‘That wasn’t wizardry. That was sourcery,’ said Carding, leaning back in his chair.
Spelter stared at him across the bubbling varnish.
‘Sourcery?’
‘The eighth son of a wizard would be a sourcerer.’
‘I didn’t know that!’
‘It is not widely advertised.’
‘Yes, but - sourcerers were a long time ago, I mean, the magic was a lot stronger then, um, men were different … it didn’t have anything to do with, well, breeding.’ Spelter was thinking, eight sons, that means he did it eight times. At least. Gosh.
‘Sourcerers could do everything,’ he went on. ‘They were nearly as powerful as the gods. Um. There was no end of trouble. The gods simply wouldn’t allow that sort of thing any more, depend upon it.’
‘Well, there was trouble because the sourcerers fought among themselves,’ said Carding, ‘But one sourcerer wouldn’t be any trouble. One sourcerer correctly advised, that is. By older and wiser minds.’
‘But he wants the Archchancellor’s hat!’
‘Why can’t he have it?’
Spelter’s mouth dropped open. This was too much, even for him.
Carding smiled at him amiably.
‘But the hat-’
‘It’s just a symbol,’ said Carding. ‘It’s nothing special. If he wants it, he can have it. It’s a small enough thing. Just a symbol, nothing more. A figurehat.’
‘Figurehat?’
‘Worn by a figurehead.’
‘But the gods choose the Archchancellor!’
Carding raised an eyebrow. ‘Do they?’ he said, and coughed.
‘Well, yes, I suppose they do. In a manner of speaking.’
‘In a manner of speaking?’
Carding got up and gathered his skirts around him. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you have a great deal to learn. By the way, where is that hat?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Spelter, who was still quite shaken.
‘Somewhere in, um, Virrid’s apartments, I suppose.’
‘We’d better fetch it,’ said Carding.
He paused in the doorway and stroked his beard reflectively. ‘I remember Ipslore,’ he said. ‘We were students together. Wild fellow. Odd habits. Superb wizard, of course, before he went to the bad. Had a funny way of twitching his eyebrow, I remember, when he was excited.’ Carding looked blankly across forty years of memory, and shivered.
‘The hat,’ he reminded himself. ‘Let’s find it. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.’
In fact the hat had no intention of letting anything happen to it, and was currently hurrying towards the Mended Drum under the arm of a rather puzzled, black-clad thief.
The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This thief was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that was not nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well. This thief had scandalised Ankh by taking a particular interest in stealing, with astonishing success, things that were in fact not only nailed down but also guarded by keen-eyed guards in inaccessible strongrooms. There are artists that will paint an entire chapel ceiling; this was the kind of thief that could steal it.
This particular thief was credited with stealing the jewelled disembowelling knife from the Temple of Offler the Crocodile God during the middle of Evensong, and the silver shoes from the Patrician’s finest racehorse while it was in the process of winning a race. When Gritoller Mimpsey, vice-president of the Thieves’ Guild, was jostled in the marketplace and then found on returning home that a freshly-stolen handful of diamonds had vanished from their place of concealment, he knew who to blame.[7] This was the type of thief that could steal the initiative, the moment and the words right out of your mouth.