Hogfather Part 9

"Try number nineteen," said Susan, relenting a little. "The governess there doesn't believe in bogeymen."

"Right?" said the monster hopefully.

"She believes in algebra, though."

"Ah. Nice." The bogeyman grinned hugely. It was amazing the sort of mischief that could be caused in a house where no one in authority thought you existed.

"I'll be off, then," it said. "Er. Happy Hogswatch."

"Possibly," said Susan, as it slunk away.

"That wasn't as much fun as the one last month," said Gawain, getting between the sheets again. "You know, when you kicked him in the trousers-"

"Just you two get to sleep now," said Susan.

"Verity said the sooner we got to sleep the sooner the Hogfather would come," said Twyla conversationally.

"Yes," said Susan. "Unfortunately, that might be the case."

The remark pa.s.sed right over their heads. She wasn't sure why it had gone through hers, but she knew enough to trust her senses.

She hated that kind of sense. It ruined your life. But it was the sense she had been born with.

The children were tucked in, and she closed the door quietly and went back to the schoolroom.

Something had changed.

She glared at the stockings, but they were unfulfilled. A paper chain rustled.

She stared at the tree. Tinsel had been twined around it, badly pasted-together decorations had been hung on it. And on top was the fairy made of- She crossed her arms, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed theatrically.

"It's you, isn't it?" she said.

SQUEAK?.

"Yes, it is. You're sticking out your arms like a scarecrow and you've stuck a little star on your scythe, haven't you...?"

The Death of Rats hung his head guiltily.

SQUEAK.

"You're not fooling anyone."

SQUEAK.

"Get down from there this minute!"

SQUEAK.

"And what did you do with the fairy?"

"It's shoved under a cus.h.i.+on on the chair," said a voice from the shelves on the other side of the room. There was a clicking noise and the raven's voice added, "These d.a.m.n eyeb.a.l.l.s are hard, aren't they?"

Susan raced across the room and s.n.a.t.c.hed the bowl away so fast that the raven somersaulted and landed on its back.

"They're walnuts!" she shouted, as they bounced around her. "Not eyeb.a.l.l.s! This is a schoolroom! And the difference between a school and a-a-a raven deli catessen is that they hardly ever have eyeb.a.l.l.s lying around in bowls in case a raven drops in for a quick snack! Understand? No eyeb.a.l.l.s! The world is full of small round things that aren't eyeb.a.l.l.s! okay?"

The raven's own eyes revolved.

"'n' I suppose a bit of warm liver's out of the question-"

"Shut up! I want both of you out of here right now! I don't know how you got in here-"

"There's a law against coming down the chimney on Hogswatchnight?"

"-but I don't want you back in my life, understand?"

"The rat said you ought to be warned even if you were crazy," said the raven sulkily. "I didn't want to come, there's a donkey dropped dead just outside the city gates, I'll be lucky now if I get a hoof-"

"Warned?" said Susan.

There it was again. The change in the weather of the mind, a sensation of tangible time...

The Death of Rats nodded.

There was a scrabbling sound far overhead. A few flakes of soot dropped down the chimney.

SQUEAK, said the rat, but very quietly.

Susan was aware of a new sensation, as a fish might be aware of a new tide, a spring of fresh water flowing into the sea. Time was pouring into the world.

She glanced up at the clock. It was just on half past six.

The raven scratched its beak.

"The rat says...The rat says: you'd better watch out..."

There were others at work on this s.h.i.+ning Hogswatch Eve. The Sandman was out and about, dragging his sack from bed to bed. Jack Frost wandered from window pane to window pane, making icy patterns.

And one tiny hunched shape slid and slithered along the gutter, squelching its feet in slush and swearing under its breath.

It wore a stained black suit and, on its head, the type of hat known in various parts of the multiverse as "bowler," "derby" or "the one that makes you look a bit of a twit." The hat had been pressed down very firmly and, since the creature had long pointy ears, these had been forced out sideways and gave it the look of a small malignant wing nut.

The thing was a gnome by shape but a fairy by profession. Fairies aren't necessarily little twinkly creatures. It's purely a job description, and the commonest ones aren't even visible.* A fairy is simply any creature currently employed under supernatural laws to take things away or, as in the case of the small creature presently climbing up the inside of a drain pipe and swearing, to bring things. A fairy is simply any creature currently employed under supernatural laws to take things away or, as in the case of the small creature presently climbing up the inside of a drain pipe and swearing, to bring things.

Oh, yes. He does. Someone has to do it, and he looks the right gnome for the job.

Oh, yes.

Sideney was worried. He didn't like violence, and there had been a lot of it in the last few days, if days pa.s.sed in this place. The men...well, they only seemed to find life interesting when they were doing something sharp to someone else and, while they didn't bother him much in the same way that lions don't trouble themselves with ants, they certainly worried him.

But not as much as Teatime did. Even the brute called Chickenwire treated Teatime with caution, if not respect, and the monster called Banjo just followed him around like a puppy.

The enormous man was watching him now.

He reminded Sideney too much of Ronnie Jenks, the bully who'd made his life miserable at Gammer Wimblestone's dame school. Ronnie hadn't been a pupil. He was the old woman's grandson or nephew or something, which gave him a license to hang around the place and beat up any kid smaller or weaker or brighter than he was, which more or less meant he had the whole world to choose from. In those circ.u.mstances, it was particularly unfair that he always chose Sideney.

Sideney hadn't hated Ronnie. He'd been too frightened. He'd wanted to be his friend. Oh, so much. Because that way, just possibly, he wouldn't have his head trodden on such a lot and would actually get to eat his lunch instead of having it thrown in the privy. And it had been a good day when it had been his lunch.

And then, despite all Ronnie's best efforts, Sideney had grown up and gone to university. Occasionally his mother told him how Ronnie was getting on (she a.s.sumed, in the way of mothers, that because they had been small boys at school together they had been friends). Apparently he ran a fruit stall and was married to a girl called Angie.* This was not enough punishment, Sideney considered. This was not enough punishment, Sideney considered.

Banjo even breathed like Ronnie, who had to concentrate on such an intellectual exercise and always had one blocked nostril. And his mouth open all the time. He looked as though he was living on invisible plankton.

He tried to keep his mind on what he was doing and ignore the labored gurgling behind him. A change in its tone made him look up.

"Fascinating," said Teatime. "You make it look so easy."

Sideney sat back, nervously.

"Um...it should be fine now, sir," he said. "It just got a bit scuffed when we were piling up the..." He couldn't bring himself to say it, he even had to avert his eyes from the heap, it was the sound they'd made. "...the things," he finished.

"We don't need to repeat the spell?" said Teatime.

"Oh, it'll keep going forever," said Sideney. "The simple ones do. It's just a state change, powered by the...the...it just keeps going..."

He swallowed.

"So," he said, "I was thinking...since you don't actually need me, sir, perhaps..."

"Mr. Brown seems to be having some trouble with the locks on the top floor," said Teatime. "That door we couldn't open, remember? I'm sure you'll want to help."

Sideney's face fell.

"Um, I'm not a locksmith..."

"They appear to be magical."

Sideney opened his mouth to say, "But I'm very bad at magical locks," and then thought much better of it. He had already fathomed that if Teatime wanted you to do something, and you weren't very good at it, then your best plan, in fact quite possibly your only plan, was to learn to be good at it very quickly. Sideney was not a fool. He'd seen the way the others reacted around Teatime, and they were men who did things he'd only dreamed of.*

At which point he was relieved to see Medium Dave walk down the stairs, and it said a lot for the effect of Teatime's stare that anyone could be relieved to have it punctuated by someone like Medium Dave.

"We've found another guard, sir. Up on the sixth floor. He's been hiding."

Teatime stood up. "Oh dear," he said. "Not trying to be heroic, was he?"

"He's just scared. Shall we let him go?"

"Let him go?" said Teatime. "Far too messy. I'll go up there. Come along, Mr. Wizard."

Sideney followed him reluctantly up the stairs.

The tower-if that's what it was, he thought; he was used to the odd architecture at Unseen University and this made UU look normal-was a hollow tube. No fewer than four spiral staircases climbed the inside, crisscrossing on landings and occasionally pa.s.sing through one another in defiance of generally accepted physics. But that was practically normal for an alumnus of Unseen University, although technically Sideney had not alumed. What threw the eye was the absence of shadows. You didn't notice shadows, how they delineated things, how they gave texture to the world, until they weren't there. The white marble, if that's what it was, seemed to glow from the inside. Even when the impossible sun shone through a window it barely caused faint gray smudges where honest shadows should be. The tower seemed to avoid darkness.

That was even more frightening than the times when, after a complicated landing, you found yourself walking up by stepping down the underside of a stair and the distant floor now hung overhead like a ceiling. He'd noticed that even the other men shut their eyes when that happened. Teatime, though, took those stairs three at a time, laughing like a kid with a new toy.

They reached an upper landing and followed a corridor. The others were gathered by a closed door.

"He's barricaded himself in," said Chickenwire.

Teatime tapped on it. "You in there," he said. "Come on out. You have my word you won't be harmed."

"No!"

Teatime stood back. "Banjo, knock it down," he said.

Banjo lumbered forward. The door withstood a couple of ma.s.sive kicks and then burst open.

The guard was cowering behind an overturned cabinet. He cringed back as Teatime stepped over it. "What're you doing here?" he shouted. "Who are you?"

"Ah, I'm glad you asked. I'm your worst nightmare!" said Teatime cheerfully.

The man shuddered.

"You mean...the one with the giant cabbage and the sort of whirring knife thing?"

"Sorry?" Teatime looked momentarily nonplussed.

"Then you're the one about where I'm falling, only instead of ground underneath it's all-"

"No, in fact I'm-"

The guard sagged. "Awww, not the one where there's all this kind of, you know, mud and then everything goes blue-"

"No, I'm-"

"Oh, s.h.i.+t, then you're the one where there's this door only there's no floor beyond it and then there's these claws-"

"No," said Teatime. "Not that one." He withdrew a dagger from his sleeve. "I'm the one where this man comes out of nowhere and kills you stone dead."

The guard grinned with relief. "Oh, that one," he said. "But that one's not very-"