The Truth

by Terry Pratchett

  It was astounding, and Mr. Pin had been so enthralled that he had all but forgotten to slip a few small valuable items into his pocket. But in truth he was familiar with Tulip on art. When they had occasionally to torch a premises, Mr. Tulip always made sure that any truly irreplaceable pieces were removed first, even though that meant taking extra time to tie the inhabitants to their beds. Somewhere under that self-inflicted scar tissue and at the heart of that shuddering anger was the soul of a true connoisseur with an unerring instinct for beauty. It was a strange thing to find in the body of a man who would mainline bath salts.

  The big doors at the other end of the room swung open, revealing the dark space beyond.

  “Mr. Tulip?” said Mr. Pin.

  Tulip drew himself away from a painstaking examination of a possible Tapasi table, with its magnificent inlay work involving dozens of —ing rare veneers.

  “Huh?”

  “Time to meet the bosses again,” said Mr. Pin.

  William was just getting ready to leave his office for good when someone knocked at his door.

  He opened it cautiously, but it was pushed the rest of the way.

  “You utter, utter—ungrateful person!”

  It wasn’t a nice thing to be called, especially by a young lady. She could use a simple word like “ungrateful” in a way that would require a dash and an “ing” in the mouth of Mr. Tulip.

  William had seen Sacharissa Cripslock before, generally helping her grandfather in his tiny workshop. He’d never paid her much attention. She wasn’t particularly attractive, but she wasn’t particularly bad-looking, either. She was just a girl in an apron, doing slightly dainty things in the background, such as light dusting and arranging flowers. Insofar as he’d formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.

  Now he could see her a lot plainer, mostly because she was advancing towards him across the room, and in the light-headed way of people who think they’re just about to die he realized that she was quite good-looking if considered over several centuries. Concepts of beauty change over the years, and two hundred years ago Sacharissa’s eyes would have made the great painter Caravati bite his brush in half; three hundred years ago the sculptor Mauvaise would have taken one look at her chin and dropped his chisel on his foot; a thousand years ago the Ephebian poets would have agreed that her nose alone was capable of launching at least forty ships. And she had good medieval ears.

  Her hand was quite modern, though, and it caught William a stinging blow on the cheek.

  “That twenty dollars a month was nearly all we had!”

  “Sorry? What?”

  “All right, he isn’t very fast, but in his day he was one of the best engravers in the business!”

  “Oh…yes. Er…” He had a sudden flash of guilt about Mr. Cripslock.

  “And you took it away, just like that!”

  “I didn’t mean to! The dwarfs just…things just happened!”

  “You’re working for them?”

  “Sort of…with them…” said William.

  “While we starve, I suppose?”

  Sacharissa stood there panting. She had a well-crafted supply of other features that never go out of fashion at all and are perfectly at home in any century. She clearly believed that severe, old-fashioned dresses toned these down. They did not.

  “Look, I’m stuck with them,” said William, trying not to stare. “I mean, stuck with the dwarfs. Lord Vetinari was very…definite about it. And it’s suddenly all become very complicated—”

  “The Guild of Engravers is going to be livid about this, you do know that?” she demanded.

  “Er…yes.” A desperate idea struck William rather harder than her hand. “That’s a point. You wouldn’t like to, er, be official about that, would you? You know: ‘We are livid,’ says spokesm—spokeswoman for the Guild of Engravers?”

  “Why?” she said suspiciously.

  “I’m desperate for things to put in my next edition,” said William desperately. “Look, can you help me? I can give you—oh, twenty pence an item, and I could use at least five a day.”

  She opened her mouth to snap a reply, but calculation cut in.

  “A dollar a day?” she said.

  “More, if they’re nice and long,” said William wildly.

  “For that letter thing you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “A dollar?”

  “Yes.”

  She eyed him with mistrust. “You can’t afford that, can you? I thought you only got thirty dollars yourself. You told Grandfather.”

  “Things have moved on a bit. I haven’t caught up with it myself, to tell you the truth.”

  She was still looking at him doubtfully, but natural Ankh-Morpork interest in the distant prospect of a dollar was gaining the upper hand.

  “Well, I hear things,” she began. “And…well, writing things down? I suppose that’s a suitable job for a lady, isn’t it? It’s practically cultural.”

  “Er…close, I suppose.”

  “I wouldn’t like to do anything that wasn’t…proper.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s proper.”

  “And the Guild can’t object to that, can they? You’ve been doing it for years, after all…”

  “Look, I’m just me,” said William. “If the Guild object, they’ll have to sort it out with the Patrician.”

  “Well…all right…if you’re sure it’s an acceptable job for a young lady…”

  “Come down to the printing works tomorrow, then,” said William. “I think we ought to be able to produce another paper of news in a few days.”

  This was a ballroom, still plush in red and gold, but musty in the semidarkness and ghostly with its shrouded chandeliers. The candlelight in the center was dimly reflected from the mirrors around the walls; they had probably once brightened the place up considerably, but over the years some sort of curious tarnish had blotched its way across them, so that the reflections of the candles looked like dim subaqueous glows through a forest of seaweed.

  Mr. Pin was halfway across the floor when he realized that the only footsteps he could hear were his own. Mr. Tulip had veered off in the gloom and was dragging the shroud off something that had been pushed against one wall.

  “Well, I’ll be a…” the man began. “This is a —ing treasure! I fort so! A genuine —ing Intaglio Ernesto, too. See that mother-of-pearl work there?”

  “This isn’t the time, Mr. Tulip—”

  “He only made six of them. Oh, no, they haven’t even kept it —ing tuned!”

  “Godsdammit, we’re supposed to be professionals…”

  “Perhaps your…colleague would like it as a present?” said a voice from the center of the room.

  There were half a dozen chairs around the circle of candlelight. They were an old-fashioned kind, and the backs curved out and up to form a deep leathery arch that had, presumably, been designed to keep out the drafts but now gave the occupants their own deep pools of shadow.

  Mr. Pin had been here before. He’d admired the setup. Anyone in the ring of candles couldn’t see who was in the depths of the chairs, while at the same time being fully visible themselves.

  It occurred to him now that the arrangement also meant that the people in the chairs couldn’t see who was in the other chairs.

  Mr. Pin was a rat. He was quite happy with the description. Rats had a lot to recommend them. And this layout had been dreamed up by someone who thought like him.

  One of the chairs said: “Your friend Daffodil—”

  “Tulip,” said Mr. Pin.

  “Your friend Mr. Tulip would perhaps like part of your payment to be the harpsichord?” said the chair.

  “It’s not a —ing harpsichord, it’s a —ing virginal,” growled Mr. Tulip. “One —ing string to a note instead of two! So called because it was an instrument for —ing young ladies!”

  “My word,
was it?” said one of the chairs. “I thought it was just a sort of early piano!”

  “Intended to be played by young ladies,” said Mr. Pin smoothly. “And Mr. Tulip does not collect art, he merely…appreciates it. Our payment will be in gems, as agreed.”

  “As you wish. Please step into the circle…”

  “—ing harpsichord,” muttered Mr. Tulip.

  The New Firm came under the hidden gaze of the chairs as they took up their positions.

  What the chairs saw was this:

  Mr. Pin was small and slim and, like his namesake, slightly larger in the head than ought to be the case. If there was a word for him apart from “rat” it was “dapper”; he drank little, he watched what he ate and considered that his body, slightly malformed though it was, was a temple. He also used too much oil on his hair and parted it in the middle in a way that was twenty years out of style, and his black suit was on the greasy side, and his little eyes were constantly moving, taking in everything.

  It was hard to see Mr. Tulip’s eyes, because of a certain puffiness probably caused by too much enthusiasm for things in bags.* The bags had also possibly caused the general blotchiness and the thick veins that stood out on his forehead, but Mr. Tulip was in any case the kind of heavyset man who is on the verge of bursting out of his clothes and, despite his artistic inclinations, projected the image of a would-be wrestler who had failed the intelligence test. If his body was a temple, it was one of those strange ones where people did odd things to animals in the basement, and if he watched what he ate, it was only to see it wriggle.

  Several of the chairs wondered, not if they were doing the right thing, since that was indisputable, but whether they were doing it with the right people. Mr. Tulip, after all, wasn’t a man you’d want to see standing too close to a naked flame.

  “When will you be ready?” said a chair. “How is your…protégé today?”

  “We think Tuesday morning would be a good time,” said Mr. Pin. “By then he’ll be as good as he’s going to get.”

  “And there will be no deaths involved,” said a chair. “This is important.”

  “Mr. Tulip will be as gentle as a lamb,” said Mr. Pin.

  Unseen gazes avoided the sight of Mr. Tulip, who had chosen this moment to suck up his nose a large quantity of Slab.

  “Er, yes,” said a chair. “His Lordship is not to be harmed any more than strictly necessary. Vetinari dead would be more dangerous than Vetinari alive.”

  “And at all costs there must be no trouble with the Watch.”

  “Yeah, we know about the Watch,” said Mr. Pin. “Mr. Slant told us.”

  “Commander Vimes is running a very…efficient Watch.”

  “No problem,” said Mr. Pin.

  “And it employs a werewolf.”

  White powder fountained into the air. Mr. Pin had to slap his colleague on the back.

  “A —ing werewolf? Are you —ing crazy?”

  “Uh…why does your partner keep saying ‘ing,’ Mr. Pin?” said a chair.

  “You must be out of your —ing minds!” Tulip growled.

  “Speech impediment,” said Pin. “A werewolf? Thank you for telling us. Thank you very much. They’re worse than vampires when they’re on the trail! You do know that, do you?”

  “You were recommended to us as men of resource.”

  “Expensive men of resource,” said Mr. Pin.

  A chair sighed. “There are seldom any other kind. Very well, very well. Mr. Slant will discuss this with you.”

  “Yeah, but they’ve got a sense a’smell that you wouldn’t believe,” Mr. Tulip went on. “Money’s no use to a —ing dead man.”

  “Are there any other surprises?” said Mr. Pin. “You’ve got bright watchmen and one of ’em’s a werewolf. Anything else? They’ve got trolls too?”

  “Oh, yes. Several. And dwarfs. And zombies.”

  “In a Watch? What kind of a city are you running here?”

  “We are not running the city,” said a chair.

  “But we care about the way it is going,” said another.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Pin. “Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens.” He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where “traditional values” meant “hang someone.” He did not have a problem with this, broadly speaking, but it never hurt to understand your employer.

  “You could have got someone else,” he said. “You’ve got a guild of Assassins here.”

  A chair made a sucking sound between its teeth.

  “The trouble with the city at present,” it said, “is that a number of otherwise intelligent people find the status quo…convenient, even though it will undoubtedly ruin the city.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Pin. “They are unconcerned citizens.”

  “Precisely, gentlemen.”

  “There’s a lot of them?”

  The chair ignored this.

  “We look forward to seeing you again, gentlemen. Tomorrow night. When, I trust, you will announce your readiness. Good evening.”

  The circle of chairs was silent for a while after the New Firm had left. Then a black-clad figure entered soundlessly through the big doors, approached the light, nodded, and hurried away.

  “They’re well outside the building,” said a chair.

  “What ghastly people.”

  “We should have used the Assassins’ Guild, though.”

  “Hah! They’ve done rather well out of Vetinari. In any case, we do not want him dead. However, it occurs to me that the Guild may eventually have a contract…”

  “Quite so. When our friends have safely left the city…the roads can be so dangerous at this time of year.”

  “No, gentlemen. We will stick to our plan. The one called Charlie will be kept around until everything is entirely settled, in case he could be of further use, and then our gentlemen will take him a long, long way away to, hah, pay him off. Perhaps later we will call the Assassins in, just in case Mr. Pin has any clever ideas.”

  “Good point. Although it does seem such a waste. The things one could do with Charlie…”

  “I told you, it would not work. The man is a clown.”

  “I suppose you are right. Better something once-and-for-all, then.”

  “I’m sure we understand one another. And now…this meeting of the Committee to Unelect the Patrician is declared closed. And hasn’t happened.”

  Lord Vetinari by habit rose so early that bedtime was merely an excuse to change his clothes.

  He liked the time just before a winter’s dawn. It was generally foggy, which made it hard to see the city, and for a few hours there was no sound but the occasional brief scream.

  But the tranquillity was broken this morning by a cry just outside the Palace gates.

  “Hoinarylup!”

  He went to the window.

  “Squidaped-oyt!”

  The Patrician walked back to his desk and rang the bell for his clerk Drumknott, who was dispatched to the walls to investigate.

  “It is the beggar known as Foul Ole Ron, sir,” he reported five minutes later. “Selling this…paper full of things.”

  Drumknott held it between two fingers as though expecting it to explode. Lord Vetinari took it and read through it. Then he read through it again.

  “Well, well,” he said. “‘The Ankh-Morpork Times.’ Was anyone else buying this?”

  “A number of people, my lord. People coming off the night shifts, market people, and so on.”

  “I see no mention of Hoinarylup or Squidaped-oyt.”

  “No, my lord.”

  “How very strange.” Lord Vetinari read for a moment, and said, “Hm-hm. Clear my appointments this morning, will you? I will see the Guild of Town Criers at nine o’clock and the Guild of Engravers at ten past.”

  “I wasn’t aware they had appointments, sir.”

  “They will have,” said Lord Vetinari. “When they see this, they will have. Well, well…I see fifty-si
x people were hurt in a tavern brawl.”

  “That seems rather a lot, my lord.”

  “It must be true, Drumknott,” said the Patrician. “It’s in the paper. Oh, and send a message to that nice Mr. de Worde, too. I will see him at nine-thirty.”

  He ran his eye down the gray type again.

  “And please also put out the word that I wish to see no harm coming to Mr. de Worde, will you?”

  Drumknott, usually so adept in his understanding of his master’s requirements, hesitated a moment.

  “My lord, do you mean that you want no harm to come to Mr. de Worde, or that you want no harm to come to Mr. de Worde?”

  “Did you wink at me, Drumknott?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Drumknott, I believe it is the right of every citizen of Ankh-Morpork to walk the streets unmolested.”

  “Good gods, sir! Is it?”

  “Indeed.”

  “But I thought you were very much against movable type, sir. You said that it would make printing too cheap, and people would—”

  “Sheearna-plp!” shouted the newspaper seller, down by the gates.

  “Are you poised for the exciting new millennium that lies before us, Drumknott? Are you ready to grasp the future with a willing hand?”

  “I don’t know, my lord. Is special clothing required?”

  The other lodgers were already at the breakfast table when William hurried down. He was hurrying because Mrs. Arcanum had Views about people who were late for meals.

  Mrs. Arcanum, proprietress of Mrs. Eucrasia Arcanum’s Lodging House for Respectable Working Men, was what Sacharissa was unconsciously training to be. She wasn’t just respectable, she was Respectable; it was a lifestyle, religion, and hobby combined. She liked respectable people who were Clean and Decent; she used the phrase as if it was impossible to be one without being the other. She kept respectable beds and cooked cheap but respectable meals for her respectable lodgers, who, apart from William, were mostly middle-aged, unmarried, and extremely sober. They were mainly craftsmen in small trades, and were almost all heavily built, well scrubbed, owned serious boots, and were clumsily polite at the dining table.