousand times before, and scaled it many times although it barely rated a 1.8, notwithstanding that the brass dome on top was an interesting climb. It was just a familiar landmark. That made it worse now; it bulked in front of him, a stubby menacing shape against the greyness of the sky.

He advanced more slowly now, approaching the tower obliquely across the sloping roof. It came to him that his initials were there, on the dome, along with Chiddy’s and those of hundreds of other young assassins, and that they’d carry on being up there even if he died tonight. It was sort of comforting. Only not very.

He unslung his rope and made an easy throw on to the wide parapet that ran around the tower, just under the dome. He tested it, and heard the gentle clink as it caught.

Then he tugged it as hard as possible, bracing himself with one foot on a chimney stack.

Abruptly, and with no sound, a section of parapet slid outwards and dropped.

There was a crash as it hit the roof below and then slid down the tiles. Another pause was punctuated by a distant thump as it hit the silent street. A dog barked.

Stillness ruled the rooftops. Where Teppic had been the breeze stirred the burning air.

After several minutes he emerged from the deeper shadow of a chimney stack, smiling a strange and terrible smile.

Nothing the examiner could do could possibly be unfair. An assassin’s clients were invariably rich enough to pay for extremely ingenious protection, up to and including hiring assassins of his own*. (* It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free) Mericet wasn’t trying to kill him; he was merely trying to make him kill himself.

He sidled up to the base of the tower and found a drainpipe. It hadn’t been coated with slipall, rather to his surprise, but his gently questing fingers did find the poisoned needles painted black and glued to the inner face of the pipe. He removed one with his tweezers and sniffed it.

Distilled bloat. Pretty expensive stuff, with an astonishing effect. He took a small glass phial from his belt and collected as many needles as he could find, and then put on his armoured gloves and, with the speed of a sloth, started to climb.

“Now it may well be that, as you travel across the city on your lawful occasions, you will find yourselves in opposition to fellow members, even one of the gentlemen with whom you are currently sharing a bench. And this is quite right and /what are you doing Mr Chidder no don’t tell me I’m sure I wouldn’t want to know see me afterwards/ proper. It is open to everyone to defend themselves as best they may. There are, however, other enemies who will dog your steps and against whom you are all ill-prepared /who are they Mr Cheesewright?”/

Mericet spun round from his blackboard like a vulture who has just heard a death-rattle and pointed the chalk at Cheesewright, who gulped.

“Thieves’ Guild, sir?” he managed.

“Step out here, boy.”

There were whispered rumours in the dormitories about what Mericet had done to slovenly pupils in the past, which were always vague but horrifying. The class relaxed. Mericet usually concentrated on one victim at a time, so all they had to do now was look keen and enjoy the show. Crimson to his ears, Cheesewright got to his feet and trooped down the aisle between the desks.

The master inspected him thoughtfully.

“Well, now,” he said, “and here we have Cheesewright, G., skulking across the quaking rooftops. See the determined ears. See the firm set of those knees.”

The class tittered dutifully. Cheesewright gave them an idiotic grin and rolled his eyes.

“But what are these sinister figures that march in step with him, hey? /Since you find this so funny, Mr Teppic, perhaps you would be so good as to tell Mr Cheesewright?”/

Teppic froze in mid-laugh.

Mericet’s gaze bored into him. He’s just like Dios the high priest, Teppic thought. Even father’s frightened of Dios.

He knew what he ought to do, and he was damned if he was going to do it. He ought to be scared.

“Ill-preparedness,” he said. “Carelessness. Lack of concentration. Poor maintenance of tools. Oh, and over-confidence, sir.”

Mericet held his gaze for some time, but Teppic had practised on the palace cats.

Finally the teacher gave a brief smile that had absolutely nothing to do with humour, tossed the chalk in the air, caught it again, and said: “Mr Teppic is exactly right. Especially about the over-confidence.”

There was a ledge leading to an invitingly open window. There was oil on the ledge, and Teppic invested several minutes in screwing small crampons into cracks in the stonework before advancing.

He hung easily by the window and proceeded to take a number of small metal rods from his belt. They were threaded at the ends, and after a few seconds’ brisk work he had a rod about three feet long on the end of which he affixed a small mirror.

That revealed nothing in the gloom beyond the opening. He pulled it back and tried again, this time attaching his hood into which he’d stuffed his gloves, to give the impression of a head cautiously revealing itself against the light. He was confident that it would pick up a bolt or a dart, but it remained resolutely unattacked.

He was chilly now, despite the heat of the night. Black velvet looked good, but that was about all you could say for it. The excitement and the exertion meant he was now wearing several pints of clammy water.

He advanced.

There was a thin black wire on the window sill, and a serrated blade screwed to the sash window above it. It was the work of a moment to wedge the sash with more rods and then cut the wire; the window dropped a fraction of an inch. He grinned in the darkness.

A sweep with a long rod inside the room revealed that there was a floor, apparently free of obstructions. There was also a wire at about chest height. He drew the rod back, affixed a small hook on the end, sent it back, caught the wire, and tugged.

There came the dull smack of a crossbow bolt hitting old plaster.

A lump of clay on the end of the same rod, pushed gently across the floor, revealed several caltraps. Teppic hauled them back and inspected them with interest. They were copper. If he’d tried the magnet technique, which was the usual method, he wouldn’t have found them.

He thought for a while. He had slip-on priests in his pouch. They were devilish things to prowl around a room in, but he shuffled into them anyway. (Priests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.) Mericet was a poisons man, after all. Bloat! If he tipped them with that Teppic would plate himself all over the walls. They wouldn’t need to bury him, they’d just redecorate over the top.* (* Bloat is extracted from the deep sea blowfish, Singularis minutia gigantica, which protects itself from enemies by inflating itself to many times its normal size. If taken by humans the effect is to make every cell in the body instantaneously try to swell some 2,000 times. This is invariably fatal, and very loud.)

The rules. Mericet would have to obey the rules. He couldn’t simply kill him, with no warning. He’d have to let him, by carelessness or over-confidence, kill himself.

He dropped lightly on to the floor inside the room and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. A few exploratory swings with the rods detected no more wires; there was a faint crunch underfoot as a priest crushed a caltrap.

“In your own time, Mr Teppic.”

Mericet was standing in a corner. Teppic heard the faint scratching of his pencil as he made a note. He tried to put the man out of his mind. He tried to think.

There was a figure lying on a bed. It was entirely covered by a blanket.

This was the last bit. This was the room where everything was decided. This was the bit the successful students never told you about. The unsuccessful ones weren’t around to ask.

Teppic’s mind filled up with options. At a time like this, he thought, some divine guidance would be necessary. Where are you, dad?

He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him at breakfast every day.

He unslung his crossbow and screwed its greased sections together. It wasn’t a proper weapon, but he’d run out of knives and his lips were too dry for the blowpipe.

There was a clicking from the corner. Mericet was idly tapping his teeth with his pencil.

It could be a dummy under there. How would he know? No, it had to be a real person. You heard tales. Perhaps he could try the rods- He shook his head, raised the crossbow, and took careful aim.

“Whenever you like Mr Teppic.”

This was it.

This was where they found out if you could kill.

This was what he had been trying to put out of his mind.

He knew he couldn’t.

Octeday afternoons was Political Expediency with Lady T’malia, one of the few women to achieve high office in the Guild. In the lands around the Circle Sea it was generally agreed that one way to achieve a long life was not to have a meal with her Ladyship. The jewellery of one hand alone carried enough poison to inhume a small town. She was stunningly beautiful, but with the kind of calculated beauty that is achieved by a team of skilled artists, manicurists, plasterers, corsetiers and dressmakers and three hours’ solid work every morning. When she walked there was a faint squeak of whalebone under incredible stress.

The boys were learning. As she talked they didn’t watch her figure. They watched her fingers.

“And thus,” she said, “let us consider the position before the founding of the Guild. In this city, and indeed in many places elsewhere, civilisation is nurtured and progresses by the dynamic interplay of interests among many large and powerful advantage cartels.

“In the days before the founding of the Guild the seeking of advancement among these consortia invariably resulted in regrettable disagreements which were terminated with extreme prejudice. These were extremely deleterious to the common interest of the city. Please understand that where disharmony rules, commerce flags.

“And yet, and yet.” She clasped her hands to her bosom. There was a creak like a galleon beating against a gale.

“Clearly there was a need for an extreme yet responsible means of settling irreconcilable differences,” she went on, “and thus was laid the groundwork for the Guild. What bliss - “ the sudden peak in her voice guiltily jerked several dozen young men out of their private reveries - “it must have been to have been present in those early days, when men of stout moral purpose set out to forge the ultimate political tool short of warfare. How fortunate you are now, in training for a guild which demands so much in terms of manners, deportment, bearing and esoteric skills, and yet offers a power once the preserve only of the gods. Truly, the world is the mollusc of your choice . . .”

Chidder translated much of this behind the stables during the dinner break.

“I know what Terminate with Extreme Prejudice means,” said Cheesewright loftily. “It means to inhume with an axe.”

“It bloody well doesn’t,” said Chidder.

“How do you know, then?”

“My family have been in commerce for years,” said Chidder.

“Huh,” said Cheesewright. “Commerce.”

Chidder never went into details about what kind of commerce it was. It had something to do with moving items around and supplying needs, but exactly what items and which needs was never made clear.

After hitting Cheesewright he explained carefully that Terminate with Extreme Prejudice did not simply require that the victim was inhumed, preferably in an extremely thorough way, but that his associates and employees were also intimately involved, along with the business premises, the building, and a large part of the surrounding neighbourhood, so that everyone involved would know that the man had been unwise enough to make the kind of enemies who could get very angry and indiscriminate.

“Gosh,” said Arthur.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Chidder, “one Hogswatchnight my grandad and his accounts department went and had a high-level business conference with the Hubside people and fifteen bodies were never found. Very bad, that sort of thing. Upsets the business community.”

“All the business community, or just that part of it floating face down in the river?” said Teppic.

“That’s the point. Better it should be like this,” said Chidder, shaking his head. “You know. Clean. That’s why my father said I should join the Guild. I mean, you’ve got to get on with the business these days, you can’t spend your whole time on public relations.”

The end of the crossbow trembled.

He liked everything else about the school, the climbing, the music studies, the broad education. It was the fact that you ended up killing people that had been preying on his mind. He’d never killed anyone.

That’s the whole point, he told himself. This is where everyone finds out if you can, including you.

If I get it wrong now, I’m dead.

In his corner, Mericet began to hum a discouraging little tune.

There was a price the Guild paid for its licence. It saw to it that there were no careless, half-hearted or, in a manner of speaking, murderously inefficient assassins. You never met anyone who’d failed the test.

People did fail. You just never met them. Maybe there was one under there, maybe it was Chidder, even, or Snoxall or any one of the lads. They were all doing the run this evening. Maybe if he failed he’d be bundled under there.

Teppic tried to sight on the recumbent figure.

“Ahem,” coughed the examiner.

His throat was dry. Panic rose like a drunkard’s supper.

His teeth wanted to chatter. His spine was freezing, his clothes a collection of damp rags. The world slowed down. No. He wasn’t going to. The sudden decision hit him like a brick in a dark alley, and was nearly as surprising. It wasn’t that he hated the Guild, or even particularly disliked Mericet, but this wasn’t the way to test anyone. It was just wrong.

He decided to fail. Exactly what could the old man do about it, here?

And he’d fail with flair.

He turned to face Mericet, looked peacefully into the examiner’s eyes, extended his crossbow hand in some vague direction to his right, and pulled the trigger.

There was a metallic twang.

There was a click as the bolt ricocheted off a nail in the window sill. Mericet ducked as it whirred over his head. It hit a torch bracket on the wall, and went past Teppic’s white face purring like a maddened cat.

There was a thud as it hit the blanket, and then silence.

“Thank you, Mr Teppic. If you could bear with me just one moment.”

The old assassin pored over his clipboard, his lips moving. He took the pencil, which dangled from it by a bit of frayed string, and made a few marks on a piece of pink paper.

“I will not ask you to take it from my hands,” he said, “what with one thing and another. I shall leave it on the table by the door.”

It wasn’t a particularly pleasant smile: it was thin and dried-up, a smile with all the warmth long ago boiled out of it; people normally smiled like that when they had been dead for about two years under the broiling desert sun. But at least you felt he was making the effort.

Teppic hadn’t moved. “I’ve passed?” he said.

“That would appear to be the case.”

“But-”

“I am sure you know that we are not allowed to discuss the test with pupils. However, I can tell you that I personally do not approve of these modern flashy techniques. Good morning to you.” And Mericet stalked out.

Teppic tottered over to the dusty table by the door and looked down, horrified, at the paper. Sheer habit made him extract a pair of tweezers from his pouch in order to pick it up.

It was genuine enough. There was the seal of the Guild on it, and the crabbed squiggle that was undoubtedly Mericet’s signature; he’d seen it often enough, generally at the bottom of test papers alongside comments like 3/10. See me.

He padded over to the figure on the bed and pulled back the blanket.

It was nearly one in the morning. Ankh-Morpork was just beginning to make a night of it.

It had been dark up above the rooftops, in the aerial world of thieves and assassins. But down below the life of the city flowed through the streets like a tide.

Teppic walked through the throng in a daze. Anyone else who tried that in the city was asking for a guided tour of the bottom of the river, but he was wearing assassin’s black and the crowd just automatically opened in front of him and closed behind. Even the pickpockets kept away. You never knew what you might find. He wandered aimlessly through the gates of the Guild House and sat down on a black marble seat, with his chin on his knuckles.

The fact was that his life had come to an end. He hadn’t thought about what was going to happen next. He hadn’t dared to think that there was going to be a next.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned, Chidder sat down beside him and wordlessly produced a slip of pink paper.

“Snap,” he said.

“You passed too?” said Teppic.

Chidder grinned. “No problem,” he said. “It was Nivor. No problem. He gave me a bit of trouble on the Emergency Drop, though. How about you?”

“Hmm? Oh. No.” Teppic tried to get a grip on himself. “No trouble,” he said.

“Heard from any of the others?”

“No.”

Chidder leaned back. “Cheesewright will make it,” he said loftily, “and young Arthur. I don’t think some of the others will. We could give them twenty minutes, what do you say?”

Teppic turned an agonised face towards him.

“Chiddy, I-

“What?”

“When it came to it, I-

“What about it?”

Teppic looked at the cobbles. “Nothing,” he said.

“You’re lucky - you just had a good airy run over the rooftops. I had the sewers and then up the garderobe in the Haberdashers’ Tower. I had to go in and change when I got here.”

“You had a dummy, did you?” said Teppic.

“Good grief, didn’t you?”

“But they let us think it was going to be real!” Teppic wailed.

“It felt real, didn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“Well, then. And you passed. So no problem.”

“But didn’t you wonder who might be under the blanket, who it was, and why-

“I was worried that I might not do it properly,” Chidder admitted. “But then I thought, well, it’s not up to me.”

“But I- “ Teppic stopped. What could he do? Go and explain? Somehow that didn’t seem a terribly good idea.

His friend slapped him on the back.

“Don’t worry about it!” he said. “We’ve done it!”

And Chidder held up his thumb pressed against the first two fingers of his right hand, in the ancient salute of the assassins.

A thumb pressed against two fingers, and the lean figure of Dr Cruces, head tutor, looming over the startled boys. “We do not murder,” he said. It was a soft voice; the doctor never raised his voice, but he had a way of giving it the pitch and spin that could make it be heard through a hurricane. “We do not execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or for petty advantage or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all these reasons are in the highest degree suspect. Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the click of evil’s scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language.

“No, we do it for the money.

“And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for the a great deal of money.

“There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of all pretence.

“Nil mortifi, sine lucre. Remember. No killing without payment.”

He paused for a moment.

“And always give a receipt,” he added.

“So it’s all okay,” said Chidder. Teppic nodded gloomily. That was what was so likeable about Chidder. He had this enviable ability to avoid thinking seriously about anything he did.

A figure approached cautiously through the open gates.* (* The gates of the Assassins’ Guild were never shut. This was said to be because Death was open for business all the time, but it was really because the hinges had rusted centuries before and no-one had got around to doing anything about it.)

The light from the torch in the porters’ lodge glinted off blond curly hair.

“You two made it, then,” said Arthur, nonchalantly flourishing the slip.

Arthur had changed quite a lot in seven years. The continuing failure of the Great Orm to wreak organic revenge for lack of piety had cured him of his tendency to run everywhere with his coat over his head. His small size gave him a natural advantage in those areas of the craft involving narrow spaces. His innate aptitude for channelled violence had been revealed on the day when Fliemoe and some cronies had decided it would be fun to toss the new boys in a blanket, and picked Arthur first; ten seconds later it had taken the combined efforts of every boy in the dormitory to hold Arthur back and prise the remains of the chair from his fingers. It had transpired that he was the son of the late Johan Ludorum, one of the greatest assassins in the history of the Guild. Sons of dead assassins always got a free scholarship. Yes, it could be a caring profession at times.

There hadn’t been any doubt about Arthur passing. He’d been given extra tuition and was allowed to use really complicated poisons. He was probably going to stay on for post-graduate work.

They waited until the gongs of the city struck two. Clock work was not a precise technology in Ankh-Morpork, and many of the city’s variuos communities had their own ideas of what constituted an hour in any case, so the chimes went on bouncing around the rooftops for five minutes.

When it was obvious that the city’s consensus was in favour of it being well past two the three of them stopped looking silently at their shoes.

“Well, that’s it,” said Chidder.

“Poor old Cheesewright,” said Arthur. “It’s tragic, when you think about it.”

“Yes, he owed me fourpence,” agreed Chidder. “Come on. I’ve arranged something for us.”

King Teppicymon XXVII got out of bed and clapped his hands over his ears to shut out the roar of the sea. It was strong tonight.

It was always louder when he was feeling out of sorts. He needed something to distract himself. He could send for Ptraci, his favourite handmaiden. She was special. Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped.

Or there was the sunrise. That was always comforting. It was pleasant to sit wrapped in a blanket on the topmost roof of the palace, watching the mists lift from the river as the golden flood poured over the land. You got that warm, contented feeling of another job well done. Even if you didn’t actually know how you’d done it . . .

He got up, shuffled on his slippers, and padded out of his bedroom and down the wide corridor that led to the huge spiral stairs and the roof. A few rushlights illuminated the statues of the other local gods, painting the walls with shifting shadow pictures of things dog-headed, fish-bodied, spider-armed. He’d known them since childhood. His juvenile nightmares would have been quite formless without them.

The sea. He’d only seen it once, when he was a boy. He couldn’t recall a lot about it, except the size. And the noise. And the seagulls.

They’d preyed on his mind. They seemed to have it far better worked out, seagulls. He wished he could come back as one, one day, but of course that wasn’t an option if you were a pharaoh. You never came back. You didn’t exactly go away, in fact.

“Well, what is it?” said Teppic.

“Try it,” said Chidder, “just try it. You’ll never have the chance again.”

“Seems a shame to spoil it,” said Arthur gallantly looking down at the delicate pattern on his plate. “What are all the little red things?”

“They’re just radishes,” said Chidder dismissively. “They’re not the important part. Go on.”

Teppic reached over with the little wooden fork and skewered a paper-thin sliver of white fish. The squishi chef was scrutinising him with the air of one watching a toddler on his first birthday. So, he realised, was the rest of the restaurant.

He chewed it carefully. It was salty and faintly rubbery, with a hint of sewage outfall.

“Nice?” said Chidder anxiously. Several nearby diners started to clap.

“Different,” Teppic conceded, chewing. “What is it?”

“Deep sea blowfish,” said Chidder.

“It’s all right,” he said hastily as Teppic laid down his fork meaningfully, “it’s perfectly safe provided every bit of stomach, liver and digestive tract is removed, that’s why it cost so much, there’s no such thing as a second-best blowfish chef, it’s the most expensive food in the world, people write poems about it-”

“Could be a taste explosion,” muttered Teppic, getting a grip on himself. Still, it must have been done properly, otherwise the place would now be wearing him as wallpaper. He poked carefully at the sliced roots which occupied the rest of the plate.

“What do these do to you?” he said.

“Well, unless they’re prepared in exactly the right way over a six-week period they react catastrophically with your stomach acids,” said Chidder. “Sorry. I thought we should celebrate with the most expensive meal we could afford.”

“I see. Fish and chips for Men,” said Teppic.

“Do they have any vinegar in this place?” said Arthur, his mouth full. “And some mushy peas would go down a treat.”

But the wine was good. Not incredibly good, though. Not one of the great vintages. But it did explain why Teppic had gone through the whole of the day with a headache.

It had been the hangunder. His friend had bought four bottles of otherwise quite ordinary white wine. The reason it was so expensive was that the grapes it was made from hadn’t actually been planted yet.* (* Counterwise wine is made from grapes belonging to that class of flora - reannuals - that grow only in excessively high magic fields. Normal plants grow after the seeds have been planted, with reannuals it’s the other way round. Although reannual wine causes inebriation in the normal way, the action of the digestive system on its molecules causes an unusual reaction whose net effect is to thrust the ensuing hangover backwards in time, to a point some hours before the wine is drunk. Hence the saying: have a hair of the dog that’s going to bite you.

Light moves slowly, lazily on the Disc. It’s in no hurry to get anywhere. Why bother? At lightspeed, everywhere is the same place.

King Teppicymon XXVII watched the golden disc float over the edge of the world. A flight of cranes took off from the mist-covered river.

He’d been conscientious, he told himself. No-one had ever explained to him how one made the sun come up and the river flood and the corn grow. How could they? He was the god, after all. He should know. But he didn’t, so he’d just gone through life hoping like hell that it would all work properly, and that seemed to have done the trick. The trouble was, though, that if it didn’t work, he wouldn’t know why not. A recurrent nightmare was of Dios the high priest shaking him awake one morning, only it wouldn’t be a morning, of course, and of every light in the palace burning and an angry crowd muttering in the star-lit darkness outside and everyone looking expectantly at him. . .

And all he’d be able to say was, “Sorry”.

It terrified him. How easy to imagine the ice forming on the river, the eternal frost riming the palm trees and snapping off the leaves (which would smash when they hit the frozen ground) and the birds dropping lifeless from the sky

Shadow swept over him. He looked up through eyes misted with tears at a grey and empty horizon, his mouth dropping open in horror.

He stood up, flinging aside the blanket, and raised both hands in supplication. But the sun had gone. He was the god, this was his job, it was the only thing he was here to do, and he had failed the people.

Now he could hear in his mind’s ear the anger of the crowd, a booming roar that began to fill his ears until the rhythm became insistent and familiar, until it reached the point where it pressed in no longer but drew him out, into that salty blue desert where the sun always shone and sleek shapes wheeled across the sky.

The pharaoh raised himself on his toes, threw back his head, spread his wings. And leapt.

As he soared into the sky he was surprised to hear a thump behind him. And the sun came out from behind the clouds.

Later on, the pharaoh felt awfully embarrassed about it.

The three new assassins staggered slowly along the street, constantly on the point of falling over but never quite reaching it, trying to sing “A Wizard’s Staff Has A Knob On The End” in harmony or at least in the same key.

“Tis big an” i”ss round an” weighs three to the-” sang Chidder. “Blast, what’ve I stepped in?”

“Anyone know where we are?” said Arthur.

“We - we were headed for the Guildhouse,” said Teppic, “only must of took the wrong way, that’s the river up ahead. Can smell it.”

Caution penetrated Arthur’s armour of alcohol.

“Could be dangerous pep - plep - people around, this time o’ night,” he hazarded.

“Yep,” said Chidder, with satisfaction, “us. Got ticket to prove it. Got test and everything. Like to see anyone try anything with us.”

“Right,” agreed Teppic, leaning against him for support of a sort. “We’ll slit them from wossname to thingy.”

“Right!”

They lurched uncertainly out on to the Brass Bridge.

In fact there were dangerous people around in the pre-dawn shadows, and currently these were some twenty paces behind them.

The complex system of criminal Guilds had not actually made Ankh-Morpork a safer place, it just rationalised its dangers and put them on a regular and reliable footing. The major Guilds policed the city with more thoroughness and certainly more success than the old Watch had ever managed, and it was true that any freelance and unlicensed thief caught by the Thieves’ Guild would soon find himself remanded in custody by social inquiry reports plus having his knees nailed together*. (* When the Thieves’ Guild declared a General Strike in the Year of the Engaging Sloth, the actual level of crime doubled.)

However, there were always a few spirits who would venture a precarious living outside the lawless, and the five men of this description were closing cautiously on the trio to introduce them to this week’s special offer, a cut throat plus theft and burial in the river mud of your choice.

People normally keep out of the way of assassins because of an instinctive feeling that killing people for very large sums of money is disapproved of by the gods (who generally prefer people to be killed for very small sums of money or for free) and could result in hubris, which is the judgement of the gods. The gods are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans, and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away are turned into cruet.

However, assassin’s black doesn’t frighten everyone, and in certain sections of society there is a distinct cachet in killing an assassin. It’s rather like smashing a sixer in conkers.

Broadly, therefore, the three even now lurching across the deserted planks of the Brass Bridge were dead drunk assassins and the men behind them were bent on inserting the significant comma.

Chidder wandered into one of the heraldic wooden hippopotami* (*One of the two** legends about the founding of Ankh-Morpork relates that the two orphaned brothers who built the city were in fact found and suckled by a hippopotamus (lit. orijeple, although some historians hold that this is a mistranslation of orejaple, a type of glass-fronted drinks cabinet). Eight heraldic hippos line the bridge facing out to sea,. It is said that if danger ever threatens the city, they will run away.

(**The other legend, not normally recounted by the citizens, is that at an even earlier time a group of wise men survived a flood sent by the gods by building a huge boat, and on this boat they took two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After some weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water so - the story runs - they tipped it over the side, and called it Ankh-Morpork.) -that lined the seaward edge of the bridge, bounced off and flopped over the parapet.

“Feel sick,” he announced.

“Feel free,” said Arthur, “that’s what the river’s for.”

Teppic sighed. He was attached to rivers, which he felt were designed to have water lilies on top and crocodiles underneath, and the Ankh always depressed him because if you put a water lily in it, it would dissolve. It drained the huge silty plains all the way to the Ramtop mountains, and by the time it had passed through Ankh-Morpork, pop. One million, it could only be called a liquid because it moved faster than the land around it; actually being sick in it would probably make it, on average, marginally cleaner.

He stared down at the thin trickle that oozed between the central pillars, and then raised his gaze to the grey horizon.

“Sun’s coming up,” he announced.

“Don’t remember eating that,” muttered Chidder.

Teppic stepped back, and a knife ripped past his nose and buried itself in the buttocks of the hippo next to him.

Five figures stepped out of the mists. The three assassins instinctively drew together.

“You come near me, you’ll really regret it,” moaned Chidder, clutching his stomach. “The cleaning bill will be horrible.”

“Well now, what have we here?” said the leading thief. This is the sort of thing that gets said in these circumstances.

“Thieves’ Guild, are you?” said Arthur.

“No,” said the leader, “we’re the small and unrepresentative minority that gets the rest a bad name. Give us your valuables and weapons, please. This won’t make any difference to the outcome, you understand. It’s just that corpse robbing is unpleasant and degrading.”

“We could rush them,” said Teppic, uncertainly.

“Don’t look at me,” said Arthur, “I couldn’t find my arse with an atlas.”

“You’ll really be sorry when I’m sick,” said Chidder. Teppic was aware of the throwing knives stuffed up either sleeve, and that the chances of him being able to get hold of one in time still to be alive to throw it were likely to be very small.

At times like this religious solace is very important. He turned and looked towards the sun, just as it withdrew from the cloudbanks of the dawn.

There was a tiny dot in the centre of it.

The late King Teppicymon XXVII opened his eyes.

“I was flying,” he whispered, “I remember the feeling of wings. What am I doing here?”

He tried to stand up. There was a temporary feeling of heaviness, which suddenly dropped away so that he rose to his feet almost without any effort. He looked down to see what had caused it.

“Oh dear,” he said.

The culture of the river kingdom had a lot to say about death and what happened afterwards. In fact it had very little to say about life, regarding it as a sort of inconvenient prelude to the main event and something to be hurried through as politely as possible, and therefore the pharaoh reached the conclusion that he was dead very quickly. The sight of his mangled body on the sand below him played a major part in this.

There was a greyness about everything. The landscape had a ghostly look, as though he could walk straight through it. Of course, he thought, I probably can.

He rubbed the analogue of his hands. Well, this is it. This is where it gets interesting; this is where I start to really live.

Behind him a voice said, GOOD MORNING.

The king turned.

“Hallo,” he said. “You’d be-”

DEATH, said Death.

The king looked surprised.

“I understood that Death came as a three-headed giant scarab beetle,” he said.

Death shrugged. WELL. NOW YOU KNOW.

“What’s that thing in your hand?”

THIS? IT’S A SCYTHE.

“Strange-looking object, isn’t it?” said the pharaoh. “I thought Death carried the Flail of Mercy and the Reaping Hook of Justice.”

Death appeared to think about this.

WHAT IN? he said.

“Pardon?”

ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT A GIANT BEETLE?

“Ah. In his mandibles, I suppose. But I think he’s got arms in one of the frescoes in the palace.” The king hesitated. “Seems a bit silly, really, now I come to tell someone. I mean, a giant beetle with arms. And the head of an ibis, I seem to recall.”

Death sighed. He was not a creature of Time, and therefore past and future were all one to him, but there had been a period when he’d made an effort to appear in whatever form the client expected. This foundered because it was usually impossible to know what the client was expecting until after they were dead. And then he’d decided that, since no-one ever really expected to die anyway, he might as well please himself and he’d henceforth stuck to the familiar black-cowled robe, which was neat and very familiar and acceptable everywhere, like the best credit cards.

“Anyway,” said the pharaoh, “I expect we’d better be going.”

WHERE TO?

“Don’t you know?”

I AM HERE ONLY TO SEE THAT YOU DIE AT THE APPOINTED TIME. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS UP TO YOU.

“Well . . .” The king automatically scratched his chin. “I suppose I have to wait until they’ve done all the preparations and so forth. Mummified me. And built a bloody pyramid. Um. Do I have to hang around here to wait for all that?”

I ASSUME SO. Death clicked his fingers and a magnificent white horse ceased its grazing on some of the garden greenery and trotted towards him.

“Oh. Well, I think I shall look away. They take all the squishy inside bits out first, you know.” A look of faint worry crossed his face. Things that had seemed perfectly sensible when he was alive seemed a little suspect now that he was dead.

“It’s to preserve the body so that it may begin life anew in the Netherworld,” he added, in a slightly perplexed voice. “And then they wrap you in bandages. At least that seems logical.”

He rubbed his nose. “But then they put all this food and drink in the pyramid with you. Bit weird, really.”

WHERE ARE ONE’S INTERNAL ORGANS AT THIS POINT?

“That’s the funny thing, isn’t it? They’re in a jar in the next room,” said the king, his voice edged with doubt. “We even put a damn great model cart in dad’s pyramid.”

His frown deepened. “Solid wood, it was,” he said, half to himself, “with gold leaf all over it. And four wooden bullocks to pull it. Then we whacked a damn great stone over the door . . .”

He tried to think, and found that it was surprisingly easy. New ideas were pouring into his mind in a cold, clear stream. They had to do with the play of light on the rocks, the deep blue of the sky, the manifold possibilities of the world that stretched away on every side of him. Now that he didn’t have a body to importune him with its insistent demands the world seemed full of astonishments, but unfortunately among the first of them was the fact that much of what you thought was true now seemed as solid and reliable as marsh gas. And also that, just as he was fully equipped to enjoy the world, he was going to be buried inside a pyramid.

When you die, the first thing you lose is your life. The next thing is your illusions.

I CAN SEE YOU HAVE GOT A LOT TO THINK ABOUT, said Death, mounting up. AND NOW, IF YOU’LL EXCUSE ME-

“Hang on a moment-”

YES?

“When I . . . fell, I could have sworn that I was flying.”

THAT PART OF YOU THAT WAS DIVINE DID FLY, NATURALLY. YOU ARE NOW FULLY MORTAL.

“Mortal?”

TAKE IT FROM ME. I KNOW ABOUT THESE THINGS.

“Oh. Look, there’s quite a few questions I’d like to ask-”

THERE ALWAYS ARE. I’M SORRY. Death clapped his heels to his horse’s flanks, and vanished.

The king stood there as several servants came hurrying along the palace wall, slowed down as they approached his corpse, and advanced with caution.

“Are you all right, O jewelled master of the sun?” one of them ventured.

“No, I’m not,” snapped the king, who was having some of his basic assumptions about the universe severely raffled, and that never puts anyone in a good mood. “I’m by way of being dead just at the moment. Amazing, isn’t it,” he added bitterly.

“Can you hear us, O divine bringer of the morning?” inquired the other servant, tiptoeing closer.

“I’ve just fallen off a hundred foot wall on to my head, what do you think?” shouted the king.

“I don’t think he can hear us, Jahmet,” said the other servant.

“Listen,” said the king, whose urgency was equalled only by the servants’ total inability to hear anything he was saying, “you must find my son and tell him to forget about the pyramid business, at least until I’ve thought about it a bit, there are one or two points which seem a little self-contradictory about the whole afterlife arrangements, and-”

“Shall I shout?” said Jahmet.

“I don’t think you can shout loud enough. I think he’s dead.”

Jahmet looked down at the stiffening corpse.

“Bloody hell,” he said eventually. “Well, that’s tomorrow up the spout for a start.”

The sun, unaware that it was making its farewell performance, continued to drift smoothly above the rim of the world. And out of it, moving faster than any bird should be able to fly, a seagull bore down on Ankh-Morpork, on the Brass Bridge and eight still figures, on one staring face .

Seagulls were common enough in Ankh. But as this one flew over the group it uttered one long, guttural scream that caused three of the thieves to drop their knives. Nothing with feathers ought to have been able to make a noise like that. It had claws in it.

The bird wheeled in a tight circle and fluttered to a perch on a convenient wooden hippo, where it glared at the group with mad red eyes.

The leading thief tore his fascinated gaze away from it just as he heard Arthur say, quite pleasantly, “This is a number two throwing knife. I got ninety-six per cent for throwing knives. Which eyeball don’t you need?”

The leader stared at him. As far as the other young assassins were concerned, he noticed, one was still staring fixedly at the seagull while the other was busy being noisily sick over the parapet.

“There’s only one of you,” he said. “There’s five of us.

“But soon there will only be four of you,” said Arthur. Moving slowly, like someone in a daze, Teppic reached out his hand to the seagull. With any normal seagull this would have resulted in the loss of a thumb, but the creature hopped on to it with the smug air of the master returning to the old plantation.

It seemed to make the thieves increasingly uneasy. Arthur’s smile wasn’t helping either.

“That’s a nice bird,” said the leader, in the inanely cheerful tones of the extremely worried. Teppic was dreamily stroking its bullet head.

“I think it would be a good idea if you went away,” said Arthur, as the bird shuffled sideways on to Teppic’s wrist. Gripping with webbed feet, thrusting out its wings to maintain its balance, it should have looked clownish but instead looked full of hidden power, as though it was an eagle’s secret identity. When it opened its mouth, revealing a ridiculous purple bird tongue, there was a suggestion that this seagull could do a lot more than menace a seaside tomato sandwich.

“Is it magic?” said one of the thieves, and was quickly hushed.

“We’ll be going, then,” said the leader, “sorry about the misunderstanding-”

Teppic gave him a warm, unseeing smile.

Then they all heard the insistent little noise. Six pairs of eyes swivelled around and down; Chidder’s were already in position.

Below them, pouring darkly across the dehydrated mud, the Ankh was rising.

Dios, First Minister and high priest among high priests, wasn’t a naturally religious man. It wasn’t a desirable quality in a high priest, it affected your judgement, made you unsound. Start believing in things and the whole business became a farce.

Not that he had anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people. The gods were necessary. He just required that they stayed out of the way and let him get on with things.

Mind you, it was a blessing that he had the looks for it. If your genes saw fit to give you a tall frame, a bald head and a nose you could plough rocks with, they probably had a definite aim in mind.

He instinctively distrusted people to whom religion came easily. The naturally religious, he felt, were unstable and given to wandering in the desert and having revelations - as if the gods would lower themselves to that sort of thing. And they never got anything done. They started thinking that rituals weren’t important. They started thinking that you could talk to the gods direct. Dios knew, with the kind of rigid and unbending certainty you could pivot the world on, that the gods of Djelibeybi liked ritual as much as anyone else. After all, a god who was against ritual would be like a fish who was against water.

He sat on the steps of the throne with his staff across his knees, and passed on the king’s orders. The fact that they were not currently being issued by any king was not a problem. Dios had been high priest now for, well, more years than he cared to remember, he knew quite clearly what orders a sensible king would be giving, and he gave them.

Anyway, the Face of the Sun was on the throne, and that was what mattered. It was a solid gold, head-enveloping mask, to be worn by the current ruler on all public occasions; its expression, to the sacrilegious, was one of good-natured constipation. For thousands of years it had symbolised kingship in Djelibeybi. It had also made it very difficult to tell kings apart.

This was extremely symbolic as well, although no-one could remember what of.

There was a lot of that sort of thing in the Old Kingdom. The staff across his knees, for example, with its very symbolic snakes entwined symbolically around an allegorical camel prod. The people believed this gave the high priests power over the gods and the dead, but this was probably a metaphor, i.e., a lie.

Dios shifted position.

“Has the king been ushered to the Room of Going Forth?” he said.

The circle of lesser high priests nodded.

“Dil the embalmer is attending upon him at this instant, O Dios.”

“Very well. And the builder of pyramids has been instructed?” Hoot Koomi, high priest of Khefin, the Two-Faced God of Gateways, stepped forward.

“I took the liberty of attending to that myself, O Dios,” he purred.

Dios tapped his fingers on his staff. “Yes,” he said, “I have no doubt that you did.”

It was widely expected by the priesthood that Koomi would be the one to succeed Dios in the event of Dios ever actually dying, although hanging around waiting for Dios to die had never seemed to be a rewarding occupation. The only dissenting opinion was that of Dios himself, who, if he had any friends, would probably have confided in them certain conditions that would need to apply first, viz., blue moons, aerial pigs and he, Dios, being seen in Hell. He would probably have added that the only difference between Koomi and a sacred crocodile was the crocodile’s basic honesty of purpose.

“Very well,” he said.

“If I may remind your lordship?” said Koomi. The faces of the other priests went a nice safe blank as Dios glared.

“Yes, Koomi?”

“The prince, O Dios. Has he been summoned?”

“No,” said Dios.

“Then how will he know?” said Koomi.

“He will know,” said Dios firmly.

“How will this be?”

“He will know. And now you are all dismissed. Go away. See to your gods!”

They scurried out, leaving Dios alone on the steps. It had been his accustomed position for so long that he’d polished a groove in the stonework, into which he fitted exactly.

Of course the prince would know. It was part of the neatness of things. But in the grooves of his mind, ground deep by the years of ritual and due observance, Dios detected a certain uneasiness. It was not at home in there. Uneasiness was something that happened to other people. He hadn’t got where he was today by allowing room for doubt. Yet there was a tiny thought back there, a tiny certainty, that there was going to be trouble with this new king.

Well. The boy would soon learn. They all learned.

He shifted position, and winced. The aches and pains were back, and he couldn’t allow that. They got in the way of his duty, and his duty was a sacred trust.

He’d have to visit the necropolis again. Tonight.

“He’s not himself, you can see that.”

“Who is he, then?” said Chidder.

They splashed unsteadily down the street, not drunkenly this time, but with the awkward gait of two people trying to do the steering for three. Teppic was walking, but not in a way that gave them any confidence that his mind was having any part of it.

Around them doors were being thrown open, curses were being cursed, there was the sound of furniture being dragged up to first-floor rooms.

“Must have been a hell of a storm up in the mountains,” said Arthur. “It doesn’t usually flood like this even in the spring.”

“Maybe we should burn some feathers under his nose,” suggested Chidder.

“That bloody seagull would be favourite,” Arthur growled.

“What seagull?”

“You saw it.”

“Well, what about it?”

“You did see it, didn’t you?” Uncertainty flickered its dark flame in Arthur’s eyes. The seagull had disappeared in all the excitement.

“My attention was a bit occupied,” said Chidder diffidently. “It must have been those mint wafers they served with the coffee. I thought they were a bit off.”

“Definitely a touch eldritch, that bird,” said Arthur. “Look, let’s put him down somewhere while I empty the water out of my boots, can we?”

There was a bakery nearby, its doors thrown open so that the trays of new loaves could cool in the early morning. They propped Teppic against the wall.

“He looks as though someone hit him on the head,” said Chidder. “No-one did, did they?”

Arthur shook his head. Teppic’s face was locked in a gentle grin. Whatever his eyes were focused on wasn’t occupying the usual set of dimensions.

“We ought to get him back to the Guild and into the san-” He stopped. There was a peculiar rustling sound behind him. The loaves of bread were bouncing gently on their trays. One or two of them vibrated on to the floor, where they spun around like overturned beetles.

Then, their crusts cracking open like eggshells, they sprouted hundreds of green shoots.

Within a few seconds the trays were waving stands of young corn, their heads already beginning to fill out and bend over. Through them marched Chidder and Arthur, poker-faced, doing the 100-metre nonchalant walk with Teppic held rigidly between them.

“Is it him doing all this?”

“I’ve got a feeling that-” Arthur looked behind them, just in case any angry bakers had come out and spotted such aggressively wholemeal produce, and stopped so suddenly that the other two swung around him, like a rudder.

They looked thoughtfully at the street.

“Not something you see every day, that,” said Chidder at last.

“You mean the way there’s grass and stuff growing up everywhere he puts his feet?”

“Yes.”

Their eyes met. As one, they looked down at Teppic’s shoes. He was already ankle-deep in greenery, which was cracking the centuries-old cobbles in its urgency.

Without speaking a word, they gripped his elbows and lifted him into the air.

“The san,” said Arthur.

“The san,” agreed Chidder.

But they both knew, even then, that this was going to involve more than a hot poultice.

The doctor sat back.

“Fairly straightforward,” he said, thinking quickly. “A case of mortis portalis tackulatum with complications.”

“What’s that mean?” said Chidder.

“In layman’s terms,” the doctor sniffed, “he’s as dead as a doornail.”

“What are the complications?”

The doctor looked shifty. “He’s still breathing,” he said. “Look, his pulse is nearly humming and he’s got a temperature you could fry eggs on.” He hesitated, aware that this was probably too straightforward and easily understood; medicine was a new art on the Disc, and wasn’t going to get anywhere if people could understand it.

“Pyrocerebrum ouerf culinaire,” he said, after working it out in his head.

“Well, what can you do about it?” said Arthur.

“Nothing. He’s dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er . . . bury him, keep him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight, for preference.”

“But he’s still breathing!”

“These are just reflex actions that might easily confuse the layman,” said the doctor airily.

Chidder sighed. He suspected that the Guild, who after all had an unrivalled experience of sharp knives and complex organic compounds, was much better at elementary diagnostics than were the doctors. The Guild might kill people, but at least it didn’t expect them to be grateful for it.

Teppic opened his eyes.

“I must go home,” he said.

“Dead, is he?” said Chidder.

The doctor was a credit to his profession. “It’s not unusual for a corpse to make distressing noises after death,” he said valiantly, “which can upset relatives and-”

Teppic sat bolt upright.

“Also, muscular spasms in the stiffening body can in certain circumstances-” the doctor began, but his heart wasn’t in it any more. Then an idea occurred to him.

“It’s a rare and mysterious ailment,” he said, “which is going around a lot at the moment. It’s caused by a - a - by some- thing so small it can’t be detected in any way whatsoever,” he finished, with a self-congratulatory smile on his face. It was a good one, he had to admit. He’d have to remember it.

“Thank you very much,” said Chidder, opening the door and ushering him through. “Next time we’re feeling really well, we’ll definitely call you in.”

“It’s probably a walrus,” said the doctor, as he was gently but firmly propelled out of the room. “He’s caught a walrus, there’s a lot of it going-”

The door slammed shut.

Teppic swung his legs off the bed and clutched at his head.

“I’ve got to go home,” he repeated.

“Why?” said Arthur.

“Don’t know. The kingdom wants me.”

“You seemed to be taken pretty bad there-” Arthur began. Teppic waved his hands dismissively.

“Look,” he said, “please, I don’t want anyone sensibly pointing out things. I don’t want anyone telling me I should rest. None of it matters. I will be back in the kingdom as soon as possible. It’s not a case of must, you understand. I will. And you can help me, Chiddy.”

“How?”

“Your father has an extremely fast vessel he uses for smuggling,” said Teppic flatly. “He will lend it to me, in exchange for favourable consideration of future trading opportunities. If we leave inside the hour, it will do the journey in plenty of time.”

“My father is an honest trader!”

“On the contrary. Seventy per cent of his income last year was from undeclared trading in the following commodities-” Teppic’s eyes stared into nothingness - “From illegal transport of gullanes and leuchars, nine per cent. From night-running of untaxed-”

“Well, thirty per cent honest,” Chidder admitted, “which is a lot more honest than most. You’d better tell me how you know. Extremely quickly.”

“I - don’t know,” said Teppic. “When I was . . . asleep, it seemed I knew everything. Everything about everything. I think my father is dead.”

“Oh,” said Chidder. “Gosh, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no. It’s not like that. It’s what he would have wanted. I think he was rather looking forward to it. In our family, death is when you really start to, you know, enjoy life. I expect he’s rather enjoying it.”

In fact the pharaoh was sitting on a spare slab in the ceremonial preparation room watching his own soft bits being carefully removed from his body and put into the special Canopic jars.

This is not a sight often seen by people - at least, not by people in a position to take a thoughtful interest.

He was rather upset. Although he was no longer officially inhabiting his body he was still attached to it by some sort of occult bond, and it is hard to be very happy at seeing two artisans up to the elbows in bits of you.

The jokes aren’t funny, either. Not when you are, as it were, the butt.

“Look, master Dil,” said Gern, a plump, red-faced young man who the king had learned was the new apprentice. “uk. . . hght. . . watch this, watch this.. . hgk.. your name in lights. Get it? Your name in lights, see?”

“Just put them in the jar, boy,” said Dil wearily. “And while we’re on the subject I didn’t think much of the Gottle of Geer routine, either.”

“Sorry, master.”

“And pass me over a number three brain hook while you’re up that end, will you?”

“Coming right up, master,” said Gern.

“And don’t jog me. This is a fiddly bit.”

“Sure thing.”

The king craned nearer.

Gern rummaged around at his end of the job and then gave a long, low whistle.

“Will you look at the colour of this!” he said. “You wouldn’t think so, would you? Is it something they eat, master?”

Dil sighed. “Just put it in the pot, Gern.”

“Right you are, master. Master?”

“Yes, lad?”

“Which bit’s got the god in it, master?”

Dil squinted up the king’s nostril, trying to concentrate. “That gets sorted out before he comes down here,” he said patiently.

“I wondered,” said Gern, “because there’s not a jar for it, see.”

“No. There wouldn’t be. It’d have to be a rather strange jar, Gern.”

Gern looked a bit disappointed. “Oh,” he said, “so he’s just ordinary, then, is he?”

“In a strictly organic sense,” said Dil, his voice slightly muffled.

“Our mum said he was all right as a king,” said Gern. “What do you think?”

Dil paused with a jar in his hand, and seemed to give the conversation some thought for the first time.

“Never think about it until they come down here,” he said. “I suppose he was better than most. Nice pair of lungs. Clean kidneys. Good big sinuses, which is what I always look for in a king.” He looked down, and delivered his professional judgement. “Pleasure to work with, really.”

“Our mum said his heart was in the right place,” said Gern. The king, hovering dismally in the corner, gave a gloomy nod. Yes, he thought. Jar three, top shelf.

Dil wiped his hands on a rag, and sighed. Possibly thirty-five years in the funeral business, which had given him a steady hand, a philosophic manner and a keen interest in vegetarianism, had also granted him powers of hearing beyond the ordinary. Because he was almost persuaded that, right beside his ear, someone else sighed too.

The king wandered sadly over to the other side of the room, and stared at the dull liquid of the preparation vat.

Funny, that. When he was alive it had all seemed so sensible, so obvious. Now he was dead it looked a huge waste of effort.

It was beginning to annoy him. He watched Dil and his apprentice tidy up, burn some ceremonial resins, lift him - it - up, carry it respectfully across the room and slide it gently into the oily embrace of the preservative. Teppicymon XXVII gazed into the murky depths at his own body lying sadly on the bottom, like the last pickled gherkin in the jar.

He raised his eyes to the sacks in the corner. They were full of straw. He didn’t need telling what was going to be done with it.

The boat didn’t glide. It insinuated itself through the water, dancing across the waves on the tips of the twelve oars, spreading like an oil slick, gliding like a bird. It was man black and shaped like a shark.

There was no drummer to beat the rhythm. The boat didn’t want the weight. Anyway, he’d have needed the full kit, including snares.

Teppic sat between the lines of silent rowers, in the narrow gully that was the cargo hold. Better not to speculate what cargoes. The boat looked designed to move very small quantities of things very quickly and without anyone noticing, and he doubted whether even the Smugglers’ Guild was aware of its existence. Commerce was more interesting than he thought.

They found the delta with suspicious ease - how many times had this whispering shadow slipped up the river, he wondered - and above the exotic smells from the mysterious former cargo he could detect the scents of home. Crocodile dung. Reed pollen. Waterlily blossoms. Lack of plumbing. The rank of lions and reek of hippos.

The leading oarsman tapped him gently on the shoulder and motioned him up, steadied him as he stepped overboard into a few feet of water. By the time he’d waded ashore the boat had turned and was a mere suspicion of a shadow downstream.

Because he was naturally curious, Teppic wondered where it would lie up during the day, since it had the look about it of a boat designed to travel only under cover of darkness, and decided that it’d probably lurk somewhere in the high reed marshes on the delta.

And because he was now a king, he made a mental note to have the marshes patrolled periodically from now on. A king should know things.

He stopped, ankle deep in river ooze. He had known everything.

Arthur had rambled on vaguely about seagulls and rivers and loaves of bread sprouting, which suggested he’d drunk too much. All Teppic could remember was waking up with a terrible sense of loss, as his memory failed to hold and leaked away its new treasures. It was like the tremendous insights that come in dreams and vanish on waking. He’d known everything, but as soon as he tried to remember what it was it poured out of his head, as from a leaky bucket.

But it had left him with a new sensation. Before, his life had been ambling along, bent by circumstance. Now it was clicking along on bright rails. Perhaps he hadn’t got it in him to be an assassin, but he knew he could be a king.

His feet found solid ground. The boat had dropped him off a little way downstream of the palace and, blue in the moonlight, the pyramid flares on the far bank were filling the night with their familiar glow.

The abodes of the happy dead came in all sizes although not, of course, in all shapes. They clustered thickly nearer the city, as though the dead like company.

And even the oldest ones were all complete. No-one had borrowed any of the stones to build houses or make roads. Teppic felt obscurely proud of that. No-one had unsealed the doors and wandered around inside to see if the dead had any old treasures they weren’t using any more. And every day, without fail, food was left in the little antechambers; the commissaries of the dead occupied a large part of the palace.

Sometimes the food went, sometimes it didn’t. The priests, however, were very clear on this point. Regardless of whether the food was consumed or not, it had been eaten by the dead. Presumably they enjoyed it; they never complained, or came back for seconds.

Look after the dead, said the priests, and the dead would look after you. After all, they were in the majority.

Teppic pushed aside the reeds. He straightened his clothing, brushed some mud off his sleeve and set off for the palace.

Ahead of him, dark against the flarelight, stood the great statue of Khuft. Seven thousand years ago Khuft had led his people out of - Teppic couldn’t remember, but somewhere where they hadn’t liked being, probably, and for thoroughly good reasons; it was at times like this he wished he knew more history - and had prayed in the desert and the gods of the place had shown him the Old Kingdom. And he had entered, yea, and taken possession thereof, that it should ever be the dwelling place of his seed. Something like that, anyway. There were probably more yeas and a few verilys, with added milk and honey. But the sight of that great patriarchal face, that outstretched arm, that chin you could crack stones on, bold in the flarelight, told him what he already knew.

He was home, and he was never going to leave again.

The sun began to rise.

The greatest mathematician alive on the Disc, and in fact the last one in the Old Kingdom, stretched out in his stall and counted the pieces of straw in his bedding. Then he estimated the number of nails in the wall. Then he spent a few minutes proving that an automorphic resonance field has a semi-infinite number of irresolute prime ideals. After that, in order to pass the time, he ate his breakfast again.

BOOK II

The Book of the Dead

Two weeks went past. Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and ceremony could do.

The new king examined himself in the mirror, and frowned.

“What’s it made of?” he said. “It’s rather foggy.”

“Bronze, sire. Polished bronze,” said Dios, handing him the Flail of Mercy.

“In Ankh-Morpork we had glass mirrors with silver on the back. They were very good.”

“Yes, sire. Here we have bronze, sire.”

“Do I really have to wear this gold mask?”

“The Face of the Sun, sire. Handed down through all the ages. Yes, sire. On all public occasions, sire.”

Teppic peered out through the eye slots. It was certainly a handsome face. It smiled faintly. He remembered his father visiting the nursery one day and forgetting to take it off; Teppic had screamed the place down.

“It’s rather heavy.”

“It is weighted with the centuries,” said Dios, and passed over the obsidian Reaping Hook of Justice.

“Have you been a priest long, Dios?”

“Many years, sire, man and eunuch. Now-”

“Father said you were high priest even in grandad’s time. You must be very old.”

“Well-preserved, sire. The gods have been kind to me,” said Dios, in the face of the evidence. “And now, sire, if we could just hold this as well . . .

“What is it?”

“The Honeycomb of Increase, sire. Very important.”

Teppic juggled it into position.

“I expect you’ve seen a lot of changes,” he said politely.

A look of pain passed over the old priest’s face, but quickly, as if it was in a hurry to get away. “No, sire,” he said smoothly, “I have been very fortunate.”

“Oh. What’s this?”

“The Sheaf of Plenty, sire. Extremely significant, very symbolic.”

“If you could just tuck it under my arm, then. . . Have you ever heard of plumbing, Dios?”

The priest snapped his fingers at one of the attendants. “No, sire,” he said, and leaned forward. “This is the Asp of Wisdom. I’ll just tuck it in here, shall I?”

“It’s like buckets, but not as, um, smelly.”

“Sounds dreadful, sire. The smell keeps bad influences away, I have always understood. This, sire, is the Gourd of the Waters of the Heavens. If we could just raise our chin . . .”

“This is all necessary, is it?” said Teppic indistinctly. “It is traditional, sire. If we could just rearrange things a little, sire. . . here is the Three-Pronged Spear of the Waters of the Earth; I think we will be able to get this finger around it. We shall have to see about our marriage, sire.”

“I’m not sure we would be compatible, Dios.”

The high priest smiled with his mouth. “Sire is pleased to jest, sire,” he said urbanely. “However, it is essential that you marry.”

“I am afraid all the girls I know are in Ankh-Morpork,” said Teppic airily, knowing in his heart that this broad statement referred to Mrs Collar, who had been his bedder in the sixth form, and one of the serving wenches who’d taken a shine to him and always gave him extra gravy. (But . . . and his blood pounded at the memory.. . there had been the annual Assassins’ Ball and, because the young assassins were trained to move freely in society and were expected to dance well, and because well-cut black silk and long legs attracted a certain type of older woman, they’d whirled the night away through baubons, galliards and slow-stepping pavonines, until the air thickened with musk and hunger. Chidder, whose simple open face and easygoing manner were a winner every time, came back to bed very late for days afterwards and tended to fall asleep during lessons . .

“Quite unsuitable, sire. We would require a consort well-versed in the observances. Of course, our aunt is available, sire.”

There was a clatter. Dios sighed, and motioned the attendants to pick things up.

“If we could just begin again, sire? This is the Cabbage of Vegetative Increase-”

“Sorry,” said Teppic, “I didn’t hear you say I should marry my aunt, did I?”

“You did, sire. Interfamilial marriage is a proud tradition of our lineage,” said Dios.

“But my aunt is my aunt!”

Dios rolled his eyes. He’d advised the late king repeatedly about the education of his son, but the man was stubborn, stubborn. Now he’d have to do it on the fly. The gods were testing him, he decided. It took decades to make a monarch, and he had weeks to do it in.

“Yes, sire,” he said patiently. “Of course. And she is also your uncle, your cousin and your father.”

“Hold on. My father-”

The priest raised his hand soothingly. “A technicality,” he said. “Your great-great-grandmother once declared she is king as a matter of political expediency and I don’t believe the edict is ever rescinded.”

“But she was a woman, though?”

Dios looked shocked. “Oh no, sire. She is a man. She herself declared this.”

“But look, a chap’s aunt-”

“Quite so, sire. I quite understand.”

“Well, thank you,” said Teppic.

“It is a great shame that we have no sisters.”

“Sisters!”

“It does not do to water the divine blood, sire. The sun might not like it. Now this, sire, is the Scapula of Hygiene. Where would you like it put?”

King Teppicymon XXVII was watching himself being stuffed. It was just as well he didn’t feel hunger these days. Certainly he would never want to eat chicken again.

“Very nice stitching there, master.”

“Just keep your finger still, Gern.”

“My mother does stitching like that. She’s got a pinny with stitching like that, has our mum,” said Gern conversationally.

“Keep it still, I said.”

“It’s got all ducks and hens on it,” Gern supplied helpfully. Dil concentrated on the job in hand. It was good workmanship, he was prepared to admit. The Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades had awarded him medals for it.

“It must make you feel really proud,” said Gern.

“What?”

“Well, our mam says the king goes on living, sort of thing, after all this stuffing and stitching. Sort of in the Netherworld. With your stitching in him.”

And several sacks of straw and a couple of buckets of pitch, thought the shade of the king sadly. And the wrapping off Gern’s lunch, although he didn’t blame the lad, who’d just forgotten where he’d put it. All eternity with someone’s lunch wrapping as part of your vital organs. There had been half a sausage left, too.

He’d become quite attached to Dil, and even to Gern. He seemed still to be attached to his body, too - at least, he felt uncomfortable if he wandered more than a few hundred yards away from it - and so in the course of the last couple of days he’d learned quite a lot about them.

Funny, really. He’d spent the whole of his life in the kingdom talking to a few priests and so forth. He knew objectively there had been other people around - servants and gardeners and so forth - but they figured in his life as blobs. He was at the top, and then his family, and then the priests and the nobles of course, and then there were the blobs. Damn fine blobs, of course, some of the finest blobs in the world, as loyal a collection of blobs as a king might hope to rule. But blobs, none the less.

But now he was absolutely engrossed in the daily details of Dil’s shy hopes for advancement within the Guild, and the unfolding story of Gern’s clumsy overtures to Glwenda, the garlic farmer’s daughter who lived nearby. He listened in fascinated astonishment to the elaboration of a world as full of subtle distinctions of grade and station as the one he had so recently left; it was terrible to think that he might never know if Gern overcame her father’s objections and won his intended, or if Dil’s work on this job - on him - would allow him to aspire to the rank of Exalted Grand Ninety-Degree Variance of the Matron Lodge of the Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades.

It was as if death was some astonishing optical device which turned even a drop of water into a complex hive of life.

He found an overpowering urge to counsel Dil on elementary politics, or apprise Gern of the benefits of washing and looking respectable. He tried it several times. They could sense him, there was no doubt about that. But they just put it down to draughts.

Now he watched Dil pad over to the big table of bandages, and come back with a thick swatch which he held reflectively against what even the king was now prepared to think of as his corpse.

“I think the linen,” he said at last. “It’s definitely his colour.”

Gern put his head on one side.

“He’d look good in the hessian,” he said. “Or maybe the calico.”

“Not the calico. Definitely not the calico. On him it’s too big.”

“He could moulder into it. With wear, you know.”

Dil snorted. “Wear? Wear? You shouldn’t talk to me about calico and wear. What happens if someone robs the tomb in a thousand years’ time and him in calico, I’d like to know.  He’d lurch halfway down the corridor, maybe throttle one of them, I’ll grant you, but then he’s coming undone, right? The elbows’ll be out in no time, I’ll never live it down.”

“But you’ll be dead, master!”

“Dead? What’s that got to do with it?” Dil riffled through the samples. “No, it’ll be the hessian. Got plenty of give in it, hessian. Good traction, too. He’ll really be able to lurch up speed in the passages, if he ever needs to.”

The king sighed. He’d have preferred something lightweight in taffeta.

“And go and shut the door,” Dil added. “It’s getting breezy in here.”

“And now it’s time,” said the high priest, “for us to see our late father.” He allowed himself a quiet smile. “I am sure he is looking forward to it,” he added.

Teppic considered this. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to, but at least it would get everyone’s mind off him marrying relatives. He reached down in what he hoped was a kingly fashion to stroke one of the palace cats. This also was not a good move. The creature sniffed it, went cross-eyed with the effort of thought, and then bit his fingers.

“Cats are sacred,” said Dios, shocked at the words Teppic uttered.

“Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,” said Teppic, nursing his hand, “I don’t know about this sort. I’m sure sacred cats don’t leave dead ibises under the bed. And I’m certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don’t come indoors and do it in the king’s sandals, Dios.”

“All cats are cats,” said Dios, vaguely, and added, “If we would be so gracious as to follow us.” He motioned Teppic towards a distant arch.

Teppic followed slowly. He’d been back home for what seemed like ages, and it still didn’t feel right. The air was too dry. The clothes felt wrong. It was too hot. Even the buildings seemed wrong. The pillars, for one thing. Back home, back at the Guild, pillars were gracefull fluted things with little bunches of stone grapes and things around the top. Here they were massive pear-shaped lumps, where all the stone had run to the bottom.

Half a dozen servants trailed behind him, carrying the various items of regalia.

He tried to imitate Dios’s walk, and found the movements coming back to him. You turned your torso this way, then you turned your head this way, and extended your arms at forty-five degrees to your body with the palms down, and then you attempted to move.

The high priest’s staff raised echoes as it touched the flagstones. A blind man could have walked barefoot through the palace by tracing the time-worn dimples it had created over the years.

“I am afraid that we will find that our father has changed somewhat since we last saw him,” said Dios conversationally, as they undulated by the fresco of Queen Khaphut accepting Tribute from the Kingdoms of the World.

“Well, yes,” said Teppic, bewildered by the tone. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“There’s that, too,” said Dios, and Teppic realised that he hadn’t been referring to something as trivial as the king’s current physical condition.

He was lost in a horrified admiration. It wasn’t that Dios was particularly cruel or uncaring, it was simply that death was a mere irritating transition in the eternal business of existence. The fact that people died was just an inconvenience, like them being out when you called.

It’s a strange world, he thought. It’s all busy shadows, and it never changes. And I’m part of it.

“Who’s he?” he said, pointing to a particularly big fresco showing a tall man with a hat like a chimney and a beard like a rope riding a chariot over a lot of other, much smaller, people.

“His name is in the cartouche below,” said Dios primly.

“What?”

“The small oval, sire,” said Dios.

Teppic peered closely at the dense hieroglyphics.

“”Thin eagle, eye, wiggly line, man with a stick, bird sitting down, wiggly line”,” he read. Dios winced.

“I believe we must apply ourselves more to the study of modem languages,” he said, recovering a bit. “His name is Pta-ka-ba. He is king when the Djel Empire extends from the Circle Sea to the Rim Ocean, when almost half the continent pays tribute to us.”

Teppic realised what it was about the man’s speech that was strange. Dios would bend any sentence to breaking point if it meant avoiding a past tense. He pointed to another fresco.

“And her?” he said.

“She is Queen Khat-leon-ra-pta,” said Dios. “She wins the kingdom of Howandaland by stealth. This is the time of the Second Empire.”

“But she is dead?” said Teppic.

“I understand so,” said the high priest, after the slightest of pauses. Yes. The past tense definitely bothered Dios.

“I have learned seven languages,” said Teppic, secure in the knowledge that the actual marks he had achieved in three of them would remain concealed in the ledgers of the Guild.

“Indeed, sire?”

“Oh, yes. Morporkian, Vanglemesht, Ephebe, Laotation and several others . . .” said Teppic.

“Ah.” Dios nodded, smiled, and continued to proceed down the corridor, limping slightly but still measuring his pace like the ticking of centuries. “The barbarian lands.”

Teppic looked at his father. The embalmers had done a good job. They were waiting for him to tell them so.

Part of him, which still lived in Ankh-Morpork, said: this is a dead body, wrapped up in bandages, surely they can’t think that this will help him get better? In Ankh, you die and they bury you or burn you or throw you to the ravens. Here, it just means you slow down a bit and get given all the best food. It’s ridiculous, how can you run a kingdom like this? They seem to think that being dead is like being deaf, you just have to speak up a bit.

But a second, older voice said: We’ve run a kingdom like this for seven thousand years. The humblest melon farmer has a lineage that makes kings elsewhere look like mayflies. We used to own the continent, before we sold it again to pay for pyramids. We don’t even think about other countries less than three thousand years old. It all seems to work.

“Hallo, father,” he said.

The shade of Teppicymon XXVII, which had been watching him closely, hurried across the room.

“You’re looking well!” he said. “Good to see you! Look, this is urgent. Please pay attention, it’s about death-”

“He says he is pleased to see you,” said Dios.

“You can hear him?” said Teppic. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“The dead, naturally, speak through the priests,” said the priest. “That is the custom, sire.”

“But he can hear me, can he?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve been thinking about this whole pyramid business and, look, I’m not certain about it.”

Teppic leaned closer. “Auntie sends her love,” he said loudly. He thought about this. “That’s my aunt, not yours.” I hope, he added.

“I say? I say? Can you hear me?”

“He bids you greetings from the world beyond the veil,” said Dios.

“Well, yes, I suppose I do, but LOOK, I don’t want you to go to a lot of trouble and build-”

“We’re going to build you a marvellous pyramid, father. You’ll really like it there. There’ll be people to look after you and everything.” Teppic glanced at Dios for reassurance. “He’ll like that, won’t he?”

“I don’t WANT one!” screamed the king. “There’s a whole interesting eternity I haven’t seen yet. I forbid you to put me in a pyramid!”

“He says that is very proper, and you are a dutiful son,” said Dios.

“Can you see me? How many fingers am I holding up? Think it’s fun, do you, spending the rest of your death under a million tons of rock, watching yourself crumble to bits? Is that your idea of a good epoch?”

“It’s rather draughty in here, sire,” said Dios. “Perhaps we should get on.”

“Anyway, you can’t possibly afford it!”

“And we’ll put your favourite frescoes and statues in with you. You’ll like that, won’t you,” said Teppic desperately.

“All your bits and pieces around you.”

“He will like it, won’t be?” he asked Dios, as they walked back to the throne room. “Only, I don’t know, I somehow got a feeling he isn’t too happy about it.”

“I assure you, sire,” said Dios, “he can have no other desire.”

Back in the embalming room King Teppicymon XXVII tried to tap Gern on the shoulder, which had no effect. He gave up and sat down beside himself.

“Don’t do it, lad,” he said bitterly. “Never have descendants.”

And then there was the Great Pyramid itself.

Teppic’s footsteps echoed on the marble tiles as he walked around the model. He wasn’t sure what one was supposed to do here. But kings, he suspected, were often put in that position; there was always the good old fallback, which was known as taking an interest.

“Well, well,” he said. “How long have you been designing pyramids?”

Ptaclusp, architect and jobbing pyramid builder to the nobility, bowed deeply.

“All my life, O light of noonday.”

“It must be fascinating,” said Teppic. Ptaclusp looked sidelong at the high priest, who nodded.

“It has its points, O fount of waters,” he ventured. He wasn’t used to kings talking to him as though he was a human being. He felt obscurely that it wasn’t right.

Teppic waved a hand at the model on its podium.

“Yes,” he said uncertainly. “Well. Good. Four walls and a pointy tip. Jolly good. First class. Says it all, really.” There still seemed to be too much silence around. He plunged on.

“Good show,” he said. “I mean; there’s no doubt about it. This is.. . a. . . pyramid. And what a pyramid it is! Indeed.” This still didn’t seem enough. He sought for something else. “People will look at it in centuries to come and they’ll say, they’ll say . . . that is a pyramid. Um.”

He coughed. “The walls slope nicely,” he croaked.

“But,” he said.

Two pairs of eyes swivelled towards his.

“Um,” he said.

Dios raised an eyebrow.

“Sire?”

“I seem to remember once, my father said that, you know, when he died, he’d quite like to, sort of thing, be buried at sea.”

There wasn’t the choke of outrage he had expected. “He meant the delta. It’s very soft ground by the delta,” said Ptaclusp. “It’d take months to get decent footings in. Then there’s your risk of sinking. And the damp. Not good, damp, inside a pyramid.”

“No,” said Teppic, sweating under Dios’s gaze, “I think what he meant was, you know, in the sea.”

Ptaclusp’s brow furrowed. “Tricky, that,” he said thoughtfully. “Interesting idea. I suppose one could build a small one, a million tonner, and float it out on pontoons or something. . .”

“No,” said Teppic, trying not to laugh, “I think what he meant was, buried without-”

“Teppicymon XXVII means that he would want to be buried without delay,” said Dios, his voice like greased silk. “And there is no doubt that he would require to honour the very best you can build, architect.”

“No, I’m sure you’ve got it wrong,” said Teppic.

Dios’s face froze. Ptaclusp’s slid into the waxen expression of someone with whom it is, suddenly, nothing to do. He started to stare at the floor as if his very survival depended on his memorising it in extreme detail.

“Wrong?” said Dios.

“No offence. I’m sure you mean well,” said Teppic. “It’s just that, well, he seemed very clear about it at the time and-”

“I mean well?” said Dios, tasting each word as though it was a sour grape. Ptaclusp coughed. He had finished with the floor. Now he started on the ceiling.

Dios took a deep breath. “Sire,” he said, “we have always been pyramid builders. All our kings are buried in pyramids. It is how we do things, sire. It is how things are done.”

“Yes, but-”

“It does not admit of dispute,” said Dios. “Who could wish for anything else? Sealed with all artifice against the desecrations of Time-” now the oiled silk of his voice became armour, hard as steel, scornful as spears - “Shielded for all Time against the insults of Change.”

Teppic glanced down at the high priest’s knuckles. They were white, the bone pressing through the flesh as though in a rage to escape.

His gaze slid up the grey-clad arm to Dios’s face. Ye gods, he thought, it’s really true, he does look like they got tired of waiting for him to die and pickled him anyway. Then his eyes met those of the priest, more or less with a clang.

He felt as though his flesh was being very slowly blown off his bones. He felt that he was no more significant than a mayfly. A necessary mayfly, certainly, a mayfly that would be accorded all due respect, but still an insect with all the rights thereof. And as much free will, in the fury of that gaze, as a scrap of papyrus in a hurricane.

“The king’s will is that he be interred in a pyramid,” said Dios, in the tone of voice the Creator must have used to sketch out the moon and stars.

“Er,” said Teppic.

“The finest of pyramids for the king,” said Dios.

Teppic gave up.

“Oh,” he said. “Good. Fine. Yes. The very best, of course.” Ptaclusp beamed with relief, produced his wax tablet with a flourish, and took a stylus from the recesses of his wig. The important thing, he knew, was to clinch the deal as soon as possible. Let things slip in a situation like this” and a man could find himself with 1,500,000 tons of bespoke limestone on his hands.

“Then that will be the standard model, shall we say, O water in the desert?”

Teppic looked at Dios, who was standing and glaring at nothing now, staring the bulldogs of Entropy into submission by willpower alone.

“I think something larger,” he ventured hopelessly.

“That’s the Executive,” said Ptaclusp. “Very exclusive, O base of the eternal column. Last you a perpetuality. Also our special offer this aeon is various measurements of paracosmic significance built into the very fabric at no extra cost.”

He gave Teppic an expectant look.

“Yes. Yes. That will be fine,” said Teppic.

Dios took a deep breath. “The king requires far more than that,” be said.

“I do?” said Teppic, doubtfully.

“Indeed, sire. It is your express wish that the greatest of monuments is erected for your father,” said Dios smoothly. This was a contest, Teppic knew, and he didn’t know the rules or how to play and he was going to lose.

“It is? Oh. Yes. Yes. I suppose it is, really. Yes.”

“A pyramid unequalled along the Djel,” said Dios. “That is the command of the king. It is only right and proper.”

“Yes, yes, something like that. Er. Twice the normal size,” said Teppic desperately, and had the brief satisfaction of seeing Dios look momentarily disconcerted.

“Sire?” he said.

“It is only right and proper,” said Teppic. Dios opened his mouth to protest, saw Teppic’s expression, and shut it again.

Ptaclusp scribbled busily, his adam’s apple bobbing. Something like this only happened once in a business career.

“Can do you a very nice black marble facing on the outside,” he said, without looking up. “We may have just enough in the quarry. O king of the celestial orbs,” he added hurriedly.

“Very good,” said Teppic.

Ptaclusp picked up a fresh tablet. “Shall we say the capstone picked out in electrum? It’s cheaper to have built in right from the start, you don’t want to use just silver and then say later, I wish I’d had a-”

“Electrum, yes.”

“And the usual offices?”

“What?”

“The burial chamber, that is, and the outer chamber. I’d recommend the Memphis, very select, that comes with a matching extra large treasure room, so handy for all those little things one cannot bear to leave behind.” Ptaclusp turned the tablet over and started on the other side. “And of course a similar suite for the Queen, I take it? O King who shall live forever.”

“Eh? Oh, yes. Yes. I suppose so,” said Teppic, glancing at Dios. “Everything. You know.”

“Then there’s mazes,” said Ptaclusp, trying to keep his voice steady. “Very popular this era. Very important, your maze, it’s no good deciding you ought to have put a maze in after the robbers have been. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I’d go for the Labrys every time. Like we say, they may get in all right, but they’ll never get out. It costs that little bit extra, but what’s money at a time like this? O master of the waters.”

Something we don’t have, said a warning voice in the back of Teppic’s head. He ignored it. He was in the grip of destiny.

“Yes,” he said, straightening up. “The Labrys. Two of them.”

Ptaclusp’s stylus went through his tablet.

“His ‘n’ hers, O stone of stones,” he croaked. “Very handy, very convenient. With selection of traps from stock? We can offer deadfalls, pitfalls, sliders, rolling balls, dropping spears, arrows-”

“Yes, yes,” said Teppic. “We’ll have them. We’ll have them all. All of them.”

The architect took a deep breath.

“And of course you’ll require all the usual steles, avenues, ceremonial sphinxes-” he began.

“Lots,” said Teppic. “We leave it entirely up to you.”

Ptaclusp mopped his brow.

“Fine,” he said. “Marvellous.” He blew his nose. “Your father, if I may make so bold, O sower of the seed, is extremely fortunate in having such a dutiful son. I may add-”

“You may go,” said Dios. “And we will expect work to start imminently.”

“Without delay, I assure you,” said Ptaclusp. “Er.”

He seemed to be wrestling with some huge philosophical problem.

“Yes?” said Dios coldly.

“It’s uh. There’s the matter of uh. Which is not to say uh. Of course, oldest client, valued customer, but the fact is that uh. Absolutely no doubt about credit worthiness uh. Would not wish to suggest in any way whatsoever that uh.”

Dios gave him a stare that would have caused a sphinx to blink and look away.

“You wish to say something?” he said. “His majesty’s time is extremely limited.”

Ptaclusp worked his jaw silently, but the result was a foregone conclusion. Even gods had been reduced to sheepish mumbling in the face of Dios’s face. And the carved snakes on his staff seemed to be watching him too.

“Uh. No, no. Sorry. I was just, uh, thinking aloud. I’ll depart, then, shall I? Such a lot of work to be done. Uh.” He bowed low.

He was halfway to the archway before Dios added: “Completion in three months. In time for Inundation.”* (* Like many river valley cultures the Kingdom has no truck with such trivia as summer, springtime and winter, and bases its calendar squarely on the great heartbeat of the Djel; hence the three seasons. Seedtime, Inundation and Sog. This is logical, straightforward and practical, and only disapproved of by barbershop quartets.**) (** Because you feel an idiot singing “In the Good Old Inundation”, that’s why.)

“What?”

“You are talking to the 1,398^th monarch,” said Dios icily. Ptaclusp swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I mean, what?, O great king. I mean, block haulage alone will take. Uh.” The architect’s lips trembled as he tried out various comments and, in his imagination, ran them full tilt into Dios’s stare. “Tsort wasn’t built in a day,” he mumbled.

“We do not believe we laid the specifications for that job,” said Dios. He gave Ptaclusp a smile. In some ways it was worse than everything else. “We will, of course,” he said, “pay extra.”

“But you never pa-” Ptaclusp began, and then sagged.