mind,” said the old diplomat. “The message is curious, yes, but not surprising.”
“This morning the Emperor instructed,” the Patrician allowed himself the luxury of a scowl, “instructed me, Gorphal, to protect this Twoflower person. Now it seems I must have him killed. You don’t find that surprising?”
“No. The Emperor is no more than a boy. He is idealistic. Keen. A god to his people. Whereas this afternoon’s letter is, unless I am very much mistaken, from Nine Turning mirrors, the Grand Vizier. He has grown old in the service of several Emperors. He regards them as a necessary but tiresome ingredient in the successful running of the Empire. He does not like things out of place. The Empire was not built by allowing things to get out of place. That is his view.”
“I begin to see—” said the Patrician.
“Quite so.” Gorphal smiled into his beard. “This tourist is a thing that is out of place. After acceding to his master’s wishes Nine Turning Mirrors would, I am quite sure, make his own arrangements with a view to ensuring that one wanderer would not be allowed to return home bringing, perhaps, the disease of dissatisfaction. The Empire likes people to stay where it puts them. So much more convenient, then, if this Two Flower disappears for good in the barbarian lands. Meaning here, master.”
“And your advice?” said the Patrician.
Gorphal shrugged.
“Merely that you should do nothing. Matters will undoubtedly resolve themselves. However,” he scratched an ear thoughtfully, “perhaps the Assassins’ Guild…?”
“Ah yes,” said the Patrician. “The Assassins guild. Who is their president at the moment?”
“Zlorf Flannelfoot, master.”
“Have a word with him, will you?”
“Quite so, master.”
The Patrician nodded. It was all rather a relief. He agreed with Nine Turning Mirrors—life was difficult enough; People ought to stay where they were put.
Brilliant constellations shone down on the Discworld. One by one the traders shuttered their shops. One by one the gonophs, thieves, finewirers, whores, illusionists, backsliders and second-storey men awoke and breakfasted. Wizards went about their polydimensional affairs. Tonight saw the conjunction of two powerful planets, and already the air over the Magical Quarter was hazy with early spells.
“Look,” said Rincewind, “this isn’t getting us anywhere.” He inched sideways. The Luggage followed faithfully, lid half open and menacing. Rincewind briefly considered making a desperate leap to safety. The lid smacked in anticipation. In any case, he told himself with sinking heart, the damn thing would only follow him again. It had that dogged look about it. Even if he managed to get to a horse, he had a nasty suspicion that it would follow him at its own pace. Endlessly. Swimming rivers and oceans. Gaining slowly every night, while he had to stop to sleep. And then one day, in some exotic city and years hence, he’d hear the sound of hundreds of tiny feet accelerating down the road behind him…
“You’ve got the wrong man!” he moaned. “it’s not my fault! I didn’t kidnap him!”
The box moved forward slightly. Now there was just a narrow strip of greasy jetty between Rincewind’s heels and the river. A flash of precognition told him that the box would be able to swim faster than he could. He tried not to imagine what it would be like to drown in the Ankh.
“It won’t stop until you give in, you know,” said a small voice conversationally.
Rincewind looked down at the iconograph, still hanging around his neck. Its trapdoor was open and the homunculus was leaning against the trap, smoking a pipe and watching the proceedings with amusement.
“I’ll take you in with me, at least,” said Rincewind through gritted teeth.
The imp took the pipe out of his mouth. “What did you say?” he said.
“I said I’ll take you in with me, dammit!”
“Suit yourself.” The imp tapped the side of the box meaningfully. “We’ll see who sinks first.”
The luggage yawned, and moved forward a fraction of an inch.
“Oh all right,” said Rincewind irritably. “But you’ll have to give me time to think.”
The luggage backed off slowly. Rincewind edged his way back onto reasonably safe land and sat down with his back against a wall. Across the river the lights of Ankh city glowed.
“You’re a wizard,” said the picture imp. “You’ll think of some way to find him.”
“Not much of a wizard, I’m afraid.”
“You can just jump down on everyone and turn them into worms,” the imp added encouragingly, ignoring his last remark.
“No. Turning To Animals is an Eighth Level spell. I never even completed my training. I only know one spell.”
“Well, that’ll do.”
“I doubt it,” said Rincewind hopelessly
“What does it do, then?”
“Can’t tell you. Don’t really want to talk about it. But frankly,” he sighed, “no spells are much good. It takes three months to commit even a simple one to memory, and then once you’ve used it,
“I never thought of it like that,” said the imp.
“Hey, look—this is all wrong. When Twoflower said they’d got better kind of magic in the empire I thought– I thought…”
The imp looked at him expectantly. Rincewind cursed to himself.
“Well, if you must know, I thought he didn’t mean magic. Not as such.”
“What else is there, then?”
Rincewind began to feel really wretched. “I don’t know,” he said. “A better way of doing things, I suppose. Something with a bit of sense in it. Harnessing—harnessing the lightning, or something.”
The imp gave him a kind but pitying look.
“Lightning is the spears hurled by the thunder giants when they fight,” it said gently, “established meteorological fact. You can’t harness it.”
“I know,” said Rincewind miserably. That’s the flaw in the argument, of course.”
The imp nodded. and disappeared into the depths of the iconograph. A few moments later Rincewind smelled bacon frying. He waited until his stomach couldn’t stand the strain any more, and rapped on the box. The imp reappeared.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” it said even before Rincewind could open his mouth. “And even if you could get a harness on it, how could you get it to pull a cart?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Lightning. It just goes up and down. “You’d want it to go along, not up and down. Anyway, it’d probably burn through the harness.”
“I don’t care about the lightning! How can I think on an empty stomach?”
“Eat something, then. That’s logic.”
“How? Every time I move that damn box flexes its hinges at me!”
The luggage, on cue, gaped widely.
“See?”
“It’s not trying to bite you,” said the imp. “There’s food in there. You’re no use to it starved.”
Rincewind peered into the dark recesses of the Luggage. There were indeed, among the chaos of boxes and bags of gold, several bottles and packages in oiled paper. He gave a cynical laugh, mooched around the abandoned jetty until he found a piece of wood about the right length, wedged it as politely as possible in the gap between the lid and the box, and pulled out one of the flat packages. It held biscuits that turned out to be as hard as diamond-wood.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, nursing his teeth.
