The Truth (Discworld #25)

Then you'd better come back to the office with me,' said William. 'After all, you've been carrying him around while you've been selling the papers, haven't you?'

Too dangerous now,' said Deep Bone.

'Would it be less dangerous for another fifty dollars?' said William.

'Another fifty dollars?' said Arnold Sideways. That'll make it fifteen dollars!'

'A hundred dollars,' said William wearily. 'You do realize, don't you, that this is in the public interest?'

The crew craned their necks.

'Don't see anyone watching,' said Coffin Henry.

William stepped forward, quite accidentally knocking over his tea.

'Come on, then,' he said.

Mr Tulip was beginning to worry now. This was unusual. In the area of worry, he had tended to be the cause rather than the recipient. But Mr Pin was not acting right, and since Mr Pin was the man who did the thinking this was a matter of some concern. Mr Tulip was good at thinking in split-seconds, and when it came to art appreciation he could easily think in centuries, but he was not happy over middle distances. He needed Mr Pin for that.

But Mr Pin was talking to himself, and kept staring at shadows.

'We'll be heading off now?' said Mr Tulip, in the hope of directing matters. 'We've got the --ing payment with a --ing big bonus, no --ing point in hanging around?'

He was also worried about the way Mr Pin had acted with the --ing lawyer. It wasn't like him to point a weapon at someone and then not use it. The New Firm didn't go round threatening people. They were the threat. All that --ing stuff about 'letting you live for today'... that was amateur stuff.

'I said, are we heading--'

'What do you think happens to people when they die, Tulip?'

Mr Tulip was taken aback. 'What kind of --ing question is that? You &«owwhat happens!'

'Do I?'

'Certainly. Remember when we had to leave that guy in that --ing barn and it was a week before we got to bury him properly? Remember how his--'

'I don't mean bodies!'

'Ah. Religion stuff, then?'

'Yes!'

'I never worry about that --ing stuff.'

'Never?'

'Never --ing give it a thought. I've got my potato.'

Then Mr Tulip found that he'd walked a few feet alone, because Mr Pin had stopped dead.

'Potato?'

'Oh, yeah. Keep it on a string round my neck.' Mr Tulip tapped his huge chest.

'And that's religious?'

'Well, yeah. If you've got your potato when you die, everything will be okay.'

'What religion is that?'

'Dunno. Never ran across it outside our village. I was only a kid. I mean, it's like gods, right? When you're a kid, they say "that's God, that is". Then you grow up and you find there's --ing millions of 'em. Same with religion.'

'And it's all okay if you have a potato when you die?'

'Yep. You're allowed to come back and have another life.'

'Even if...' Mr Pin swallowed, for he was in territory which had never before existed on his internal atlas, '... even if you've done things which people might think were bad?'

'Like chopping up people and --ing shovin' 'em off cliffs?'

'Yeah, that kind of thing

Mr Tulip sniffed, causing his nose to flash. 'We-ell, it's okay so long as you're really --ing sorry about it.'

Mr Pin was amazed, and a little suspicious. But he could feel things... catching up. There were faces in the darkness and voices on the cusp of hearing. He dared not turn his head now, in case he saw anything behind him.

You could buy a sack of potatoes for a dollar.

'It works?' he said.

'Sure. Back home people'd been doing it for hundreds of --ing years. They wouldn't be doing it if it didn't --ing work, would they?'

'Where was that?'

Mr Tulip tried to concentrate on this question, but there were many scabs in his memory.

There was... forests,' he said. 'And... bright candles,' he muttered. 'An'... secrets,' he added, staring into nothing.

'And potatoes?'

Mr Tulip came back to the here and now.

'Yeah, them,' he said. 'Always lots of --ing potatoes. If you've got your potato, it will be all right.'

'But... I thought you had to pray in deserts and go to a temple every day, and sing songs, and give stuff to the poor... ?'

'Oh, you can do all that too, sure,' said Mr Tulip. 'Just so long as you've got your --ing potato.'

'And you come back alive?' said Mr Pin, still trying to find the small print.

'Sure. No point in coming back dead. Who'd notice the --ing difference?'

Mr Pin opened his mouth to reply, and Mr Tulip saw his expression change.

'Someone's got their hand on my shoulder!' he hissed.

'You feeling all right, Mr Pin?'

'You can't see anyone?'

'Nope.'

Clenching his fists, Mr Pin turned round. There were plenty of people in the street, but no one gave him a second glance.

He tried to reorganize the jigsaw that his mind was rapidly becoming.

'Okay. Okay,' he said. 'What we'll do... we'll go back to the house, okay, and... and we'll get the rest of the diamonds, and we'll scrag Charlie, and, and... we'll find a vegetable shop... any special kind of potato?'

'Nope.'

'Right... but first...' Mr Pin stopped, and his mind's ear heard footsteps stop behind him a moment later. The damn vampire had done something to him, he knew. The darkness had been like a tunnel, and there had been things...

Mr Pin believed in threats, and in violence, and at a time like this he believed in revenge. An inner voice that currently passed for sanity was making a clamour, but it was overruled by a deeper and more automatic response.

'That bloody vampire did this,' he said. 'And killing a vampire... hey... that's practically good, right?' He brightened. Salvation beckoned through Holy Works. 'Everyone knows they have evil occult powers. Could even count in a man's favour, eh?'

'Yeah. But... who cares?'

'I do.'

'Okay.' Even Mr Tulip didn't argue with that tone of voice. Mr ,Pin could be inventively unpleasant. Besides, part of the code was that you did not leave an insult unavenged. Everyone knew that.

It was just that nervousness was beginning to percolate even into the bath-salt-and-worming-powder-ravaged pathways of his own brain. He'd always admired the way Mr Pin wasn't frightened of difficult things, like long sentences.

'What'll we use?' he said. 'A stake?'

'No,' said Mr Pin. 'With this one I want to be certain.'

He lit a cigarette, with a hand that shook just a little, and then let the match flare up.

'Ah. Right,' said Mr Tulip.

'Let's just do it,' said Mr Pin.

Rocky's brow furrowed as he looked at the seals nailed around the doors of the de Worde town house.

'What's dem things?' he said.

They're to say the Guilds will interest themselves in anyone who breaks in,' said Sacharissa, fumbling with the key. 'It's a sort of curse. Only it works.'

'Dat one's the Assassins?' said the troll, indicating a crude shield with the cloak-and-dagger and double-cross.

'Yes. It means there's an automatic contract out on anyone who breaks in.'

'Wouldn't want dem interested in me. Good job you got a key...'

The lock clicked. The door opened at a push.

Sacharissa had been in a number of Ankh-Morpork's great houses, when the owners had thrown parts of them open to the public in aid of some of the more respectable charities. She hadn't realized how a building could change when people no longer wanted to live in it. It felt threatening and out of scale. The doorways were too big, the ceilings too high. The musty, empty atmosphere descended on her like a headache.

Behind her Rocky lit a couple of lanterns. But even their light left her surrounded by shadows.

At least the main staircase wasn't hard to find, and William's hasty directions led her to a suite of rooms bigger than her house.

The wardrobe, when she found it, was simply a room full of rails and hangers.

Things glittered in the gloom. The dresses also smelled strongly of mothballs.

'Dat's interestin',' said Rocky, behind her.

'Oh, it's just to keep the moths away,' said Sacharissa.

'I'm lookin' at all the footprints,' said the troll. 'Dey were in the hall, too.'

She tore her gaze away from the rows of dresses and looked down. The dust was certainly disturbed.

'Er... cleaning lady?' she said. 'Someone must come in to keep an eye on things?'

'What she do, kick der dust to death?'

'I suppose there must be... caretakers and things?' said Sacharissa uncertainly. A blue dress was saying: wear me, I'm just your type. See me shimmer.

Rocky prodded a box of mothballs that had spilled out across a dressing table and rolled into the dust.

'Looks like dem moths are really keen on dese things,' he said.

'You don't think a dress like this would be a bit... forward, do you?' said Sacharissa, holding the dress against herself.

Rocky looked worried. He hadn't been hired for his dress sense, and certainly not for his grasp of colloquial Middle Class.

'You're quite a lot forward already,' he opined.

'I meant make me look like a fast woman!'

'Ah, right,' said Rocky, getting there. 'No. Def'nitly not.'

'Really?'

'Sure. No one could run much in a dress like dat.'

Sacharissa gave up. 'I suppose Mrs Hotbed could let it out a bit,' she said, reflectively. It was tempting to stay, because some of the racks were quite full, but she felt like a trespasser here and part of her was certain that a woman with hundreds of dresses was more likely to miss one than a woman with a dozen or so. In any case, the empty darkness was getting on her nerves. It was full of other people's ghosts. 'Let's get back.'

When they were halfway across the hall someone started to sing. The words were incoherent and the tune was being modulated by alcohol, but it was singing of a sort and it was under their feet.

Rocky shrugged when Sacharissa glanced at him.

'Maybe all dem moths is having a ball?' he said.

There must be a caretaker, mustn't there? Maybe we'd better just, you know, mention we've been here?' Sacharissa agonized. It hardly seems polite, just taking things and running

She headed for a green door tucked away beside the staircase and pushed it open. The singing went louder for a moment but stopped as soon as she said, 'Excuse me?' into the darkness.

After a few moments' silence a voice said: 'Hello! How are you? I'm fine!'

'It's only, er, me? William said it was all right?' She presented the statement like a question, in the voice of someone who was apologizing to a burglar for discovering him.

'Mr Mothball Nose? Whoops!' said the voice in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs.

'Er... are you all right?'

'Can't get... it's a... hahaha... it's all chains... hahaha...'

'Are you... ill?'

'No, I'm fine, not ill at all, jus' had a few too many

'Few too many what?' said Sacharissa, speaking from a sheltered upbringing.

'... wazza... things you put drink in... barrels?'

'You're drunk!'

'Tha's right! Tha's the word! Drunk as a... thing... smellything... ahahaha...'

There was a tinkle of glass.

The lantern's weak glow showed what looked like a wine cellar, but a man was slumped on a bench against one wall and a chain ran from his ankle to a ring set in the floor.

'Are you... a prisoner?' said Sacharissa.

'Ahaha

'How long have you been down here?' She crept down.

'Years...

'Years?'

'Got lots of years...' The man picked up a bottle and peered at it. 'Now... Year of the Amending Camel... that was bloodigoodyear... and this one... Year of the Translated Rat... another bloodigoodyear... bloodigoodyears, the lot of them. Could do with a biscuit, though.'

Sacharissa's knowledge of vintages extended just as far as knowing that Chateau Maison was a very popular wine. But people didn't have to be chained up to drink wine, even the stuff from Ephebe that stuck the glass to the table.

She moved a little closer and the light fell on the man's face. It was locked in the grin of the seriously drunk, but it was very recognizable. She saw it every day, on coins.

'Er... Rocky,' she said. 'Er... can you come down here a minute?'

The door burst open and the troll came down the steps at speed. Unfortunately, it was because he was rolling.

Mr Tulip appeared at the top of the stairs, massaging his fist.

'It's Mr Sneezy!' said Charlie, raising a bottle. The gang's all here! Whoopee!'

Rocky got up, weaving slightly. Mr Tulip strolled down the steps, ripping out the doorpost as he passed. The troll raised his fists in the classic boxer's pose, but Mr Tulip didn't bother with niceties of that kind and hit him hard with the length of ancient wood. Rocky went over like a tree.

Only then did the huge man with the revolving eyes try to focus them on Sacharissa.

'Who the --ing hell are you?'

'Don't you dare swear at me!' she said. 'How dare you swear in the presence of a lady!'

This seemed to nonplus him. 'I don't --ing swear!'

'Here, I've seen you before, you're that-- I knew you weren't a proper virgin!' said Sacharissa triumphantly.

There was the click of a crossbow. Some tiny sounds carry well and have considerable stopping power.

'There are some thoughts too dreadful to think,' said the skinny man looking at her from the top of the steps and down the length of a pistol bow. 'What are you doing here, lady?'

'And you were Brother Pin! You haven't got any right here! I've got a key!' Some areas of Sacharissa's mind that dealt with things like death and terror were signalling to be heard at this point, but, being part of Sacharissa, they were trying to do it in a ladylike way, and so she ignored them.

'A key?' said Brother Pin, advancing down the stairs. The bow stayed pointing at her. Even in his current state of mind, Mr Pin knew how to aim. 'Who'd give you a key?'

'Don't you come near me! Don't you dare come near me! If you come near me I'll - I'll write it down!'

'Yeah? Well, one thing I know is, words don't hurt,' said Mr Pin. 'I've heard lots of--'

He stopped and grimaced, and for a moment it looked as if he'd fall to his knees. He righted himself and focused on her again.

'You are coming with us,' he said. 'An' don't say you're going to scream, because we're all alone here and I've... heard... lots... of... screams...'

Once again he seemed to run down, and again he recovered. Sacharissa stared in horror at the weaving crossbow. Those parts of her advocating silence as a survival aid had finally made themselves heard.

'What about these two?' said Mr Tulip. 'We're scragging 'em now?'

'Chain them up and leave them.'

'But we always--'

'Leave them!'

'You sure you feel all right?' said Mr Tulip.

'No! I don't! Just leave them, okay? We haven't got time!'

'We've got lots of--'

'I haven't!' Mr Pin strode up to Sacharissa. 'Who gave you that key?'

'I'm not going to--'

'Do you want Mr Tulip here to say goodbye to our drunken friends?' In his buzzing head, and with his shaky grasp of how things were supposed to work in a moral universe, Mr Pin reckoned that this was all right. After all, their shadows would follow Mr Tulip, not him...

'This house belongs to Lord de Worde and his son gave me the key!' said Sacharissa triumphantly. 'There! He was the one you met at the newspaper! Now you know what you've got yourself into, eh?'

Mr Pin stared at her.

Then he said, 'I'm going to find out. Don't run. Really don't scream. Walk normally and everything--' He paused. I was going to say it will be all right,' he said. 'But that would be silly, wouldn't it... ?'

It wasn't fast, going through the streets with the crew. To them the world was a permanent theatre, art gallery, music hall, restaurant and spittoon, and in any case no member of the crew would dream of going anywhere in a straight line.

The poodle Trixiebell accompanied them, keeping as close to the centre of the group as possible. Of Deep Bone there was no sign. William had offered to carry Wuffles, because in a way he felt he owned him. A hundred dollars' worth of him, at least. It was a hundred dollars he hadn't got but, well, surely tomorrow's edition would pay for that. And anyone after the dog now surely wouldn't try anything out here on the street, in broad daylight, especially since it was barely narrow daylight now. Clouds filled the sky like old eiderdowns, the fog that was descending was meeting the river mist coming up, and the light was draining out of everything.

He tried to think of the headline. He couldn't quite get a grip on it yet. There was too much to say, and he wasn't good at getting the huge complexities of the world into fewer than half a dozen words. Sacharissa was better at it, because she treated words as lumps of letters that could be hammered together any old how. Her best one had been on some tedious inter-Guild squabble and, in single column, read:

PROBE

INTO

SHOCK

GUILD

RUMPUS

William just wasn't used to the idea of evaluating words purely in terms of their length, whereas she'd picked up the habit in two days. He'd already had to stop her calling Lord Vetinari CITY BOSS. It was technically correct that if you spent some time with a thesaurus you could arrive at that description, and it did fit in a single column, but the sight of the words had made William feel extremely exposed.

It was self-absorption like this that allowed him to walk into the printing shed, with the crew tagging along, and not notice anything wrong until he saw the expression on the faces of the dwarfs.

'Ah, our writer man,' said Mr Pin, stepping forward. 'Shut the door, Mr Tulip.'

Mr Tulip slammed the door with one hand. The other was clamped over Sacharissa's mouth. She rolled her eyes at William.

'And you've brought me the little doggie,' said Mr Pin. Wuffles started to growl as he approached. William backed away.

'The Watch will be here soon,' said William. Wuffles still growled, on a rising note.

'Doesn't worry me now,' said Mr Pin. 'Not with what I know. Not with who I know. Where's the damn vampire?'

'I don't know! He's not always with us!' snapped William.

'Really? In that case let me retort!' said Mr Pin, his pistol bow inches from William's face. 'If it doesn't arrive within two minutes I will--'

Wuffles leapt out of William's arms. His bark was the frantic whurwhur of a small dog mad with fury. Pin reared back, one arm raised to protect his face. The bow fired. The arrow hit one of the lamps over the press. The lamp exploded.

A cloud of burning oil rained down. It splattered across type metal and old rocking horses and dwarfs.

Mr Tulip let go of Sacharissa to help his colleague, and in the slow dance of rushing events Sacharissa spun round and planted her knee hard and firmly in the place that made a parsnip a very funny thing indeed.

William grabbed her on the way past and rushed her out into the freezing air. When he fought his way back in through the stampeding crew, who had the same instinctive reaction to fire as they did to soap and water, it was into a room full of burning debris. Dwarfs were fighting fires in the rubbish. Dwarfs were fighting fires in their beards. Several were advancing on Mr Tulip, who was on his hands and knees and throwing up. And Mr Pin was spinning around, flailing at an enraged Wuffles, who was managing to growl while sinking his teeth into Pin's arm all the way to the bone.

William cupped his hands. 'Get out right now!' he yelled. 'The tins!'

One or two dwarfs heard him, and looked around at the shelves of old paint tins just as the first one blew off its lid.

The tins were ancient, no more now than rust held together with chemical sludge. Several others were starting to burn.

Mr Pin danced across the floor, trying to shake the enraged dog from his arm.

'Get the damn thing off'f me!' he yelled.

'Forget the --ing dog, my --ing suit's on fire!' shouted Mr Tulip, flailing at his own sleeve.

A tin of what had once been enamel paint took off from the blazing mess, spinning with a wzipwzip noise, and exploded on the press.

William grabbed Goodmountain's shoulder. 'I said come on!'

'My press! It's on fire!'

'Better it than us! Come on\'

It was said of the dwarfs that they cared more about things like iron and gold than they did about people, because there was only a limited supply of iron and gold in the world whereas there seemed to be more and more people everywhere you looked. It was said mostly by people like Mr Windling.

But they did care fiercely about things. Without things, people were just bright animals.

The printers clustered around the doorway, axes at the ready. Choking brown smoke billowed out. Flames licked out among the roof eaves. Several sections of tin roof buckled and collapsed.

As they did so a smouldering ball rocketed out through the door and three dwarfs who took a swipe only just missed hitting one another.

It was Wuffles. Patches of fur were still smoking, but his eyes gleamed and he was still whining and growling.

He let William pick him up. He had a triumphant air about him, and turned to watch the burning doorway with his ears cocked.

'That must be it, then,' said Sacharissa.

'They might have got out of the back door,' said Goodmountain. 'Boddony, some of you go round and check, will you?'

'Plucky dog, this,' said William.

' "Brave" would be better,' said Sacharissa distantly. 'It's only five letters. It would look better in a single-column sidebar. No... "Plucky" would work, because then we'd get:

PLUCKY DOG PUTS

BITE ON VILLAINS

... although that first line is a bit shy.' 'I wish I could think in headlines,' said William, shivering.

It was cool and damp down here in the cellar.

Mr Pin dragged himself to a corner and slapped at the burns on his suit.

'We're --ing trapped,' moaned Tulip.

'Yeah? This is stone,' said Pin. 'Stone floor, stone walls, stone ceiling! Stone doesn't bum, okay? We just stay nice and calm down here and wait it out.'

Mr Tulip listened to the sound of the fire above them. Red and yellow light danced on the floor under the cellar hatchway.

'I don't --ing like it,' he said.

'We've seen worse.'

'I don't --ing like it!'

'Just keep cool. We're going to get out of this. I wasn't born to fry!'

The flames roared around the press. A few late paint tins pin-wheeled through the heat, spraying burning droplets.

The fire was yellow-white at the heart, and now it crackled around the metal formes that held the type.

Silver beads appeared around the leaden, inky slugs. Letters shifted, settled, ran together. For a moment the words themselves floated on the melting metal, innocent words like 'the' and 'truth' and 'shall make ye fere', and then they were lost. From the red-hot press, and the wooden boxes, and amongst the racks and racks of type, and even out of the piles of carefully stockpiled metal, thin streams began to flow. They met and merged and spread. Soon the floor Was a moving, rippling mirror in which the orange and yellow flames danced upside down.

On Otto's workbench the salamanders detected the heat. They liked heat. Their ancestors had evolved in volcanoes. They woke up and began to purr.

Mr Tulip, walking up and down the cellar like a trapped animal, picked up one of the cages and glared at the creatures.

'What're these --ing things?' he said, and dropped it back on the bench. Then he noticed the dark jar next to it. 'And why's it --ing got "Handle viz Care!!!" on this one?'

The eels were already edgy. They could detect heat too, and they were creatures of deep caves and buried, icy streams.

There was a flash of dark as they protested.

Most of it went straight through the brain of Mr Tulip. But such as was left of that ragged organ had survived his every attempt at scrambling and in any case Mr Tulip didn't use it much, because it hurt such a lot.

But there was a brief remembrance of snow, and fir woods, and burning buildings, and the church. They'd sheltered there. He'd been small. He remembered big shining paintings, more colours than he'd ever seen before...

He blinked and dropped the jar.

It shattered on the floor. There was another burst of dark from the eels. They wriggled desperately out of the wreckage and slithered along the edge of the wall, squeezing into the cracks between the stones.

Mr Tulip turned at a sound behind him. His colleague had collapsed to his knees and was clutching at his head.

'You all right?'

They're right behind me!' Pin whispered.

'Nah, just you and me down here, old friend.'

Mr Tulip patted Pin on the shoulder. The veins on his forehead stood out with the effort of thinking of something to do next. The memory had gone. Young Tulip had learned how to edit memories. What Mr Pin needed, he decided, was to remember the good times.

'Hey, remember when Gerhardt the Boot and his lads had us cornered in that --ing cellar in Quirm?' he said. 'Remember what we did to him afterwards?'

'Yes,' said Mr Pin, staring at the blank wall. I remember.'

'And that time with that old man who was in that house in Genua and we didn't --ing know? So we nailed up the door and--'

'Shut up! Shut up!'

'Just trying to look on the --ing bright side.'

'We shouldn't have killed all those people...' Mr Pin whispered, almost to himself.

'Why not?' said Mr Tulip, but Pin's nervousness had got through to him again. He pulled at the leather cord around his neck and felt the reassuring lump on the end. A potato can be a great help in times of trial.

A pattering behind him made him turn round, and he brightened up.

'Anyway, we're okay now,' he said. 'Looks like it's --ing raining.'

Silver droplets were pouring through the cellar hatch.

'That's not water!' screamed Pin, standing up.

The drops ran together, became a steady stream. It splashed oddly and mounded up under the hatch, but more liquid poured on top of it and spread out across the floor.

Pin and Tulip backed against the far wall.

'That's hot lead,' said Pin. They print their paper with it!'

'How --ing much is there going to be?'

'Down here? Can't end up more than a couple of inches, can it?'

At the other side of the cellar Otto's bench started to smoulder as the pool touched it.

'We need something to stand on,' said Pin. 'Just while it cools! It won't take long in this chill!'

'Yeah, but there's nothing here but us! We're --ing trapped*.'

Mr Pin put his hand over his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath of air that was already getting very warm in the soft silver rain.