Guards! Guards!

,

Notes

1

All this was untrue. The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

2

A figgin is defined in the Dictionary of Eye-Watering Words as 'a small short-crust pasty containing raisins'. The Dictionary would have been invaluable for the Supreme Grand Master when he thought up the Society's oaths, since it also includes welchet ('a type of waistcoat worn by certain clock-makers'), gaskin ('a shy, grey-brown bird of the coot family'), and moules ('a game of skill and dexterity, involving tortoises').

3

The pronoun is used by dwarfs to indicate both sexes. All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.

4

i.e., about 55.

5

Lit. dezka-knik, 'mine supervisor'.

6

One of the remarkable innovations introduced by the Patrician was to make the Thieves' Guild responsible for theft, with annual budgets, forward planning and, above all, rigid job protection. Thus, in return for an agreed average level of crime per annum, the thieves themselves saw to it that unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in it.

7

Lit: 'Good day! Good day! What is all of this that is going on here (in this place)?'

8

Listen, sunshine [lit: 'the stare of the great hot eye in the sky whose fiery gaze penetrates the mouth of the cavern'] I don't want to have to give anyone a smacking, so if you play B'tduz* with me, I'll play B'tduz with you. Okay?'**

*) A popular dwarfish game which consists of standing a few feet apart and throwing large rocks at one another's head.

**) Lit: 'All correctly beamed and propped?'

9

Evening, all. ' (Lit: 'Felicitations to all present at the closing of the day.')

10

Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force.

11

And mime artists. It was a strange aversion, but there you are. Anyone in baggy trousers and a white face who tried to ply their art anywhere within Ankh's crumbling walls would very quickly find themselves in a scorpion pit, on one wall of which was painted the advice: Learn The Words.