' - may have taken - '
' - all right, may have taken, good grief, tons of gold out of dwarf land - '
'Golem Trust land - '
'All right, but there was a covenant! Which you broke when you took - '
' - didn't take. It walked off by itself,' said Adora Belle calmly.
'For heavens' sake, only a woman could think like this! You think because you believe there's a perfectly good justification for your actions the legal issues don't matter! And here am I, this close to persuading people here that a dollar doesn't have to be round and shiny and I'm finding that at any minute four big shiny beaming golems are going to stroll into town, waving and glittering at everybody!'
'There's no need to get hysterical,' said Adora Belle.
'Yes, there is! What there isn't a need for is staying calm!'
'Yes, but that's when you come alive, right? That's when your brain works best. You always find a way, right?'
And there was nothing you could do about a woman like that. She just turned herself into a hammer and you ran right into her.
Fortunately.
They'd reached the entrance to the university. Above them loomed the forbidding statue of Alberto Malich, the founder. It had a chamber pot on its head. This had inconvenienced the pigeon which, by family tradition, spent most of its time perched on Alberto's head and now wore on its own head a miniature version of the same pottery receptacle.
Must be Rag Week again, thought Moist. Students, eh? Love 'em or hate 'em, you're not allowed to hit 'em with a shovel.
'Look, golems or not, let's have dinner tonight, just you and me, up in the suite. Aimsbury would love it. He doesn't often get a chance to cook for humans and it'd make him feel better. He'll do anything you want, I'm sure.'
Adora Belle gave him a lopsided look. 'I thought you'd suggest that," so I ordered sheep's head. He was overjoyed.'
'Sheep's head?' said Moist gloomily. 'You know I hate food that stares back. I won't even look a sardine in the face.'
'He promised to blindfold it.'
'Oh, good.'
'My granny did a wonderful sheep's head mould,' said Adora Belle. 'That's where you use pig's trotters to thicken the broth so that when it gets cold you - '
'You know, sometimes there's such a thing as too much information?' said Moist. 'This evening, then. Now let's go and see your dead wizard. You should enjoy it. There's bound to be skulls.'
There were skulls. There were black drapes. There were complex symbols drawn on the floor. There were spirals of incense from black thuribles. And in the middle of all this the Head of Post-Mortem Communications, in a fearsome mask, was fiddling with a candle.
He stopped when he heard them come in, and straightened up hurriedly.
'Oh, you're early,' he said, his voice somewhat muffled by the fangs. 'Sorry. It's the candles. They should be cheap tallow for the proper black smoke, but wouldn't you know it, they've given me beeswax. I told them just dribbling is no good to me, acrid smoke is what we want. Or what they want, anyway. Sorry, John Hicks, head of department. Ponder has told me all about you.'
He took off the mask and extended a hand. The man looked as though he'd tried, like any self-respecting necromancer, to grow a proper goatee beard, but owing to some basic lack of malevolence it had turned out a bit sheepish. After a few seconds Hicks realized why they were staring, and pulled off the fake rubber hand with the black fingernails.
'I thought necromancy was banned,' said Moist.
'Oh, we don't do necromancy here,' said Hicks. 'What made you think that?'
Moist looked around at the furnishings, shrugged, and said, 'Well, I suppose it first crossed my mind when I saw the way the paint was flaking off the door and you can still just see a crude skull and the letters NECR...'
'Ancient history, ancient history,' said Hicks quickly. 'We are the Department of Post-Mortem Communications. A force for good, you understand. Necromancy, on the other hand, is a very bad form of magic done by evil wizards.'
'And since you are not evil wizards, what you are doing can't be called necromancy?'
'Exactly!'