more brain thief

[holli]

The de Worde boys scooped Aggie up as soon as she and Sam returned to the party: the oldest was just Aggie’s age, and Sam suspected he was developing a crush. So Sam wandered over to where Dad and Mr. Lipwig were still talking.

“--good for the city, you can’t deny that,” Dad was saying, but Mr. Lipwig was shaking his head.

“It’s not that I disagree,” he said, and nodded hello to Sam. “But the Guilds wouldn’t like it, you know that, and how would we ever pay for it?”

“You’re the taxman, Lipwig; it’s your job to figure that out. The city’s coffers are in better shape than they’ve ever been, anyway. And you can’t say it wouldn’t be a project for the public good.”

Ah. Dad was on about the schools again. Since establishing the Watch School, Sam’s dad had become convinced that the city needed to do something about the patchwork state of education in the city. And since retiring from the Watch, Dad hadn’t had an awful lot else to occupy his time. Dad was the sort of man who needed a job in front of him, and the Watch had been it for more than forty years. Now the job was different, but the man doing it hadn’t changed. Dad was going after public education the same way he’d gone after criminals: full bore, and relentlessly.

This meant badgering Guild leaders, school administrators, and various nobs until they gave way under the sheer force of Dad’s personality. It was going quite well, as far as Sam knew; but Mr. Lipwig was proving a tough nut to crack.

“Sto Lat’s had public education for years,” Dad said, and Sam began reciting along in his head. “They’re even talking about making it compulsory. There are enough damned ignorant fools in this city that I’d think you’d be glad to raise the general knowledge base. Having an educated population--” is good for everyone, Sam finished mentally, as Dad said it out loud.

“The Watch School’s been a good example of that,” Sam said loyally, and Dad gave him a grateful smile.

Mr. Lipwig sighed. “You too, Sam? I suppose I can’t expect you to take my side in this, though. It’s really not that it’s a bad idea, you know; I wish we could do it too. But the money’s not there, and neither is the public support.”

“I think you’d be surprised, there,” Sam said. “People want their kids to do better than they did. And they know education’s the fastest way up the ladder.”

Sam hadn’t been paying much attention to the rest of the party, but now he became aware of a little bubble of silence that was spreading from the far doors, behind him, outwards through the room. Dad glanced over Sam’s shoulder and cut off whatever he was going to say; he looked surprised enough that Sam turned to see what was causing the fuss.

Lord Vetinari was standing in the doorway.

It was the first time Sam had seen him in months; certainly the first public appearance he’d made in weeks. He was pale and far too thin, and he leaned more heavily on his stick than he had in Sam’s memory, but he didn’t look like a dying man. Not really.

But he was one, which was the trouble. His Lordship’s illness had been protracted and unpleasant, with long spells bedbound, and his doctors were largely mystified. There were any number of potential causes. His Lordship had been poisoned with arsenic once, and his leg contained rather more lead pellet than was considered generally advisable. It wasn’t that he was particulary old, though: he was barely seventy. Only a few years older than Sam’s dad, as a matter of fact.

That was something that Sam tried not to think about too much. He just told himself that Dad was made of teak, and tried to let the treacherous numbers slide out of his thoughts.

Mr. Lipwig excused himself, and went to welcome Lord Vetinari to the party. Dad clapped Sam on the back. “Any luck with that case of yours, lad?”

“No, Dad. Not yet. And we’d better not talk about it here; I see Ms. Cripslock within earshot.” Sam had been lucky, so far, in keeping the Rag-and-Bone Man case out of the papers. He didn’t like to think about the public furore that would ensue if it were general knowledge that someone was robbing graves and stitching up patchwork monsters out of the parts.

“You’ll crack it, don’t worry. It was clever of you to stake out the graveyards.” Sam inflated a little with pride. “Now,” Dad said, “I think the dancing’s about to start.”

“Da-ad,” Sam moaned. It wasn’t that he didn’t like dancing, or that he was bad at it; Mum had ensured he’d not embarrass himself by sending him to dance lessons for most of his childhood and adolescence.* But the girls he had to dance with at parties like these were not the kind of girls he wanted to have anything to do with; he couldn’t just park on Aggie’s dance card, not least because her mother would start to think Sam was an acceptable target for her marrying-off ambitions.

Since That Article, dancing at parties had become something of a social minefield. He had to dance with everyone, he couldn’t dance with anyone twice, and if he showed the slightest hint of actually liking one of the girls he danced with, he had to contend with their mothers coming round for tea and suggesting to Mum that he marry their daughters.

Sam knew that by the standards of Ankh-Morpork’s upper classes, he was something of a catch. *The* catch, actually: the hundred-pound catfish that lurked in deep waters, too crafty for even the cleverest of lures. Society mothers were experienced anglers to a woman, though, and for the son of a Duke they were willing to put on their hip waders and get muddy.

So dancing had become something of a chore. Sitting out drew severe social opprobrium, though, and also Sam felt bad for the girls who had to dance with absolute prats instead of with him.**

So Sam danced. With Aggie, which was a relief, and with Jane Dearheart-Lipwig, who was only thirteen and blushed a lot and stepped on his toes, and with an assortment of interchangeable society belles who had absolutely nothing of interest to say. Most of them had enough sense to avoid the subject of That Article, at least, and stuck to innocuous topics, like upcoming social events.

“Oh, I’m terribly excited for the Cotillion,” burbled one of them-- Sam forgot quite which one. “You know, there’s a real Princess coming, from some tiny little country or other-- but still! A Princess! It’s *too* charming.”

“Hm? Oh, yes, quite,” Sam said. He had been thinking about where a mad scientist might get body parts, if the cemetaries were no longer an option.

The last song ended, and everyone clapped politely. Sam made a beeline for Mum and Dad, who were talking to His Lordship and Mr. Lipwig.

“Ah. Young Corporal Vimes. How goes the pursuit of justice?”

Lord Vetinari always talked that way to Sam; he didn’t much mind it anymore. “Going well, your Lordship. How’s the city running?”

That was an old question, one Sam had been asking the Patrician since he was small. Just now, Sam didn’t mind feeling a little younger than he was.

And it made his Lordship laugh-- only a dry little chuckle, but better than nothing. “Oh, as well as it ever has, my boy. I hope to leave it thus in Mr. Lipwig’s capable hands.

“Not any time soon, though, my Lord,” said Mr. Lipwig. “What with you doing so much better and all.”

Lord Vetinari smiled the way he always did, which was thinly. “We shall see, we shall see. You know, I’m told the wizards are informed in advance when they’re going to die; it must make schedling so much easier.”

An uncomfortable little silence descended on the conversation. Dad frowned into his fruit juice, and Sam could see Mum racking her brain for a decently light topic of conversation.

“Er,” said Sam. “Oh! Mum, Dad, I haven’t told you. Gordon and Hettie are dating.”

“Why, that’s lovely, Sam,” Mum said, grateful for the change in subject. “And-- are you quite all right with that?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sam said. “I mean, they’re my friends, they’re happy, I want them to be happy. Bit out of the blue, though, isn’t it?”

“On the contrary,” said his Lordship, “I’ve been expecting it for years.” Off everyone’s slightly astonished looks, he said, “Well, I do hear all the gossip. Eventually.”

Sam reflected that Lord Vetinari’s sense of humor was a little weird. But then, it always had been.

*This remained one of Sam’s most deeply guarded secrets; as a lad, he had been convinced that it would have been absolute social suicide to admit even taking dance lessons, much less acknowledging that they weren’t completely horrible. Sam was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to like dancing.

**It was thoughts like this that led Penny to crush Sam’s ego whenever possible. Not that Sam was an absolute prat-- he wasn’t, really, a prat at all-- but he tended to think of himself as being better than other well-born young men by dint of his practical employment and Watch School affiliations. This was a different kind of snobbery, but it was snobbery nonetheless.

Comments

[petra]

\o/ For public schooling! Of course.

And no, I would not want Moist to run that, really, though he would probably be pretty good at it.

I love that Vetinari uses his gossip network for everything, including teenage hookup charts.