Mort

'Goodnight, Cutwell. Shut the door behind you.'

The sun crept over the horizon, decided to make a run for it, and began to rise.

But it would be some time before its slow light rolled across the sleeping Disc, herding the night ahead of it, and nocturnal shadows still ruled the city.

They clustered now around The Mended Drum in Filigree Street, foremost of the city's taverns. It was famed not for its beer, which looked like maiden's water and tasted like battery acid, but for its clientele. It was said that if you sat long enough in the Drum, then sooner or later every major hero on the Disc would steal your horse.

The atmosphere inside was still loud with talk and heavy with smoke although the landlord was doing all those things landlords do when they think it's time to close, like turn some of the lights out, wind up the clock, put a cloth over the pumps and, just in case, check the whereabouts of their club with the nails hammered in it. Not that the customers were taking the slightest bit of notice, of course. To most of the Drum's clientele even the nailed club would have been considered a mere hint.

However, they were sufficiently observant to be vaguely worried by the tall dark figure standing by the bar and drinking his way through its entire contents.

Lonely, dedicated drinkers always generate a mental field which ensures complete privacy, but this particular one was radiating a kind of fatalistic gloom that was slowly emptying the bar.

This didn't worry the barman, because the lonely figure was engaged in a very expensive experiment.

Every drinking place throughout the multiverse has them — those shelves of weirdly-shaped, sticky bottles that not only contain exotically-named liquid, which is often blue or green, but also odds and ends that bottles of real drink would never stoop to contain, such as whole fruits, bits of twig and, in extreme cases, small drowned lizards. No-one knows why barmen stock so many, since they all taste like treacle dissolved in turpentine. It has been speculated that they dream of a day when someone will walk in off the street unbidden and ask for a glass of Peach Corniche with A Hint Of Mint and overnight the place will become somewhere To Be Seen At.

The stranger was working his way along the row.

WHAT IS THAT GREEN ONE?

The landlord peered at the label.

'It says it's Melon Brandy,' he said doubtfully. 'It says it's bottled by some monks to an ancient recipe, 'he added.

I WILL TRY IT.

The man looked sideways at the empty glasses on the counter, some of them still containing bits of fruit salad, cherries on a stick and small paper umbrellas.

'Are you sure you haven't had enough?' he said. It worried him vaguely that he couldn't seem to make out the stranger's face.

The glass, with its drink crystallising out on the sides, disappeared into the hood and came out again empty.

NO. WHAT IS THE YELLOW ONE WITH THE WASPS IN IT?

'Spring Cordial, it says. Yes?'

YES. AND THEN THE BLUE ONE WITH THE GOLD FLECKS.

'Er. Old Overcoat?'

YES. AND THEN THE SECOND ROW.

'Which one did you have in mind?'

ALL OF THEM.

The stranger remained bolt upright, the glasses with their burdens of syrup and assorted vegetation disappearing into the hood on a production line basis.