'Is this exactly legal under college rules, sir?'
'Of course not! Think of what might happen if this sort of thing fell into the wrong hands! Hold the lantern higher, Goatly, we're losing the light.'
'And whose hands would that be, sir?'
'Well, technically ours, as a matter of fact. But it's perfectly all right if the Council don't find out. And they won't, of course. They know better than to go around finding things out.'
'So it is illegal, technically?'
'Well now,' said Hicks, drawing a glyph which flamed blue for a moment, 'who among us, when you get right down to it, can say what is right and what is wrong?'
'The College Council, sir?' said Barnsforth.
Hicks threw down the chalk and straightened up.
'Now listen to me, you four! We are going to insorcize Flead, understand? To his eternal satisfaction and the not inconsiderable good of the department, believe me! This is a difficult ritual but if you assist me you'll be Doctors of Post-Mortem Communications by the end of term, understand? Straight As for the lot of you and, of course, the skull ring! Since you so far have managed to turn in one-third of an essay between you all, I would say that is a bargain, wouldn't you, Barnsforth?'
The student blinked in the force of the question, but natural talent came to his aid. He coughed in a curiously academic way, and said: 'I think I understand you, sir. What we are doing here goes beyond mundane definitions of right and wrong, does it not? We serve a higher truth.'
'Well done, Barnsforth, you will go a long way. Everyone got that?
Higher truth. Good! Now let's decant the old bugger and get out of here before anyone catches us!'
A troll officer in a coach is hard to ignore. He just looms. That was Vimes's little joke, perhaps. Sergeant Detritus sat beside Moist, effectively clamping him into his seat. Lord Vetinari and Drumknott sat opposite, his lordship with his hands crossed on the silver-topped cane and his chin resting on his hands. He watched Moist intently.
There was a rumour that the sword in the stick had been made with the iron taken from the blood of a thousand men. It seemed a waste, thought Moist, when for a bit of extra work you could get enough to make a ploughshare. Who made up these things, anyway?
But with Vetinari it seemed possible, if a bit messy.
'Look, if you let Cosmo - ' he began.
'Pas devant le gendarme,' said Lord Vetinari.
'Dat mean no talkin' in front o' me,' Sergeant Detritus supplied helpfully.
'Then can we talk about angels?' said Moist, after a period of silence.
'No, we can't. Mr Lipwig, you appear to be the only person able to command the biggest army since the days of the Empire. Do you think that is a good idea?'
'I didn't want to! I just worked out how to do it!'
'You know, Mr Lipwig, killing you right now would solve an incredibly large number of problems.'
'I didn't intend this! Well... not exactly like this.'
'We didn't intend the Empire. It just became a bad habit. So, Mr Lipwig, now that you have your golems, what else do you intend to do with them?'
'Put one in to power every clacks tower. The donkey treadmills have never worked properly. The other cities can't object to that. It will be a boon to ma - to people-kind and the donkeys won't object either, I expect.'
'That will account for a few hundred, perhaps. And the rest?'
'I intend to turn them into gold, sir. And I think it will solve all our problems.'
Vetinari raised a quizzical eyebrow. 'All our problems?'
The pain was breaking through again but was somehow reassuring. He was becoming Vetinari, certainly. The pain was good. It was a good pain. It concentrated him, it helped him think.
Right now, Cosmo was thinking that Pucci really should have been strangled at birth, which family folklore said he had tried to achieve. Everything about her was annoying. She was selfish, arrogant, greedy, vain, cruel, headstrong and totally lacking in tact and the slightest amount of introspection.