I Shall Wear Midnight

could be both stupid and clever.

She picked up her chair, placed it neatly in front of the desk, sat down on it, folded her hands and said, ‘I am very sorry, my lord.’ She turned to the Duchess, bowed her head and said, ‘And to you too, your grace. I temporarily forgot my place. It will not happen again. Thank you.’

The Duchess grunted. It would have been impossible for Tiffany to have thought any less of her but, well, a grunt? After a climb-down like that? Humbling an uppity young witch deserved a lot better than that — some remark so cutting that it blunted on the bone. Honestly, she might have made an effort.

Roland was staring at Tiffany, so nonplussed he was nearly minused. She confused him a little more by handing him the now-crumpled sheet of paper and saying, ‘Do you want to deal with the other matters, my lord?’

He struggled for a moment, managed to flatten the paper on the desk to his satisfaction, smoothed it out and said, ‘There is the matter of the death of my father and the theft of money from his strongbox.’

Tiffany fixed him with a helpful smile, which made him nervous. ‘Anything else, my lord? I am anxious that everything should be dealt with.’

‘Roland, she is up to something,’ said the Duchess. ‘Be on your guard.’ She waved a hand towards the guards. ‘And you guards should be on your guard as well, mind!’

The guards, having some difficulty with the idea of being even more on their guard when they were already — through nervousness — much further on their guard in any case than they had ever been before, strained to look a bit taller.

Roland cleared his throat. ‘Ahem, then there is the matter of the late cook, who fell to her death almost coincidentally with, I believe, insulting you. Do you understand these charges?’

‘No,’ said Tiffany.

There was a moment of silence before Roland said, ‘Er, why not?’

‘Because they aren’t charges, my lord. You are not declaring outright that you think I stole the money and killed your father and the cook. You are simply sort of waving the idea in front of me in the hope that I will burst into tears, I suppose. Witches don’t cry, and I want something that probably no other witch has ever asked for before. I want a hearing. A proper hearing. And that means evidence. And that means witnesses, and that means that the people who say have to say it in front of everybody. And that means a jury of my peers, which means people like me, and that means habeas corpus, thank you very much.’ She stood up and turned towards the doorway, which was blocked by a struggling crowd of guards. Now she looked at Roland, and bobbed a little curtsy. ‘Unless you feel entirely confident enough to have me arrested, my lord, I am leaving.’

They watched with open mouths as she walked up to the guards.

‘Good evening, Sergeant, good evening, Preston, good evening, gentlemen. This won’t take a minute. If you would just excuse me, I am leaving.’ She saw Preston wink at her as she pushed past his sword, and then she heard the guards suddenly collapse in a heap.

She walked along the corridor to the hall. There was a huge fire in the even bigger fireplace, which was large enough to be a room all by itself. The fire was peat. It couldn’t do much to heat most of the hall, which never got warm even in the heart of summer, but it was cosy to be close to, and if you have to breathe smoke, then you can’t do better than peat smoke, which rose up to the chimney and drifted like a warm mist around the sides of bacon, which were hung up there to smoke.

It was all going to get complicated again, but for the moment Tiffany sat there simply for a rest and, while she was about it, to shout at herself for being so stupid. How much poison can he seep into their heads? How much does he need to?

That was the problem with witchcraft: it was as if everybody needed the witches, but hated the fact that they did, and somehow the hatred of the fact could become the hatred of the person. People then started thinking: Who are you to have these skills? Who are you to know these things? Who are you to think you’re better than us? But Tiffany didn’t think she was better than them. She was better than them at witchcraft, that was true, but she couldn’t knit a sock, she didn’t know how to shoe a horse, and while she was pretty good at making cheese, she had to have three tries to bake a loaf that you could actually bite into with your teeth. Everybody was good at something. The only wicked thing was not finding out in time.

There was fine dust on the floor of the fireplace, because there is nothing like peat for dust, and as Tiffany watched, tiny little footprints appeared in it.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘what did you do to the guards?’

A shower of Feegles landed lightly on the seat beside her.

‘Weel,’ Rob Anybody said, ‘personally I would have liked to take them to the cleaners, the mound-digging Cromwells that they are, but I could see where that might make it a wee bit difficult for ye, so we just tied their bootlaces together. Maybe they’ll blame it on the wee mice.’

‘Look, you’re not to hurt anybody, all right? The guards have to do what they are told.’

‘Nae, they didnae,’ said Rob scornfully. ‘That’s nae errand for a warrior, doing what you’re told. And what would they have done to ye, doing what they were told? That old carlin of a mother-in-law was glaring claymores at ye the whole time, bad cess to her! Hah! Let’s see how she likes her bathwater tonight!’

The edge to his voice put Tiffany on the alert. ‘You are not to hurt anybody, do you understand? Nobody at all, Rob.’

The Big Man grumbled. ‘Och yes, miss, I’ve taken what you said on board!’

‘And you promise on your honour as a Feegle not to throw it over the side as soon as my back is turned, do you?’

Rob Anybody started grumbling again, using crackling Feegle words that she had never heard before. They sounded like curses, and once or twice, when he spat them out, smoke and sparks came out with them. He was stamping his feet too, always a sign of a Feegle at the end of his tether. ‘They came arrayed with sharp steel to dig up me home, dig up me clan and dig up me family,’ he said, and his words were all the more menacing because they were so level and quiet. Then he spat a short sentence towards the fire, which burned green for a moment when the words hit the flames.

‘I’ll no’ disobey the hag o’ the hills, ye ken, but I put ye on firm notice that if I can see a shovel near my mound again, the owner will find it shoved up his kilt blunt end first, so that he hurts his hands trying to pull it out. And that will only be the start of his problems! And if there is any clearances here, I swear on my spog that it will be us that is doing the clearing!’ He stamped up and down a bit, and then added: ‘And what is this we are hearing about ye demanding the law? We is nae friends of the law, ye ken.’

‘What about Wee Mad Arthur?’ said Tiffany.

It was almost impossible to make a Feegle look sheepish, but Rob Anybody looked as if he was about to say ‘Bah’. ‘Oh, it’s a terrible thing them gnomes did to him,’ he said, looking sad. ‘Do ye ken he washes his face every day? I mean, that sort of thing is OK when the mud gets too thick, but every day? I ask ye, how can a body stand it?’

One moment there were the Feegles, and then there was a faint whoosh, followed by a total lack of Feegles, and the next moment there was a more than adequate supply of guards. Fortunately they were the sergeant and Preston, stamping to attention.

The sergeant cleared his throat. ‘Am I addressing Miss Tiffany Aching?’ he said.

‘It looks to me as if you are, Brian,’ said Tiffany, ‘but you be the judge.’

The sergeant looked around quickly and then leaned closer. ‘Please, Tiff,’ he whispered, ‘it’s all gone serious on us.’ He straightened up quickly and then said, far louder than was necessary, ‘Miss Tiffany Aching! I am commanded by my lord the Baron to inform you that it is his command that you must stay within the irons of the castle—’

‘The what?’ said Tiffany.

Wordlessly, his eyes on the ceiling, the sergeant handed her a piece of parchment.

‘Oh, you mean the environs,’ she said. ‘That means the castle and the places around it too,’ she told him helpfully. ‘But I thought the Baron wanted me to leave?’

‘Look, I’m just reading out what it says here, Tiff, and I am ordered to lock your broomstick in the dungeon.’

‘That’s an impressive errand that you have there, Officer. It’s leaning against the wall, help yourself.’