In a little rack on the desk are an ink pad and two rubber stamps, showing the city's coat of arms and the seal of the bank. But in Moist's eyes, there is a haze of gold around these simple things, too. They have value.
'Mr Fusspot?' said Moist. The dog sat up in his tray, looking expectant.
Moist pushed his sleeves back and flexed his fingers.
'Shall we make some money, Mr Chairman?' he said.
The chairman expressed unconditional agreement by means of going 'woof!'
'Pay The Bearer The Sum Of One Dollar,' Moist wrote on a piece of crisp bank paper.
He stamped the paper with both the stamps, and gave the result a long critical look. It needed something more. You had to give people a show. The eye was everything.
It needed... a touch of gravitas, like the bank itself. Who'd bank in a wooden hut?
Hmm.
Ah, yes. It was all about the city, right? Underneath he wrote, in large ornate letters:
AD URBEM PERTINET
And, in smaller letters, after some thought:
'Promitto fore ut possessori postulanti nummum unum solvent, an apte satisfaciam.
Signed Moist von Lipwig pp The Chairman.
'Excuse me, Mr Chairman,' he said, and lifted the dog up. It was the work of a moment to press a front paw on the damp pad and leave a neat little footprint beside the signature.
Moist went through this a dozen or more times, tucked five of the resulting bills under the blotter and took the rest of the new money, and the chairman, for walkies.
Cosmo Lavish glared at his reflection in the mirror. Often he got it right in the glass three or four times in a row, and then - oh, the shame - he'd try it in public and people, if they were foolish enough to mention it, would say: 'Have you got something in your eye?'
He'd even had a device constructed that pulled at one eyebrow repeatedly, by means of clockwork. He'd poisoned the man who made it, there and then as he took delivery, chatting with him in his smelly little workshop while the stuff took hold. He'd been nearly eighty and Cosmo had been very careful, so it never came to the attention of the Watch. Anyway, at that age it shouldn't really count as murder, should it? It was more like a favour, really. And obviously he couldn't risk the old fool blabbing happily to someone after Cosmo had become Patrician.
On reflection, he thought, he should have waited until he was certain that the eyebrow-training machine was working properly. It had given him a black eye before he'd made a few hesitant adjustments.
How did Vetinari do it? It was what had got him the Patricianship, Cosmo was sure. Well, a couple of mysterious murders had helped, admittedly, but it was the way the man could raise an eyebrow that kept him there.
Cosmo had studied Vetinari for a long time. It was easy enough, at social gatherings. He'd cut out every picture that appeared in the Times, too. What was the secret that kept the man so powerful and unscathed? How might he be understood?
And then one day he'd read in some book or other: 'If you want to understand a man, walk a mile in his shoes'.
And he'd had a great and glorious idea...
He sighed happily and tugged at the black glove.
He'd been sent to the Assassins' school as a matter of course. It was the natural destination for young men of a certain class and accent. He'd survived, and had made a study of poisons because he'd heard that was Vetinari's speciality, but the place had bored him. It was so stylized now. They'd got so wrapped up in some ridiculous concepts of honour and elegance that they seemed to forget what it was an assassin was supposed to do...
The glove came free, and there it was.
Oh yes...
Heretofore had done magnificently.
Cosmo stared at the wondrous thing, moving his hand so that it caught the light. Light did strange things to stygium: sometimes it reflected silver, sometimes an oily yellow, sometimes it remained resolutely black. And it was warm, even here. In direct sunlight it would burst into flame. It was a metal that might have been intended for those who move in shadow...
The ring of Vetinari. Vetinari's signet ring. Such a small thing, and yet so powerful. It was entirely without ornamentation unless you counted the tiny border to the cartouche which surrounded, sharply incised and serifed, the single letter: