Pyramids tds-7

by Terry David John Pratchett

  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 top6. 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 c
orner, 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 reciept,' 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 gates7. 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 th
e chair from his fingers. It had transpired that he was the son of the late Johan Ludorum, one of the greatest assasins in the history of the Guild. Sons of dead assasins 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.