'That's me! And I've got my potato, look, and I'm very sorry about everything!' Mr Pin was feeling quite calm now. The mountains of madness have many little plateaux of sanity.
Death stared into the madly smiling face. You ARE VERY SORRY?
'Oh, yes!'
ABOUT EVERYTHING?
'Yep!'
AT THIS TIME? IN THIS PLACE? YOU DECLARE YOU ARE SORRY?'
'That's right. You got it. You're bright. So if you'll just show me how to get back--'
YOU WOULD NOT LIKE TO RECONSIDER?
'No arguing, I want what's due,' said Mr Pin. 'I've got my potato. Look.'
AND I SEE. Death reached into his robe and pulled out what looked to Mr Pin, at first sight, like a miniature model of himself.
But there was a rat skull looking out from under the tiny cowl. Death grinned. SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND, he said. The Death of Rats reached out and snatched the string. 'Hey--'
DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. WHAT THINGS SEEM MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE, Said Death. YET LET NO ONE SAY I DON'T
HONOUR THE LAW. He snapped his fingers. RETURN, THEN, TO WHERE YOU
SHOULD GO...
Blue light flickered for a moment around the astonished Pin, and then he vanished. Death sighed and shook his head.
THE OTHER ONE... HAD SOMETHING IN HIM THAT COULD BE BETTER, he
said. BUT THAT ONE... He sighed deeply. WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS
IN THE HEART OF MEN?
The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of potato.
SQUEAK, he said.
Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he
Said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.
William, ducking from doorway to doorway, realized that he was taking the long way round. Otto would have said that it was because he didn't want to arrive.
The storm had abated slightly, although stinging hail still bounced off his hat. The much bigger balls from the initial onslaught filled the gutters and covered the roads. Carts had skidded, pedestrians were hanging on to the walls.
Despite the fire in his head, he took out his notebook and wrote: hlstns bggr than golf blls? and made a mental note to check one against a golf ball, just in case. Part of him was beginning to understand that his readers might have a very relaxed attitude about the guilt of politicians but were red hot on things like the size of the weather.
He stopped on the Brass Bridge and sheltered in the lee of one of the giant hippos. Hail peppered the surface of the river with a thousand tiny sucking noises.
The rage was cooling now.
For most of William's life Lord de Worde had been a distant figure staring out of his study window, in a room lined with books that never got read, while William stood meekly in the middle of acres of good but threadbare carpet and listened to... well, viciousness mostly, now that he thought about it, the opinions of Mr Windling dressed up in more expensive words.
The worst part, the worst part, was that Lord de Worde was never wrong. It was not a position he understood in relation to his personal geography. People who took an opposing view were insane, or dangerous, or possibly even not really people. You couldn't have an argument with Lord de Worde. Not a proper argument. An argument, from arguer, meant to debate and discuss and persuade by reason. What you could have with William's father was a flaming row.
Icy water dripped off one of the statues and ran down William's neck.