I Shall Wear Midnight

the doubtful pleasure of dealing with this incident falls to me, and so …’ He opened his notebook, pulled out a pencil, and gave them a confident smile. ‘Who is going to be the first to help me unravel this little conundrum? To begin with, I would very much like to know what a bunch of Nac Mac Feegle are doing in my city, apart from recovering?’

The glint off his armour hurt the eyes. And also he smelled strongly of soap, and that was good enough for Tiffany.

She began to raise her hand, but Mrs Proust grabbed it and held it firmly. This caused Tiffany to shake off Mrs Proust even more firmly and then say in a voice firmer than the grip, ‘That would be me, Captain.’

‘And you would be …?’

Running away as soon as possible, Tiffany said to herself, but spoke up with, ‘Tiffany Aching, sir.’

‘Off to a hen night, are you?’

‘No,’ said Tiffany.

‘Yes!’ said Mrs Proust quickly.

The captain put his head on one side. ‘So only one of you is going? That doesn’t sound like much fun,’ he said, with his pencil poised over the page.

This was clearly too much for the Duchess, who pointed an accusing finger at Tiffany; it trembled with anger. ‘It is as clear as the nose on your face, Officer! This … this … this witch knew we were travelling down to the city in order to buy jewellery and gifts, and clearly, I repeat clearly, conspired with her imps to rob us!’

‘I never did!’ Tiffany yelled.

The captain held up a hand, as if the Duchess was a line of traffic. ‘Miss Aching, did you indeed encourage Feegles into the city?’

‘Well, yes, but I didn’t really intend to. It was a sort of spur-of-themoment thing. I didn’t intend—’

The captain held up his hand again. ‘Stop talking, please.’ He rubbed his nose. Then he sighed. ‘Miss Aching, I’m arresting you on suspicion of … well, I’m just feeling suspicious. Besides, I am well aware that it is impossible to lock up a Feegle who doesn’t want to be locked up. If they are friends of yours, I trust’ — he looked around meaningfully — ‘they will not do anything to get you into further trouble and, with luck, all of us will be able to get a decent night’s sleep. My fellow officer, Captain Angua, will escort you down to the Watch House. Mrs Proust, would you be so good as to go along with them and explain the way of the world to your young friend?’ Captain Angua stepped forward; she was female and beautiful and blonde — and … odd.

Captain Carrot turned to her ladyship. ‘Madam, my officers will be happy to escort you to any other hotel or inn of your choice. I see that your maidservant is holding a rather strong-looking bag. Would this be containing the jewellery of which you spoke? In which case, can we ascertain that it has not been stolen?’

Her ladyship was not happy about this, but the captain cheerfully did not notice, in that very professional way policemen have of not seeing things they don’t want to see. And there was a definite sense that he wouldn’t have paid much attention in any case.

It was Roland who opened the bag and held the purchase up to the light. The tissue paper was carefully pulled off, and in the light of the lamps something sparkled so brilliantly that it seemed not only to reflect the light but to generate it too, somewhere inside its glowing stones. It was a tiara. Several of the watchmen gasped. Roland looked smug. Letitia looked objectionably winsome. Mrs Proust sighed. And Tiffany … went back in time, just for a second. But in that second she was a little girl again, reading the well-thumbed book of fairy stories that all her sisters had read before her.

But she had seen what they had not seen; she had seen through it. It lied. No, well, not exactly lied, but told you truths that you did not want to know: that only blonde and blue-eyed girls could get the prince and wear the glittering crown. It was built into the world. Even worse, it was built into your hair colouring. Redheads and brunettes sometimes got more than a walk-on part in the land of story, but if all you had was a rather mousy shade of brown hair you were marked down to be a servant girl.

Or you could be the witch. Yes! You didn’t have to be stuck in the story. You could change it, not just for yourself, but for other people. You could change the story with a wave of your hand.

She sighed anyway, because the jewelled headdress was such a wonderful thing. But the sensible witch part of her said, ‘How often would you wear it, miss? Once in a blue moon? Something as expensive as that will spend all its time in a vault!’

‘Not stolen then,’ said Captain Carrot happily. ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Miss Aching, I suggest you tell your little chums to follow you quietly, yes?’

Tiffany looked down at the Nac Mac Feegle, who were silent, as if in shock. Of course, when about thirty deadly fighters found themselves being beaten into submission by one tiny man, it takes a while to come up with a face-saving excuse.

Rob Anybody looked up at her with a very rare expression of shame. ‘Sorry, miss. Sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘We just had considerably too much of the booze. And ye ken, the more ye have of the booze, you ken ye want to have even more of the booze, until ye falls over, which is when ye know ye’ve had enough of the booze. By the way, what the heel is creme-de-menthe? A nice green colour, ye ken, I must have drunk a bucket of that stuff! I suppose there is no point in saying we are verrae sorry? But ye ken, we did find the useless streak of rubbish for ye.’

Tiffany looked up at what remained of the King’s Head. Flickering in the torchlight it looked like some kind of skeleton of a building. Even as she watched, a large beam began to creak and dropped apologetically onto a pile of broken furniture.

‘I told you to find him; I didn’t tell you you were supposed to pull the doors off,’ she said. She folded her arms, and the little men huddled even closer together; the next stage of female anger would be the tapping o’ the feets, which generally led them to burst into tears and walk into trees. Now, though, they formed up neatly behind her and Mrs Proust and Captain Angua.

The captain nodded at Mrs Proust and said, ‘I’m sure we can all agree that handcuffs won’t be necessary — yes, ladies?’

‘Oh, you know me, Captain,’ said Mrs Proust.

Captain Angua’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, but I don’t know anything about your little friend. I would like you to carry the broomstick, Mrs Proust.’

Tiffany could see there was no point in arguing, and handed the stick over without complaining. They walked on in silence apart from the muted mumbling of the Nac Mac Feegles.

After a while the captain said, ‘Not a good time to be wearing pointy black hats, Mrs Proust. There’s been another case, out on the plains. Some dead and alive hole you would never go to. They beat up an old lady for having a book of spells.’

‘No!’

They turned to look at Tiffany, and the Feegles walked into her ankles.

Captain Angua shook her head. ‘Sorry, miss, but it’s true. Turned out to be a book of Klatchian poetry, you know. All that wiggly writing! I suppose it looks like a spell book for those inclined to think that way. She died.’

‘I blame The Times,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘When they put that sort of thing in the paper, it gives people ideas.’

Angua shrugged. ‘From what I hear the people who did it weren’t much for reading.’

‘You’ve got to stop it!’ said Tiffany.

‘How, miss? We are the City Watch. We don’t have any real jurisdiction outside the walls. There are places out there in the woods that we probably haven’t even heard of. I don’t know where this stuff comes from. It’s like some mad idea dropping out of the air.’ The captain rubbed her hands together. ‘Of course, we don’t have any witches in the city,’ she said, ‘although there are quite a lot of hen nights, eh, Mrs Proust?’ And the captain winked. She really winked, Tiffany was certain of it, in the same way she had been certain that Captain Carrot really did not like the Duchess very much.

‘Well, I think real witches would soon stop it,’ Tiffany said. ‘They certainly would in the mountains, Mrs Proust.’

‘Oh, but we don’t have real witches in the city. You heard the captain.’ Mrs Proust