‘You think that …’ Tiffany hesitated and then said, ‘That he is after me?’
She closed her eyes so that she couldn’t see the accusing face, and remembered the day she had kissed the winter. There had been terror, and dreadful apprehension, and the strange feeling of being warm whilst surrounded by ice and snow. And as for the kiss, well, it had been as gentle as a silk handkerchief falling on a carpet. Until she had poured all the heat of the sun into the lips of winter and melted him into water. Frost to fire. Fire to frost. She’d always been good with fire. Fire had always been her friend. It wasn’t as if the winter had ever died; there had been other winters since, but not so bad, never so bad. And it hadn’t just been a snog. She had done the right thing at the right time. It was what you did. Why had she had to do it? Because it was her fault; because she had disobeyed Miss Treason and joined in a dance that wasn’t just a dance but the curving of the seasons and the turning of the year.
And, with horror, she wondered: Where does it end? You do one foolish thing and then one thing to put it right, and when you put it right something else goes wrong. Where did it ever stop? Mrs Proust was watching her as though fascinated.
‘All I did was dance,’ said Tiffany.
Mrs Proust put a hand on her shoulder. ‘My dear, I think you will have to dance again. Could I suggest you do something very sensible at this point, Tiffany Aching?’
‘Yes,’ said Tiffany.
‘Listen to my advice,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘I don’t usually give things away, but I feel quite chipper about catching that lad who kept breaking my windows. So I’m in the mood for a good mood. There is a lady who I am sure would be very keen to talk to you. She lives in the city, but you’ll never find her no matter how hard you try. She will find you, though, in the blink of a second, and my advice is that when she does, you listen to everything she might tell you.’
‘So how do I find her?’ said Tiffany.
‘You’re feeling sorry for yourself and not listening,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘She will find you. You’ll know it when she does. Oh my word, yes.’ She reached into a pocket and produced a small round tin, the lid of which she flicked open with a black fingernail. The air suddenly felt prickly. ‘Snuff ?’ she said, offering the tin to Tiffany. ‘Dirty habit, of course, but it clears the tubes and helps me think.’ She took a pinch of the brown powder, tipped it onto the back of the other hand and sniffed it up with a sound like a honk in reverse. She coughed and blinked once or twice and said, ‘Of course, brown bogeys are not to everybody’s liking, but I suppose they add to that nasty witch look. Anyway, I expect they’ll soon give us dinner.’
‘They’re going to feed us?’ said Tiffany.
‘Oh yes, they’re a decent bunch, although the wine last time was a bit off in my opinion,’ said Mrs Proust.
‘But we’re in prison.’
‘No, my dear, we’re in the police cells. And, though nobody’s saying it, we’re locked in here for our protection. You see, everyone else is locked out, and although they sometimes act dumb, policemen can’t help being clever. They know that people need witches; they need the unofficial people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and when right is wrong and when wrong is right. The world needs the people who work around the edges. They need the people who can deal with the little bumps and inconveniences. And little problems. After all, we are almost all human. Almost all of the time. And almost every full moon Captain Angua comes to me to make up a prescription for her hardpad.’
The snuff tin was produced again.
After a while Tiffany said, ‘Hardpad is a disease of dogs.’
‘And werewolves,’ said Mrs Proust.
‘Oh. I thought there was something odd about her.’
‘She stays on top of it, mind you,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘She shares lodgings with Captain Carrot and doesn’t bite anybody – although, come to think about it, she possibly bites Captain Carrot, but least said soonest mended, I’m sure you will agree. Sometimes what is legal isn’t what is right, and sometimes it needs a witch to tell the difference. And sometimes a copper too, if you have the right kind of copper. Clever people know this. Stupid people don’t. And the trouble is, stupid people can be oh so very clever. And by the way, miss, your boisterous little friends have escaped.’
‘Yes,’ Tiffany said. ‘I know.’
‘Isn’t that a shame, despite the fact that they faithfully promised the Watch to stay?’ Mrs Proust evidently did like to retain a reputation for nastiness.
Tiffany cleared her throat. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose Rob Anybody would tell you that there are times when promises should be kept and times when promises should be broken, and it takes a Feegle to know the difference.’
Mrs Proust grinned hugely. ‘You could almost be from the city, Miss Tiffany Aching.’
If you needed to guard something that didn’t need guarding, possibly because no one in their right mind would want to steal it, then Corporal Nobbs of the City Watch was, for want of a better way of describing him, and in the absence of any hard biological evidence to the contrary, your man. And now he stood in the dark and crunching ruins of the King’s Head, smoking a horrible cigarette made by rolling up all the stinking butts of previously smoked cigarettes into some fresh cigarette paper and sucking the horrible mess until some kind of smoke appeared.
He never noticed the hand that lifted his helmet off, hardly even felt the forensic blow to the head, and certainly did not feel the calloused little hands that placed the helmet back on his head as they lowered his sleeping body to the ground.
‘OK,’ said Rob Anybody in a hoarse whisper, looking around at the blackened timbers. ‘Now, we don’t have much time, ye ken, so—’
‘Well, well, I just knew that you wee scunners would come back here if I waited long enough for ye,’ said a voice in the dark. ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit and a fool to his folly, so the criminal returns to the scene of his crime.’
The watchman known as Wee Mad Arthur struck a match, which was, for a Feegle, a pretty good torch. There was a clink as something that was the size of a shield for a Feegle, but would have been a badge for a human policeman, landed on the floor in front of him. ‘That’s tae show you wee fools that I’m nae on duty, OK? Cannae be a policeman withoot a badge, ain’t that so? I just wanted tae see why ye wee deadbeats talks properly, like what I do, because ye ken, I’m no’ a Feegle.’
The Feegles looked at Rob Anybody, who shrugged and said, ‘What the heel do you think ye are, then?’
Wee Mad Arthur ran his hands through his hair, and nothing fell out. ‘Well, my ma an’ poppa told me I was a gnome, like them—’
He stopped talking because the Feegles were hooting and slapping their legs with mirth, which tends to go on for a long time.
Wee Mad Arthur watched for a little while before shouting, ‘I do not find this funny!’
‘Will ye no’ listen to yourself?’ said Rob Anybody, wiping his eyes. ‘Ye are speaking Feegle, sure enough! Did yer mammy and yer pappy nae tell ye? We Feegles are born knowing how to speak! Crivens! It’s just like a dog knowing how to bark! Ye cannae tell me ye are a gnome! Ye’ll be telling me ye are a pixie next!’
Wee Mad Arthur looked down at his boots. ‘My dad made me these boots,’ he said. ‘I couldnae bring mesel’ to tell him I didnae like boots on my feet. The whole family had been making and repairing shoes for hundreds of years, ye ken, and I wasnae good at the cobbling at all, and then one day all the elders of the tribe called me together and told me I was a lost foundling. They was moving to a new camp, and they ha’ found me, a tiny wee bairn, greeting by the road, right next to a sparrowhawk that I had strangled to death after it had snatched me from me cradle; they reckoned it was taking me home to feed me tae its chicks. And the old gnomes put their hats together, and said that while they were very happy to let me stay, what with being able to bite foxes to death and everything, it might be time for me to go out into the big world and find out who
my people were.’
‘Well, laddie, ye have found them,’ said Rob Anybody, slapping him on the back. ‘Ye did well to listen to a load of old cobblers. That was wisdom they told you, sure enough.’
He hesitated for a moment, and then went on, ‘However, it’s a wee bitty difficult that ye are – no offence meant – a policeman.’ He jumped back slightly, just in case.
‘Granted,’ said Wee Mad Arthur with satisfaction. ‘Whereas ye are a bunch of thieving drunken reprobates and scoff-laws with no respect for the law whatsoever!’
The Feegles nodded happily, although Rob Anybody said, ‘Would you no’ mind adding the words drunk and disorderly? We wouldnae want to be sold short here.’
‘And what about the snail-rustling, Rob?’ said Daft Wullie happily.
‘Weel,’ said Rob Anybody, ‘in actual point of fact, the snailrustling is still in the early stages of development at this time.’
‘Have you no good points?’ said Wee Mad Arthur desperately.
Rob Anybody looked puzzled. ‘We kind of thought them is our good points, but if you want to get picky, we never steal from them as has nae money, we has hearts of gold, although maybe – OK, mostly – somebody else’s gold, and we did invent the deep-fried stoat. That must count for something.’
‘How is that a good point?’ said Arthur.
‘Weel, it saves some other poor devil having tae do it. It’s what ye might call a taste explosion; ye take a mouthful, taste it, and then there is an explosion.’
Despite himself, Wee Mad Arthur was grinning. ‘Have you boys got no shame?’
Rob Anybody matched him grin for grin. ‘I couldnae say,’ he replied, ‘but if we have, it probably belonged tae somebody else.’
‘And what about the poor wee big lassie locked up and down in the Watch House?’ said Wee Mad Arthur.
‘Oh, she’ll bide fine till the morning,’ said Rob Anybody, as loftily as he could in the circumstances. ‘She is a hag o’ considerable resource.’
‘Ye think so? You wee scunners punched an entire pub to death! How can anyone put that right?’
This time Rob Anybody gave him a longer, more thoughtful look before saying, ‘Well, Mr Policeman, it seems ye are a Feegle and a copper. Well, that’s the way the world spins. But the big question for the pair of ye is: are you a sneak and a snitch?’
In the Watch House the shift was changing. Somebody came in and shyly handed Mrs Proust quite a large plate of cold meats and pickles, and a bottle of wine with two glasses. After a nervous look at Tiffany, the watchman whispered something to Mrs Proust, and in one movement she’d taken a small packet out of her pocket and shoved it into his hand. Then she came back and sat down on the straw again.
‘And I see he’s had the decency to open the bottle and let the wine breathe for a while,’ she said, and added, when she saw Tiffany’s glance, ‘Lance Constable Hopkins has a little problem that he’d rather his mother never found out about and I make a rather helpful ointment. I don’t charge him, of course. One hand washes the other, although in the case of young Hopkins I hope he scrubs it first.’
Tiffany had never drunk wine before; at home you drank small beer or small cider, which had just enough alcohol to kill off the nasty invisible tiny biting things, but not enough alcohol to make you more than a bit silly.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I never thought prison would be like this!’
‘Prison? I told you, my dear girl, this isn’t prison! If you want to know what a prison is like, visit the Tanty! That’s a dark place if you like! In here the watchmen don’t gob in your grub – at least when you’re watching, and certainly never in mine, you can be sure of that. The Tanty is a tough place; they like to think that anyone who gets put in there will think more than twice before doing anything that will get them put in there again. And they’ve tidied it up a bit these days, and not everybody who goes in comes out in a pine box, but the walls still scream silently to those with hearing. I hear them.’ She opened her snuffbox with a click. ‘And worse than the screaming is the sound of the canaries in D wing, where they lock up the men who they don’t dare hang. They bang up each one by himself in a little room, and they give him a canary as company.’ At this point Mrs Proust took a pinch of snuff, at such speed and volume that Tiffany was surprised that it didn’t come out of her ears.
The box’s lid snapped back down. ‘Those men, mark you, are not your average murderer – oh no, they killed people for a hobby, or for a god or for something to do, or because it wasn’t a very nice day. They did worse things than just murder, but murder was how it always ended. I see you haven’t touched your beef …? Oh well, if you’re quite sure …’ Mrs Proust paused with rather a large piece of heavily pickled lean beef on her knife and went on: ‘Funny thing, though, these cruel men used to look after their canaries, and cried when they died. The warders used to say it was all a sham; they said it gave them the creeps, but I’m not sure. When I was young, I used to run errands for the warders and I would look at those great heavy doors and I would listen to the little birds, and I would wonder what it is that makes the difference between a good man and a man so bad that no hangman in the city – not even my dad, who could have a man out of his cell and stone-cold dead in seven and a quarter seconds – would dare to put a rope round his neck in case he escaped from the fires of evil and came back with a vengeance.’ Mrs Proust stopped there and shivered, as if shaking off the memories. ‘That’s life in the big city, my girl; it’s not an easy bed of sweet primroses, like in the country.’
Tiffany wasn’t very happy with being called a girl again, but that wasn’t the worst of it. ‘Sweet primroses?’ she said. ‘It wasn’t sweet primroses the other day when I had to cut down a hanged man.’ And she had to tell Mrs Proust all about Mr Petty and Amber. And about the bouquet of nettles.
‘And your dad told you about the beatings?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Sooner or later, it’s all about the soul.’
The meal had been tasty, and the wine surprisingly strong. And the straw was a lot cleaner than you might have expected. It had been a long day, piled on top of other long days. ‘Please,’ Tiffany said, ‘can we get some sleep? My father always says that things will look better in the morning.’
There was a pause. ‘Upon reflection,’ Mrs Proust said, ‘I think your father will turn out to be wrong.’
Tiffany let the clouds of tiredness take her. She dreamed about canaries singing in the dark. And perhaps she imagined it, but she thought she woke up for a moment and saw the shadow of an old lady looking at her. It certainly wasn’t Mrs Proust, who snored something terrible. The shape was there for a moment, and then it vanished. Tiffany remembered: the world is full of omens, and you picked the ones you liked.
Chapter 8
THE KING’S NECK
IFFANY WAS WOKEN by the squeak of the cell door opening. She sat up and looked around. Mrs Proust was still asleep, and snoring so hard that her nose wobbled. Correction: Mrs Proust appeared to be asleep. Tiffany liked her, in a wary kind of way, but could she trust her? Sometimes she seemed to almost … read her mind.
‘I don’t read minds,’ said Mrs Proust, turning over.
‘Mrs Proust!’
Mrs Proust sat up and started to pull bits of straw off her dress. ‘I don’t read minds,’ she said, flicking the straw onto the floor. ‘I really have keen, but not supernatural, skills which I have honed to the sharpest of edges, and don’t you forget it, please. I hope to goodness they’re going to give us a cooked breakfast.’
‘No problem there – what would ye like us to fetch for ye?’
They looked up to see the Feegles sitting on the beam overhead, and dangling their feet happily.
Tiffany sighed. ‘If I asked you what you were doing last night, would you lie to me?’
‘Absolutely not, on our honour as Feegles,’ said Rob Anybody, with his hand on where he thought his heart was.
‘Well, that seems conclusive,’ said Mrs Proust, standing up.
Tiffany shook her head and sighed again. ‘No, it’s not quite as simple as that.’ She looked up at the beam and said, ‘Rob Anybody, was the answer you gave me just then truthful? I’m asking you as the hag o’ the hills.’
‘Oh aye.’
‘And that one?’
‘Oh aye.’
‘And that one?’
‘Oh aye.’
‘And that one?’
‘Oh … well, only a tiny wee lie, ye ken, hardly a lie, just something that it wouldnae be good for ye tae know.’
Tiffany turned to Mrs Proust, who was grinning. ‘The Nac Mac Feegles feel that the truth is so precious that it shouldn’t be waved about too much,’ she said apologetically.
‘Ah, people after my own heart,’ said Mrs Proust, and then, remembering herself, she added, ‘If I had one, that is.’
There was a sound of heavy boots, which got nearer and no less heavy very quickly, and turned out to belong to a tall and skinny watchman, who touched his helmet politely to Mrs Proust and gave Tiffany a nod.
‘Good morning, ladies! My name is Constable Haddock and I have been told to tell you that you’ve been let go with a warning,’ he said. ‘Although I have to tell you that no one quite knows what to warn you about, as far as I can tell, so if I was you, I’d consider myself generally in the situation of being warned, as it were, in a general and generically non-specific way, and hopefully slightly chastened by the experience, no offence meant, I’m sure.’ He coughed, and went on, after giving Mrs Proust a nervous look, ‘And Commander Vimes has asked me to make it clear that the individuals known jointly as the Nac Mac Feegle are to be out of this city by sunset.’