Interesting Times

beside him.

Herb and the guard stared at it.

'Guard… take him away,' said Lord Hong.

It was a marvellously constructed paper figure of a man.

But there didn't seem to have been enough paper for a head.

The immediate court turned out to be about eighty men, women and eunuchs, in various states of sleeplessness.

They were astonished at what sat on the throne.

The Horde were quite astonished at the court.

'Who're all them vinegar-faced old baggages at the front?' whispered Cohen, who was idly tossing a throwing knife into the air and catching it again. 'I wouldn't even set fire to them.'

'They're the wives of former Emperors,' hissed Six Beneficent Winds.

'We don't have to marry them, do we?'

'I don't think so.'

'Why're their feet so small?' said Cohen. 'I like to see big feet on a woman.'

Six Beneficent Winds told him. Cohen's expression hardened.

'I'm learning a lot about civilization, I am,' he said. 'Long fingernails, crippled feet and servants running around without their family jewels. Huh.'

'What is going on here, pray?' said a middle-aged man. 'Who are you? Who are these old eunuchs?'

'Who're you?' said Cohen. He drew his sword. 'I need to know so's it can be put on your gravestone—'

'I wonder if I might effect some introductions at this point?' said Mr Saveloy. He stepped forward.

'This,' he said, 'is Ghenghiz Cohen — put it away, Ghenghiz — who is technically a barbarian, and this is his Horde. They have overrun your city. And you are—?'

'Barbarian invaders?' said the man haughtily, ignoring him. 'Barbarian invaders come in their thousands! Big screaming men on little horses!'

'I told you,' said Truckle. 'But would anyone listen?'

'—and there is fire, terror, rapine, looting and blood in the streets!'

'We haven't had breakfast yet,' said Cohen, tossing his knife into the air again.

'Hah! I would rather die than submit to such as you!'

Cohen shrugged. 'Why didn't you say earlier?'

'Oops,' said Six Beneficent Winds.

It was a very accurate throw.

'Who was he, anyway?' said Cohen, as the body folded up. 'Anyone know who he was?'

'Ghenghiz,' said Mr Saveloy, 'I've kept meaning to tell you: when people say they'd rather die, they don't really mean they'd rather die. Not always.'

'Why'd they say it, then?'

'It's the done thing.'

'Is this civilization again?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'Let's settle this once and for all, shall we?' said Cohen. He stood up. 'Hands up those who'd rather die than have me as Emperor.'

'Anyone?' said Mr Saveloy.

Rincewind trotted along another passage. Was there no outside to this place? Several times he thought he'd found an exit, but it led only to a courtyard within the huge building, filled with tinkling fountains and willow trees.

And the place was waking up. There were—

— running steps behind him.

A voice shouted, 'Hey—'

He dived for the nearest door.

The room beyond was full of steam. It roiled in great billowing clouds. He could dimly make out a figure toiling at the huge wheel and the words 'torture chamber' crossed his mind until the smell of soap replaced them with the word 'laundry'. Rather wan but incredibly clean figures looked up from their vats and watched him with barely a hint of interest.

They did not look like people in close touch with current events.

He half ran, half sauntered between the bubbling cauldrons.

'Keep it up. Good man. That's it, scrub, scrub, scrub. Let me see those wringers wringing. Well done. Is there another door out of here? Good bubbles there, very good bubbles. Ah…'

One of the laundry workers, who appeared to be in charge, gave him a suspicious glare and seemed to be about to say something.

Rincewind dodged through a courtyard crisscrossed with washing lines and stopped, panting, with his back to a wall.

Although it was against his general principles, it was perhaps time to stop and think.

People were chasing him. That is to say, they were chasing a running figure in a faded red robe and a very charred pointy hat.

It took a great effort for Rincewind to come to terms with the idea, but it was just possible that if he was wearing something else he might not be chased.

On the line in front of him, shirts and trousers flapped in the breeze. Their construction was to tailoring in the same way that woodchopping is to carpentry. Someone had mastered the art of the tube, and left it at that. They looked just like the clothes nearly everyone wore in Hunghung.

The palace was almost a city in its own right, said the voice of reason. It must be full of people on all sorts of errands, it added.

It would mean… taking off our hat, it added.

Rincewind hesitated. It would be hard for a non-wizard to grasp the enormity of the suggestion. A wizard would sooner go without his robe and trousers than forgo his hat. Without his hat, people might think he was an ordinary person.

There was shouting in the distance.

The voice of reason could see that if it wasn't careful it was going to end up as dead as the rest of Rincewind and added sarcastically: all right, keep our wretched hat. Our damn hat is why we're in this mess in the first place. Perhaps you think you're going to have a head left to wear it on?

Rincewind's hands, also aware that times were going to be extremely interesting and very short unless they took matters into themselves, reached out slowly and removed a pair of pants and a shirt and rammed them inside his robe.

The door burst open. There were still guards behind him, and a couple of the tsimo herders had joined in the chase. One of them waved a prod in Rincewind's direction.

He plunged towards an archway and out into a garden.

It had a little pagoda. It had willow trees, and a pretty lady on a bridge feeding the birds.

And a man painting a plate.

Cohen rubbed his hands together.

'No-one? Good. That's all sorted, then.'

'Ahem.'

A small man at the front of the crowd made a great play of keeping his hands to himself, but said:

'Excuse me, but… what would happen in the hypothetical situation of us calling the guards and denouncing you?'

'We'd kill you all before they were halfway through the door,' said Cohen, matter of factly. 'Any more