Witches Abroad (31 page)

She took a pull of rum and handed the jug to Saturday.

Saturday took a mouthful, and passed the jug up to something that might have been a hand.

‘Let it begin,' said Mrs Gogol.

The dead man picked up three small drums and began to beat out a rhythm, heartbeat fast.

After a while something tapped Mrs Gogol on the shoulder and handed her the jug. It was empty.

Might as well begin . . .

‘Lady Bon Anna smile on me. Mister Safe Way protect me. Stride Wide Man guide me. Hotaloga Andrews catch me.

‘I stand between the light and the dark, but that no matter, because I
am
between.

‘Here is rum for you. Tobacco for you. Food for you. A home for you.

‘Now you listen to me good . . .'

. . .
bong
.

For Magrat it was like waking from a dream into a dream. She'd been idly dreaming that she was dancing with the most handsome man in the room, and . . . she was dancing with the most handsome man in the room.

Except that he wore two circles of smoked glass over his eyes.

Although Magrat was soft-hearted, a compulsive daydreamer and, as Granny Weatherwax put it, a wet hen, she wouldn't be a witch if she didn't have certain instincts and the sense to trust them. She reached up and, before his hands could move, tweaked the things away.

Magrat had seen eyes like that before, but never on something walking upright.

Her feet, which a moment before had been moving gracefully across the floor, tripped over themselves.

‘Er . . .' she began.

And she was aware that his hands, pink and well-manicured, were also cold and damp.

Magrat turned and ran, knocking the couples aside in her madness to get away. Her legs tangled in the dress. The stupid shoes skittered on the floor.

A couple of footmen blocked the stairs to the hall.

Magrat's eyes narrowed. Getting out was what mattered.

‘Hai!'

‘Ouch!'

And then she ran on, slipping at the top of the stairs. A glass slipper slithered across the marble.

‘How the hell's anyone supposed to
move
in these things?' she screamed at the world in general. Hopping frantically on one foot, she wrenched the other shoe off and ran into the night.

The Prince walked slowly to the top of the steps and picked up the discarded slipper.

He held it. The light glittered off its facets.

Granny Weatherwax leaned against the wall in the shadows. All stories had a turning point, and it had to be close.

She was good at getting into other people's minds, but now she had to get into hers. She concentrated. Down deeper . . . past everyday thoughts and minor concerns,
faster, faster
 . . . through layers of deep cogitation . . . deeper . . . past things sealed off and crusted over, old guilts and congealed regrets, but there was no time for them now . . . down . . . and there . . . the silver thread of the story. She'd been part of it, was part of it, so it had to be a part of her.

It poured past. She reached out.

She hated everything that predestined people, that fooled them, that made them slightly less than human.

The story whipped along like a steel hawser. She gripped it.

Her eyes opened in shock. Then she stepped forward.

‘Excuse me, Your Highness.'

She snatched the shoe from the Duc's hands, and raised it over her head.

Her expression of evil satisfaction was terrible to behold.

Then she dropped the shoe.

It smashed on the stairs.

A thousand glittering fragments scattered across the marble.

Coiled as it was around the length of turtle-shaped spacetime known as the Discworld, the story shook. One broken end flapped loose and flailed through the night, trying to find any sequence to feed on . . .

In the clearing the trees moved. So did the shadows. Shadows shouldn't be able to move unless the light moves. These did.

The drumming stopped.

In the silence there was the occasional sizzle as power crackled across the hanging coat.

Saturday stepped forward. Green sparks flew out to his hands as he gripped the jacket and put it on.

His body jerked.

Erzulie Gogol breathed out.

‘You are here,' she said. ‘You are still yourself. You are exactly yourself.'

Saturday raised his hands, with his fists clenched. Occasionally an arm or leg would jerk as the power inside him squirrel-caged around in its search for freedom, but she could see that he was riding it.

‘It will become easier,' she said, more gently now.

Saturday nodded.

With the power flowing inside him he had, she thought, the fire he'd had when he was alive. He had not been a particularly good man, she knew. Genua had not been a model of civic virtue. But at least he'd never told people that they wanted him to oppress them, and that everything he did was for their own good.

Around the circle, the people of New Genua – the
old
New Genua – knelt or bowed.

He hadn't been a kind ruler. But he'd fitted. And when he'd been arbitrary or arrogant or just plain wrong, he'd never suggested that this was justified by anything other than the fact that he was bigger and stronger and occasionally nastier than other people. He'd never suggested that it was because he was
better
. And he'd never told people they ought to be happy, and imposed a kind of happiness on them. The invisible people knew that happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in.

Saturday nodded again, this time in satisfaction. When he opened his mouth, sparks flashed between his teeth. And when he waded through the swamp, the alligators fought to get out of his way.

It was quiet in the palace kitchens now. The huge trays of roast meat, the pigs' heads with apples in their mouths, the multi-layered trifles had long ago been carried upstairs. There was a clattering from the giant sinks at the far end, where some of the maids were making a start on the washing up.

Mrs Pleasant the cook had made herself a plate of red stripefish in crawfish sauce. She wasn't the finest cook in Genua – no-one got near Mrs Gogol's gumbo, people would almost come back from the dead for a taste of Mrs Gogol's gumbo – but the comparison was as narrow as that between, say, diamonds and sapphires. She'd done her best to cook up a good banquet, because she had her professional pride, but there wasn't much she felt she was able to do with lumps of meat.

Genuan cooking, like the best cooking everywhere in the multiverse, had been evolved by people who had to make desperate use of ingredients their masters didn't want. No-one would even try a bird's nest unless they had to. Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator. No-one would eat a shark's fin if they were allowed to eat the rest of the shark.

She poured herself a rum and was just picking up the spoon when she felt herself being watched.

A large man in a black leather doublet was staring at her from the doorway, dangling a ginger cat mask from one hand.

It was a very direct stare. Mrs Pleasant found herself wishing she'd done something about her hair and was wearing a better dress.

‘Yes?' she said. ‘What d'you want?'

‘Waaant foood, Miss-uss Pleassunt,' said Greebo.

She looked him up and down. There were some odd types in Genua these days. This one must have been a guest at the ball, but there was something very . . .
familiar
about him.

Greebo wasn't a happy cat. People had made a fuss just because he'd dragged a roast turkey off the table. Then the skinny female with the teeth had kept simpering at him and saying she'd see him later in the rose garden, which wasn't at all the cat way of doing things, and that'd got him confused, because this wasn't the right kind of body and nor was hers. And there were too many other males around.

Then he'd smelled the kitchen. Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity.

‘I seen you somewhere before?' said Mrs Pleasant.

Greebo said nothing. He'd followed his nose to a bowl on one of the big tables.

‘Waaant,' he demanded.

‘Fish heads?' said Mrs Pleasant. They were technically garbage, although what she was planning with some rice and a few special sauces would turn them into the sort of dish kings fight for.

‘Waant,' Greebo repeated.

Mrs Pleasant shrugged.

‘You want raw fish heads, man, you take 'em,' she said.

Greebo lifted the bowl uncertainly. He wasn't too good with fingers. Then he looked around conspiratorially and ducked under the table.

There were the sounds of keen gurgitation and the bowl being scraped around on the floor.

Greebo emerged.

‘Millluk?' he suggested.

Fascinated, Mrs Pleasant reached for the milk jug and a cup—

‘Saaaaucerrr,' Greebo said.

—and a saucer.

Greebo took the saucer, gave it a long hard look, and put it on the floor.

Mrs Pleasant stared.

Greebo finished the milk, licking the remnant off his beard. He felt a lot better now. And there was a big fire over there. He padded over to it, sat down, spat on his paw and made an attempt to clean his ears, which didn't work because inexplicably neither ears nor paw were the right shape, and then curled up as best he could. Which wasn't very well, given that he seemed to have the wrong sort of backbone, too.

After a while Mrs Pleasant heard a low, asthmatic rumble.

Greebo was trying to purr.

He had the wrong kind of throat.

In a minute he was going to wake up in a bad temper and want to fight something.

Mrs Pleasant got on with her own supper. Despite the fact that a hulking great man had just eaten a bowl of fish heads and lapped a saucer of milk in front of her, and was now stretched out uncomfortably in front of the fire, she found she didn't feel the least bit afraid. In fact she was fighting down an impulse to scratch his tummy.

Magrat wrenched off the other slipper as she ran down the long red carpet towards the palace gateway and freedom. Just getting away, that was the important thing.
From
was more urgent than
to
.

And then two figures drifted out of the shadows and faced her. She raised the slipper pathetically as they approached in absolute silence, but even in the twilight she could feel their gaze.

The crowds parted. Lily Weatherwax glided through, in a rustle of silk.

She looked Granny up and down, without any expression of surprise.

‘All in white, too,' she said, dryly. ‘My word, aren't you the
nice
one.'

‘But I've stopped you,' said Granny, still panting with the effort. ‘I've
broken
it.'

Lily Weatherwax looked past her. The snake sisters were coming up the steps, holding a limp Magrat between them.

‘Save us all from people who think literally,' said Lily. ‘The damn things come in pairs, you know.'

She crossed to Magrat and snatched the second slipper out of her hand.

‘The clock was interesting,' she said, turning back to Granny. ‘I was impressed with the clock. But it's no good, you know. You can't stop this sort of thing. It has the momentum of inevitability. You can't spoil a good story. I should know.'

She handed the slipper to the Prince, but without taking her eyes off Granny.

‘It'll fit her,' she said.

Two of the courtiers held Magrat's leg as the Prince wrestled the slipper past her protesting toes.

‘There,' said Lily, still without looking down. ‘And do stop trying that hedge-witch hypnotism on me, Esme.'

‘It fits,' said the Prince, but in a doubtful tone of voice.

‘Yes, anything would fit,' said a cheerful voice from somewhere towards the back of the crowd, ‘if you were allowed to put two pairs of hairy socks on first.'

Lily looked down. Then she looked at Magrat's mask. She reached out and pulled it off.

‘Ow!'

‘Wrong girl,' said Lily. ‘But it still doesn't matter, Esme, because it
is
the right slipper. So all we have to do is find the girl whose foot it fits—'

There was a commotion at the back of the crowd. Courtiers parted, revealing Nanny Ogg, oil-covered and hung with spider webs.

‘If it's a five-and-a-half narrow fit, I'm your man,' she said. ‘Just let me get these boots off . . .'

‘I wasn't referring to you, old woman,' said Lily coldly.

‘Oh, yes you was,' said Nanny. ‘We know how this bit goes, see. The Prince goes all round the city with the slipper, trying to find the girl whose foot fits. That's what you was plannin'. So I can save you a bit of trouble, how about it?'

There was a flicker of uncertainty in Lily's expression.

‘A
girl
,' she said, ‘of
marriageable
age.'

‘No problem there,' said Nanny cheerfully.

The dwarf Casanunda nudged a courtier proudly in the knees.

‘She's a very close personal friend of mine,' he said proudly.

Lily looked at her sister.

‘
You're
doing this. Don't think I don't know,' she said.

‘I ain't doing a thing,' said Granny. ‘It's real life happening all by itself.'

Nanny grabbed the slipper out of the Prince's hands and, before anyone else could move, slid it on to her foot.

Then she waggled the foot in the air.