discwoooorld
Sep. 29th, 2010 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holliI've read the new Tiffany Aching book, and found it delightful. Without spoilers, I'll say that I was surprised and pleased that the things I was expecting did not happen, even when they were things I would have liked.
Also, I seem to be writing some Discworld fic, only it's completely out of order. Here are the bits and pieces I have so far, in the order they arrived in my brain:
Policemen have their own walk. It's called "proceeding," and it is the gentle, rolling gait of every law enforcement officer in the history of the multiverse. It is a constant, like the deliberate dimness of sergeants or the missing three dollars in the tea kitty. Or like the way a running man will catch a watchman's eye...
***
Sam Vimes, nineteen years old and a newly minted corporal, was proceeding down Attic Bee Street in a not untroubled state of mind. On the face of it, he should have had very little to feel uneasy about. He was, after all, the scion of Ankh-Morpork's wealthiest family, son of the Watch Commander, and promoted not though the nepotism that advanced so many well-bred young men, but through the patient solving of a nasty murder. Sam was still rather proud of that.
It was just that all his good fortune made him rather more noticeable that he was used to being; his parents certainly had a high profile, but Sam had always enjoyed a little more obscurity. Mostly because any news organization interested in changing that state of affairs had, previously, caught seven kinds of hell from Dad.
There was a news-stand on the corner. Sam couldn't help but wince as he passed it. It was the way his own face seemed to grimace at him, as if in pained sympathy, from half the covers.
That bloody article! "Ankh's Most Eligible Bachelor." It was such a *lot* of nonsense, but Dad said you could never underestimate how much nonsense the magazine-buying portion of the public was willing to consume. Dad said a lot of things like that, and Sam found he was very rarely wrong.
The article itself wasn't actually that bad, although it got his eye color wrong, listed his hobbies as painting watercolors and pursuing great justice, and included a truly terrifying fold-out poster that was now in pride of place on the bedroom walls of twelve-year-old girls across the city. No, the *real* problem was that the article seemed to have announced an open season on him, Sam Vimes, and every eligible young lady in the city-- and their mothers-- had taken their romantic crossbows down from above the mantel and begun polishing, as it were, the stocks.
Sergeant Colon's granddaughters had been bad enough, Sam thought to himself as he proceeded down the busy sidewalk. But this was an order of magnitude more alarming.
It's lucky that Sam had a Watchman's instincts, because most people would have been, by this point, much too distracted to notice a single running man in the crowded street. But Sam *was* a Watchman, and quite a good one, so no number of personal problems would have kept Sam from noticing the figure, carrying a satchel, shoving his way through the crowd. A girl was following him, running with the single-minded determination of the recently robbed. Sam sighed, and reached for his bell.
The man was running towards him, which was lucky. Sam angled out into the crowded street to intercept him-- once the thief realized there was a copper in the way, he'd have to try to dodge him, or arrow off into an alley, or possibly drop the satchel and feign sudden-onset amnesia, which someone had actually tried on Sam's friend Gordon once when they were lance-constables.
What Sam was not expecting was for the man to spot him, start frantically waving his free arm, and shout "Officer! Officer!" But life in the big city was full of surprises.
The thief reached Sam a moment ahead of the girl, and pushed Sam into her path. The two of them immediately began conducting a screaming argument over Sam's helmet. Sam winced.
"--showed her my license, I did--"
"--and what kind of a city are you running here, I ask you--"
"--chased me all the way from Goosegate, and the missus says I'm not to strain meself--"
"--tried to tell me it was some sort of a licensed theft, of all things--"
"--mad, sir, I really think--"
"--completely insane--"
A small crowd had begun to gather already, with the typical Ankh-Morpork enthusiasm for street theatre. Sam sighed. "Sir, if you could just-- miss, really, if you would calm down for a moment--" No response. Sam took off his helmet, unholstered his truncheon, and hit one with the other, producing a resounding bonnng that silenced the man, the girl, and the fellow selling sausages to the bystanders.
"That's better," Sam said. "Sir. Miss. Mr. Dibbler. If you could all be quiet for a moment, I think we can get this sorted out, hm?"
Everyone looked suitably chastened, although Sam noticed Mr. Dibbler taking the opportunity to pocket the change he'd been about to hand a man.
"Sorry, sir," said the thief. The girl blushed furiously and looked away.
"Now," said Sam, "Miss. You're recently arrived to the city, I'm guessing?"
Her mouth formed an O of astonishment. "How did you--"
"Newcomers tend to be a little... taken aback by their first experience with the Thieves' Guild," said Sam. "It's very common. I think they do an introductory pamphlet now, usually."
"I tried to give her one," the thief said, aggrieved. "But she just kicked me on the knee and started shouting."
***
Sam Vimes, much to his chagrin, had a title. As the son of a duke he was a Lord anyway, which was bad enough, but the firstborn son of the Duke of Ankh had a courtesy title, which meant that Sam had to be introduced at posh parties as the Viscount of Pellingham. There was no such place as Pellingham, at least not in the last nine hundred years, and being the Viscount of it was complete nonsense, but that didn't mean a thing to the people who announced you at posh parties. They went right on doing it regardless.
It did have one advantage. Over the years, Sam had taken to separating out all the posh nonsense in his life and assigning it to the Viscount. He could be plain Sam Vimes, who was an ordinary copper like his dad; the Viscount of Pellingham was some rich bugger who was going to grow up to be a duke. It made it much easier to forget that plain Sam Vimes was as much of a fiction as the Viscount.
***
Sam could remember, back when he was a boy, that the river had been thick and green and nearly solid enough to run across, if you were quick and had exceptionally large feet. It was still fairly green, and extremely scummy, but there was fast-moving water visible under the frothy skin of foam, and rumors of fish pulled alive from it. Not that anyone would eat a fish from the River Ankh-- Morporkians prided themselves on their toughness, but they weren't actually suicidal-- but there hadn't been fish in the river when Sam was a boy. Not live ones, anyway.
The difference was the water treatment plant, which had been built fifteen years ago to separate Ankh-Morpork's sewage into its component parts. It produced the gas the lit the city, astonishingly potent fertilizer for the farmers of the plains, and water that wasn't actively dangerous. Harry King, who'd been rich before he bankrolled the plant and was a lot richer now, said that he was a forward-thinking man, and that was true. He'd looked into the river, and seen a future where your reflection could be visible in the water.
***
Every year, Sam and his dad went to Cockbill Street. It was a ritual that had begun before Sam's memory, and continued unbroken into the present. Every year, as a child, he'd been fussed over by pinched-faced women, who then conferred in hushed tones with Sam's dad while Sam played football with a pack of ragged children. Every year he brought a new football, and every year he left without it, and often without his jacket as well. And the pinched-faced women, over the months that followed, got things like jobs, scholarships and doctor's visits for their children, loans, and other things that absolutely were not charity, because Cockbill Street people didn't take charity. But from a Cockbill Street lad who'd done well for himself, there were things they could take without calling them charity, that they might not take from someone else.
***
"It's not that you can't be a witch and a lady at the same time," Meg said. "The Queen of Lancre does it, and the Baroness de Chumsfanleigh. I don't want to be a witch *or* a lady, though. I want to be a doctor. But it seems like a doctor's something you choose to become, and a witch--or a lady-- is something you are whether you like it or not. *That's* the trouble."
***
"Hallo, Sam!" said the carter. He had a bristly black beard and eyebrows like two fat wooly caterpillars, and his cart, like everything else in Little Ephebe, was decorated with white marble statues. In this case, they were about eight inches high, and mounted on the posts at the front of the cart. "How's the coppering business treating you, then?"
"Very well, Mr. Chrystostomou," Sam said. "How's the olive business?"
"Oh, you know," he said. "It's shameful what they charge for brine these days, when it's only salt water after all's said and done. But I do well enough, well enough indeed." His men finished hitching up the cart, and Mr. Crystostomou bade Sam and Meg good day, and was gone into traffic with a flick of his tail.
"Are there a lot of centaurs in Ankh-Morpork?" Meg asked, looking a little stunned.
"You *are* new, aren't you," Sam said agreeably. "Mostly they live 'round here, but there's a good few over to Hobson's Livery as well. Mr. Hobson says hiring them saves the cost of horse and driver."
"Ah," said Meg flatly, which, Sam was learning, seemed to be her default response and meant 'this city is extremely weird.'
***
"I've never had Klatchian food," Meg said. "Is it nice?"
"It's a bit spicy," sam said, not entirely truthfully, because it was in fact extremely spicy unless you ordered the watered-down stuff for soft Morporkians. Sam had, once, got through an entire banquet at the Klatchian Embassy on a single glass of water and without wiping his eyes, a fact of which he was still extremely proud and which had earned him some repute in the diplomatic community. But he'd cheated a bit there, of course.
"Well, I'd like to try it," Meg said, "especially if it's something you like. Lancrastrian food runs to boiled potatoes and vegetables cooked in pork, and I want to try lots of different things while I'm here. What's your favorite Klatchian restaurant?"
There was nothing to be done for it. If he went anywhere else, word would get back to Mrs. Aziz, and he'd never hear then end of it. And it was a Thursday, anyway.
"The Painted Garden's very good," he said. "And I know the owners."
***
Sam prayed to whatever minor deities looked after coppers with complicated romantic lives as he approached the Painted Garden, Meg beside him. But the Goddess Araminta* must have been off-duty that day, because Mina was behind the hostess' desk at the front of the restaurant.
"Hi, Sam," she said, and cut her eyes sideways at Meg. She didn't even have the decency to look amused; instead she smiled like a cat and her eyes went hooded. It was a look Sam had been quite fond of, once, but back then he had always been in on the joke. "Who's your friend?"
Nothing to do but bully though it, was there? "This is Meg," Sam said grimly. "She's from Lancre, and she's never had Klatchian food, and I though, well, if I went anywhere else…"
"You'd never hear the end of it from Mum. Right," said Mina. "I'll tell her you said hello, by the way. She's out with Hana. Wedding shopping, you know, or else it'd be Hana's day to hostess."
"It *is* Thursday, isn't it?" Sam said, as if he didn't know. "That explains it. How's the planning going?"
Mina rolled her eyes. "There's a new disaster every week, if you ask Mum," she said. "But Hana's holding up fine. Can't wait to get it over with. You're still coming, right?"
Sam had wondered a lot, in the last few months, what kind of ex-girlfriend said 'no hard feelings' and actually meant it. The kind who chucked you, rather than the reverse, he supposed. Damn her for meaning it, anyway, and he really did like Hana and their parents; had though about them in the context of potential in-laws, once…
"Of course," he said. "Wouldn't miss it." And Mina led them to a table, still smiling.
*There's a god for nearly everything, if you look hard enough. In this case, Araminta did double-duty as the goddess of salves and unguents, and had missed Sam's plea due to a particularly tricky ointment that needed looking after as its maker put it into jars. If Sam had known he had been overlooked in favor of keeping a Genuan housewife's eyebrows unsinged, he probably would not have felt much better.
***
Sam and Mina had dated for eight months, the first four of which he had spent trying to impress her, and the last four of which had been spent trying to prove he wasn't that impressive, really. In the time since the breakup, he had figured out the trouble with the first approach, but not the second.
Mina had been a brilliant girlfriend: smart and funny, tremendously interesting, pretty to the point that Sam felt significantly outclassed. Her parents liked him, and his parents liked her. Being allowed to kiss her, to hold her hand, to take her out to restaurants and museums and walks along the river-- all these things made Sam feel slightly giddy, long after the novelty should have worn off.
But she was never comfortable around the Viscount. She didn't like going to any of the nobby parties Sam had to go to (and why not, Sam didn't like them either), and he did all the wrong things when she told him why she didn't wan't to go to any more of them. He'd offered to buy her a new dress, of all the damn stupid things, because she was self-conscious wearing her same old best sari over and over again.
He'd tried not to talk about the future, about the Duke of Ankh looming over his head, but by the end that was all Mina had been able to see. "I like you, Sam," she'd said. "I like Sam Vimes a lot. But I don't know that I can stay with you, when the Duke of Ankh is going to need someone I can't be."
Sam had argued with her, which was also stupid. She'd said she couldn't move in nobly circles the way he could, because her family wasn't old and posh like his. This was a deep insult, which she knew perfectly well, and also untrue. "Mum comes from an old family, okay, but Dad's just ordinary. You know that. All the titles and stuff, that all came later."
"Then why's there a statue of your however-many-great-grandad at the top of Broad Way?" she'd asked, which was a reasonable question. And it was perfectly true that, since the days of Old Stoneface, the Vimes family had spent most of its time at the bottom of the social heap, but it was also true that they had, once, been at the top, and were now at the top again.
So Mina had chucked Sam, and said 'no hard feelings' and meant it, and Sam had moped around and gotten drunk with Gordon and felt sorry for himself. And now, for the first time since then, there was a girl who he liked and who seemed to like him and, best of all, had no idea about the bloody Viscount, and here he was having lunch with her under Mina's watchful eye.
***
"Hi, Aggie," Sam said. "Home from school again?"
Agatha Rust offered him a crooked smile. More than once, Sam had wondered how the Rust family, which ran to underbites and unthinking arrogance, had produced a girl like Agatha, who had a sharp little chin and an even sharper mind. She had wanted to go to the Watch school, which to Sam's way of thinking proved she had good sense, but her parents had sent her to the Quirm College for Young Ladies instead, thus setting off an endless game of cat and mouse between Agatha, her parents, and the College wardens.
"Mum says I can stay home until they replace the shutters on my dormitory," Aggie said. "With stronger hinges, I guess. Not that it's my fault they didn't think of the hinges when they replaced the locks."
Aggie was the College's all-time record holder for successful running-away attempts, a fact of which she was enormously proud.
"That's nice," said Sam. "I'll tell Penny you said hello."
***
Also, I seem to be writing some Discworld fic, only it's completely out of order. Here are the bits and pieces I have so far, in the order they arrived in my brain:
Policemen have their own walk. It's called "proceeding," and it is the gentle, rolling gait of every law enforcement officer in the history of the multiverse. It is a constant, like the deliberate dimness of sergeants or the missing three dollars in the tea kitty. Or like the way a running man will catch a watchman's eye...
***
Sam Vimes, nineteen years old and a newly minted corporal, was proceeding down Attic Bee Street in a not untroubled state of mind. On the face of it, he should have had very little to feel uneasy about. He was, after all, the scion of Ankh-Morpork's wealthiest family, son of the Watch Commander, and promoted not though the nepotism that advanced so many well-bred young men, but through the patient solving of a nasty murder. Sam was still rather proud of that.
It was just that all his good fortune made him rather more noticeable that he was used to being; his parents certainly had a high profile, but Sam had always enjoyed a little more obscurity. Mostly because any news organization interested in changing that state of affairs had, previously, caught seven kinds of hell from Dad.
There was a news-stand on the corner. Sam couldn't help but wince as he passed it. It was the way his own face seemed to grimace at him, as if in pained sympathy, from half the covers.
That bloody article! "Ankh's Most Eligible Bachelor." It was such a *lot* of nonsense, but Dad said you could never underestimate how much nonsense the magazine-buying portion of the public was willing to consume. Dad said a lot of things like that, and Sam found he was very rarely wrong.
The article itself wasn't actually that bad, although it got his eye color wrong, listed his hobbies as painting watercolors and pursuing great justice, and included a truly terrifying fold-out poster that was now in pride of place on the bedroom walls of twelve-year-old girls across the city. No, the *real* problem was that the article seemed to have announced an open season on him, Sam Vimes, and every eligible young lady in the city-- and their mothers-- had taken their romantic crossbows down from above the mantel and begun polishing, as it were, the stocks.
Sergeant Colon's granddaughters had been bad enough, Sam thought to himself as he proceeded down the busy sidewalk. But this was an order of magnitude more alarming.
It's lucky that Sam had a Watchman's instincts, because most people would have been, by this point, much too distracted to notice a single running man in the crowded street. But Sam *was* a Watchman, and quite a good one, so no number of personal problems would have kept Sam from noticing the figure, carrying a satchel, shoving his way through the crowd. A girl was following him, running with the single-minded determination of the recently robbed. Sam sighed, and reached for his bell.
The man was running towards him, which was lucky. Sam angled out into the crowded street to intercept him-- once the thief realized there was a copper in the way, he'd have to try to dodge him, or arrow off into an alley, or possibly drop the satchel and feign sudden-onset amnesia, which someone had actually tried on Sam's friend Gordon once when they were lance-constables.
What Sam was not expecting was for the man to spot him, start frantically waving his free arm, and shout "Officer! Officer!" But life in the big city was full of surprises.
The thief reached Sam a moment ahead of the girl, and pushed Sam into her path. The two of them immediately began conducting a screaming argument over Sam's helmet. Sam winced.
"--showed her my license, I did--"
"--and what kind of a city are you running here, I ask you--"
"--chased me all the way from Goosegate, and the missus says I'm not to strain meself--"
"--tried to tell me it was some sort of a licensed theft, of all things--"
"--mad, sir, I really think--"
"--completely insane--"
A small crowd had begun to gather already, with the typical Ankh-Morpork enthusiasm for street theatre. Sam sighed. "Sir, if you could just-- miss, really, if you would calm down for a moment--" No response. Sam took off his helmet, unholstered his truncheon, and hit one with the other, producing a resounding bonnng that silenced the man, the girl, and the fellow selling sausages to the bystanders.
"That's better," Sam said. "Sir. Miss. Mr. Dibbler. If you could all be quiet for a moment, I think we can get this sorted out, hm?"
Everyone looked suitably chastened, although Sam noticed Mr. Dibbler taking the opportunity to pocket the change he'd been about to hand a man.
"Sorry, sir," said the thief. The girl blushed furiously and looked away.
"Now," said Sam, "Miss. You're recently arrived to the city, I'm guessing?"
Her mouth formed an O of astonishment. "How did you--"
"Newcomers tend to be a little... taken aback by their first experience with the Thieves' Guild," said Sam. "It's very common. I think they do an introductory pamphlet now, usually."
"I tried to give her one," the thief said, aggrieved. "But she just kicked me on the knee and started shouting."
***
Sam Vimes, much to his chagrin, had a title. As the son of a duke he was a Lord anyway, which was bad enough, but the firstborn son of the Duke of Ankh had a courtesy title, which meant that Sam had to be introduced at posh parties as the Viscount of Pellingham. There was no such place as Pellingham, at least not in the last nine hundred years, and being the Viscount of it was complete nonsense, but that didn't mean a thing to the people who announced you at posh parties. They went right on doing it regardless.
It did have one advantage. Over the years, Sam had taken to separating out all the posh nonsense in his life and assigning it to the Viscount. He could be plain Sam Vimes, who was an ordinary copper like his dad; the Viscount of Pellingham was some rich bugger who was going to grow up to be a duke. It made it much easier to forget that plain Sam Vimes was as much of a fiction as the Viscount.
***
Sam could remember, back when he was a boy, that the river had been thick and green and nearly solid enough to run across, if you were quick and had exceptionally large feet. It was still fairly green, and extremely scummy, but there was fast-moving water visible under the frothy skin of foam, and rumors of fish pulled alive from it. Not that anyone would eat a fish from the River Ankh-- Morporkians prided themselves on their toughness, but they weren't actually suicidal-- but there hadn't been fish in the river when Sam was a boy. Not live ones, anyway.
The difference was the water treatment plant, which had been built fifteen years ago to separate Ankh-Morpork's sewage into its component parts. It produced the gas the lit the city, astonishingly potent fertilizer for the farmers of the plains, and water that wasn't actively dangerous. Harry King, who'd been rich before he bankrolled the plant and was a lot richer now, said that he was a forward-thinking man, and that was true. He'd looked into the river, and seen a future where your reflection could be visible in the water.
***
Every year, Sam and his dad went to Cockbill Street. It was a ritual that had begun before Sam's memory, and continued unbroken into the present. Every year, as a child, he'd been fussed over by pinched-faced women, who then conferred in hushed tones with Sam's dad while Sam played football with a pack of ragged children. Every year he brought a new football, and every year he left without it, and often without his jacket as well. And the pinched-faced women, over the months that followed, got things like jobs, scholarships and doctor's visits for their children, loans, and other things that absolutely were not charity, because Cockbill Street people didn't take charity. But from a Cockbill Street lad who'd done well for himself, there were things they could take without calling them charity, that they might not take from someone else.
***
"It's not that you can't be a witch and a lady at the same time," Meg said. "The Queen of Lancre does it, and the Baroness de Chumsfanleigh. I don't want to be a witch *or* a lady, though. I want to be a doctor. But it seems like a doctor's something you choose to become, and a witch--or a lady-- is something you are whether you like it or not. *That's* the trouble."
***
"Hallo, Sam!" said the carter. He had a bristly black beard and eyebrows like two fat wooly caterpillars, and his cart, like everything else in Little Ephebe, was decorated with white marble statues. In this case, they were about eight inches high, and mounted on the posts at the front of the cart. "How's the coppering business treating you, then?"
"Very well, Mr. Chrystostomou," Sam said. "How's the olive business?"
"Oh, you know," he said. "It's shameful what they charge for brine these days, when it's only salt water after all's said and done. But I do well enough, well enough indeed." His men finished hitching up the cart, and Mr. Crystostomou bade Sam and Meg good day, and was gone into traffic with a flick of his tail.
"Are there a lot of centaurs in Ankh-Morpork?" Meg asked, looking a little stunned.
"You *are* new, aren't you," Sam said agreeably. "Mostly they live 'round here, but there's a good few over to Hobson's Livery as well. Mr. Hobson says hiring them saves the cost of horse and driver."
"Ah," said Meg flatly, which, Sam was learning, seemed to be her default response and meant 'this city is extremely weird.'
***
"I've never had Klatchian food," Meg said. "Is it nice?"
"It's a bit spicy," sam said, not entirely truthfully, because it was in fact extremely spicy unless you ordered the watered-down stuff for soft Morporkians. Sam had, once, got through an entire banquet at the Klatchian Embassy on a single glass of water and without wiping his eyes, a fact of which he was still extremely proud and which had earned him some repute in the diplomatic community. But he'd cheated a bit there, of course.
"Well, I'd like to try it," Meg said, "especially if it's something you like. Lancrastrian food runs to boiled potatoes and vegetables cooked in pork, and I want to try lots of different things while I'm here. What's your favorite Klatchian restaurant?"
There was nothing to be done for it. If he went anywhere else, word would get back to Mrs. Aziz, and he'd never hear then end of it. And it was a Thursday, anyway.
"The Painted Garden's very good," he said. "And I know the owners."
***
Sam prayed to whatever minor deities looked after coppers with complicated romantic lives as he approached the Painted Garden, Meg beside him. But the Goddess Araminta* must have been off-duty that day, because Mina was behind the hostess' desk at the front of the restaurant.
"Hi, Sam," she said, and cut her eyes sideways at Meg. She didn't even have the decency to look amused; instead she smiled like a cat and her eyes went hooded. It was a look Sam had been quite fond of, once, but back then he had always been in on the joke. "Who's your friend?"
Nothing to do but bully though it, was there? "This is Meg," Sam said grimly. "She's from Lancre, and she's never had Klatchian food, and I though, well, if I went anywhere else…"
"You'd never hear the end of it from Mum. Right," said Mina. "I'll tell her you said hello, by the way. She's out with Hana. Wedding shopping, you know, or else it'd be Hana's day to hostess."
"It *is* Thursday, isn't it?" Sam said, as if he didn't know. "That explains it. How's the planning going?"
Mina rolled her eyes. "There's a new disaster every week, if you ask Mum," she said. "But Hana's holding up fine. Can't wait to get it over with. You're still coming, right?"
Sam had wondered a lot, in the last few months, what kind of ex-girlfriend said 'no hard feelings' and actually meant it. The kind who chucked you, rather than the reverse, he supposed. Damn her for meaning it, anyway, and he really did like Hana and their parents; had though about them in the context of potential in-laws, once…
"Of course," he said. "Wouldn't miss it." And Mina led them to a table, still smiling.
*There's a god for nearly everything, if you look hard enough. In this case, Araminta did double-duty as the goddess of salves and unguents, and had missed Sam's plea due to a particularly tricky ointment that needed looking after as its maker put it into jars. If Sam had known he had been overlooked in favor of keeping a Genuan housewife's eyebrows unsinged, he probably would not have felt much better.
***
Sam and Mina had dated for eight months, the first four of which he had spent trying to impress her, and the last four of which had been spent trying to prove he wasn't that impressive, really. In the time since the breakup, he had figured out the trouble with the first approach, but not the second.
Mina had been a brilliant girlfriend: smart and funny, tremendously interesting, pretty to the point that Sam felt significantly outclassed. Her parents liked him, and his parents liked her. Being allowed to kiss her, to hold her hand, to take her out to restaurants and museums and walks along the river-- all these things made Sam feel slightly giddy, long after the novelty should have worn off.
But she was never comfortable around the Viscount. She didn't like going to any of the nobby parties Sam had to go to (and why not, Sam didn't like them either), and he did all the wrong things when she told him why she didn't wan't to go to any more of them. He'd offered to buy her a new dress, of all the damn stupid things, because she was self-conscious wearing her same old best sari over and over again.
He'd tried not to talk about the future, about the Duke of Ankh looming over his head, but by the end that was all Mina had been able to see. "I like you, Sam," she'd said. "I like Sam Vimes a lot. But I don't know that I can stay with you, when the Duke of Ankh is going to need someone I can't be."
Sam had argued with her, which was also stupid. She'd said she couldn't move in nobly circles the way he could, because her family wasn't old and posh like his. This was a deep insult, which she knew perfectly well, and also untrue. "Mum comes from an old family, okay, but Dad's just ordinary. You know that. All the titles and stuff, that all came later."
"Then why's there a statue of your however-many-great-grandad at the top of Broad Way?" she'd asked, which was a reasonable question. And it was perfectly true that, since the days of Old Stoneface, the Vimes family had spent most of its time at the bottom of the social heap, but it was also true that they had, once, been at the top, and were now at the top again.
So Mina had chucked Sam, and said 'no hard feelings' and meant it, and Sam had moped around and gotten drunk with Gordon and felt sorry for himself. And now, for the first time since then, there was a girl who he liked and who seemed to like him and, best of all, had no idea about the bloody Viscount, and here he was having lunch with her under Mina's watchful eye.
***
"Hi, Aggie," Sam said. "Home from school again?"
Agatha Rust offered him a crooked smile. More than once, Sam had wondered how the Rust family, which ran to underbites and unthinking arrogance, had produced a girl like Agatha, who had a sharp little chin and an even sharper mind. She had wanted to go to the Watch school, which to Sam's way of thinking proved she had good sense, but her parents had sent her to the Quirm College for Young Ladies instead, thus setting off an endless game of cat and mouse between Agatha, her parents, and the College wardens.
"Mum says I can stay home until they replace the shutters on my dormitory," Aggie said. "With stronger hinges, I guess. Not that it's my fault they didn't think of the hinges when they replaced the locks."
Aggie was the College's all-time record holder for successful running-away attempts, a fact of which she was enormously proud.
"That's nice," said Sam. "I'll tell Penny you said hello."
***
