'About twenty miles, I guess.'.
Cutwell rolled his eyes heavenwards and moved his lips. Eventually he said: 'That means it'll arrive around midnight tomorrow, just in time for the coronation.'
'Whose?'
'Hers.'
'But she's queen already, isn't she?'
'In a way, but officially she's not queen until she's crowned.' Cutwell grinned, his face a pattern of shade in the candlelight, and added, 'If you want a way of thinking about it, then it's like the difference between stopping living and being dead.'
Twenty minutes earlier Mort had been feeling tired enough to take root. Now he could feel a fizzing in his blood. It was the kind of late-night, frantic energy that you knew you would pay for around midday tomorrow, but for now he felt he had to have some action or else his muscles would snap out of sheer vitality.
'I want to see her,' he said. 'If you can't do anything, there might be something I can do.'
There's guards outside her room,' said Cutwell. 'I mention this merely as an observation. I don't imagine for one minute that they'll make the slightest difference.'
It was midnight in Ankh-Morpork, but in the great twin city the only difference between night and day was, well, it was darker. The markets were thronged, the spectators were still thickly clustered around the whore pits, runners-up in the city's eternal and byzantine gang warfare drifted silently down through the chilly waters of the river with lead weights tied to their feet, dealers in various illegal and even illogical delights plied their sidelong trade, burglars burgled, knives flashed starlight in alleyways, astrologers started their day's work and in the Shades a nightwatch-man who had lost his way rang his bell and cried out: 'Twelve o'clock and all's arrrrrgghhhh, . . .'
However, the Ankh-Morpork Chamber of Commerce would not be happy at the suggestion that the only real difference between their city and a swamp is the number of legs on the alligators, and indeed in the more select areas of Ankh, which tend to be in the hilly districts where there is a chance of a bit of wind, the nights are gentle and scented with habiscine and Cecillia blossoms.
On this particular night they were scented with saltpetre, too, because it was the tenth anniversary of the accession of the Patrician[7] and he had invited a few friends round for a drink, five hundred of them in this case, and was letting off fireworks. Laughter and the occasional gurgle of passion filled the palace gardens, and the evening had just got to that interesting stage where everyone had drunk too much for their own good but not enough actually to fall over. It is the kind of state in which one does things that one will recall with crimson shame in later life, such as blowing through a paper squeaker and laughing so much that one is sick.
In fact some two hundred of the Patrician's guests were now staggering and kicking their way through the Serpent Dance, a quaint Morporkian folkway which consisted of getting rather drunk, holding the waist of the person in front, and then wobbling and giggling uproariously in a long crocodile that wound through as many rooms as possible, preferably ones with breakables in, while kicking one leg vaguely in time with the beat, or at least in time with some other beat. This dance had gone on for half an hour and had wound through every room in the palace, picking up two trolls, the cook, the Patrician's head torturer, three waiters, a burglar who happened to be passing and a small pet swamp dragon.
Somewhere around the middle of the dance was fat Lord Rodley of Quirm, heir to the fabulous Quirm estates, whose current preoccupation was with the thin fingers gripping his waist. Under its bath of alcohol his brain kept trying to attract his attention.
'I say,' he called over his shoulder, as they oscillated for the tenth hilarious time through the enormous kitchen, 'not so tight, please.'
I AM MOST TERRIBLY SORRY.
'No offence, old chap. Do I know you?' said Lord Rodley, kicking vigorously on the back beat.
I THINK IT UNLIKELY. TELL ME, PLEASE, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS ACTIVITY?
'What?' shouted Lord Rodley, above the sound of someone kicking in the door of a glass cabinet amid shrieks of merriment.
WHAT is THIS THING THAT WE DO? said the voice, with glacial patience.
'Haven't you been to a party before? Mind the glass, by the way.'
I AM AFRAID I DO NOT GET OUT AS MUCH AS I WOULD LIKE TO. PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS. DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH SEX?
'Not unless we pull up sharp, old boy, if you know what I mean?' said his lordship, and nudged his unseen fellow guest with his elbow.
'Ouch,' he said. A crash up ahead marked the demise of the cold buffet.
NO.
'What?'
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN.
'Mind the cream there, it's slippery – look, it's just a dance, all right? You do it for fun.'
FUN.
'That's right. Dada, dada, da – kick!' There was an audible pause.