“What?”
“Please put the axe down!”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Hodgesaargh spent his nights in a little shed adjoining the mews. He too had received an invitation to the wedding, but it had been snatched from his hand and eaten in mistake for one of his fingers by Lady Jane, an ancient and evil-tempered gyrfalcon. So he'd gone through his usual nightly routine, bathing his wounds and eating a meal of stale bread and ancient cheese and going to bed early to bleed gently by candlelight over a copy of Beaks and Talons.
He looked up at a sound from the mews, picked up the candlestick, and wandered out.
An elf was looking at the birds. It had Lady Jane perched on its arm.
Hodgesaargh, like Mr. Brooks, didn't take much interest in events beyond his immediate passion. He was aware that there were a lot of visitors in the castle and, as far as he was concerned, anyone looking at the hawks was a fellow enthusiast.
“That's my best bird,” he said proudly. “I've nearly got her trained. She's very good. I'm training her. She's very intelligent. She knows eleven words of command.”
The elf nodded solemnly. Then it slipped the hood off the bird's head, and nodded toward Hodgesaargh.
“Kill,” it commanded.
Lady Jane's eyes glittered in the torchlight. Then she leapt, and hit the elf full in the throat with two sets of talons and a beak.
“She does that with me, too,” said Hodgesaargh. “Sorry about that. She's very intelligent.”
* * *
Diamanda was lying on the kitchen floor, in a pool of blood. Magrat knelt beside her.
“She's still alive. Just.” She grabbed the hem of her dress, and tried to rip it.
“Damn the thing. Help me, Shawn.”
“Miss?”
“We need bandages!”
“But-”
“Oh, stop gawping.”
The skirt tore. A dozen lace roses unravelled.
Shawn had never been privy to what queens wore under their clothes, but even starting with certain observations concerning Millie Chillum and working his way up, he'd never considered metal underwear.
Magrat thumped the breastplate.
“Fairly good fit,” she said, defying Shawn to point out that in certain areas there was quite a lot of air between the metal and Magrat. “Not that a few tucks and a rivet here and there wouldn't help. Don't you think it looks good?”
“Oh, yes,” said Shawn. “Uh. Sheet iron is really you.”
“You really think so?”
“Oh, yes,” said Shawn, inventing madly. “You've got the figure for it.”
She set and splinted his arm and fingers, working methodically, using strips of silk as bandages. Diamanda was less easy. Magrat cleaned and stitched and bandaged, while Shawn sat and watched, trying to ignore the insistent hot-ice pain from his arm.
He kept repeating, “They just laughed and stabbed her. She didn't even try to run away. It was like they were playing.”
For some reason Magrat shot a glance at Greebo, who had the decency to look embarrassed.