The last wizard in the group lagged behind his colleagues and looked around the square with disdain.
‘There used to be fountains out here,’ he said. ‘You people - be off.’
The traders stared at one another. Wizards normally spoke imperiously, that was to be expected. But there was an edge to the voice that no-one had heard before. It had knuckles in it.
Ardrothy’s eyes swivelled sideways. Arising out of the ruins of his jellied starfish and clam stall like an avenging angel, dislodging various molluscs from his beard and spitting vinegar, was Miskin Koble, who was said to be able to open oysters with one hand. Years of pulling limpets off rocks and wrestling the giant cockles in Ankh Bay had given him the kind of physical development normally associated with tectonic plates. He didn’t so much stand up as unfold.
Then he thudded his way towards the wizard and pointed a trembling finger at the ruins of his stall, from which half a dozen enterprising lobsters were making a determined bid for freedom. Muscles moved around the edges of his mouth like angry eels.
‘Did you do that?’ he demanded.
‘Stand aside, oaf,’ said the wizard, three words which in the opinion of Ardrothy gave him the ongoing life expectancy of a glass cymbal.
‘I hates wizards,’ said Koble. ‘I really hates wizards. So I am going to hit you, all right?’
He brought his fist back and let fly.
The wizard raised an eyebrow, yellow fire sprang up around the shellfish salesman, there was a noise like tearing silk, and Koble had vanished. All that was left was his boots, standing forlornly on the cobbles with little wisps of smoke coming out of them.
No-one knows why smoking boots always remain, no matter how big the explosion. It seems to be just one of those things.
It seemed to the watchful eyes of Ardrothy that the wizard himself was nearly as socked as the crowd, but he rallied magnificently and gave his staff a flourish.
‘You people had better jolly well learn from this,’ he said. ‘No-one raises their hand to a wizard, do you understand? There are going to be a lot of changes around here. Yes, what do you want?’
This last comment was to Ardrothy, who was trying to sneak past unnoticed. He scrabbled quickly in his pie tray.
‘I was just wondering if your honourship would care to purchase one of these finest pies,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Full of nourish-’
‘Watch closely, pie-selling person,’ said the wizard. He stretched out his hand, made a strange gesture with his fingers, and produced a pie out of the air.
It was fat, golden-brown and beautifully glazed. just by looking at it Ardrothy knew it was packed edge to edge with prime lean pork, with none oft hose spacious areas of good fresh air under the lid that represented his own profit margin. It was the kind of pie piglets hope to be when they grew up.
His heart sank. His ruin was floating in front of him with short-crust pastry on it.
‘Want a taste?’ said the wizard. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from.’
‘Wherever it came from,’ said Ardrothy.
He looked past the shiny pastry to the face of the wizard, and in the manic gleam of those eyes he saw the world turning upside down.
He turned away, a broken man, and set out for the nearest city gate.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that wizards were killing people, he thought bitterly, they were taking away their livelihood as well.
A bucket of water splashed into Rincewind’s face, jerking him out of a dreadful dream in which a hundred masked women were attempting to trim his hair with broadswords and cutting it very fine indeed. Some people, having a nightmare like that, would dismiss it as castration anxiety, but Rincewind’s subconscious knew being-cut-to-tiny-bits-mortal dread when it saw it. It saw it most of the time.
He sat up.
‘Are you all right?’ said Conina, anxiously.
Rincewind swivelled his eyes around the cluttered deck.
‘Not necessarily,’ he said cautiously. There didn’t seem to be any black-clad slavers around, at least vertically. There were a good many crew members, all of them maintaining a respectful distance from Conina. Only the captain stood reasonably close, an inane grin on his face.
‘They left,’ said Conina. ‘Took what they could and left.’
‘They bastards,’ said the captain, ‘but they paddle pretty fast!’ Conina winced as he gave her a ringing slap on the back. ‘She fight real good for a lady,’ he added. ‘Yes!’