'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.
Those were not, within the clan, considered to be drawbacks in a person; one could hardly get rich if one bothered all the time about whether what one was doing was wrong or right. But Pucci thought she was beautiful, and that grated on his nerves. She did have good hair, that was true, but those high heels! She looked like a tethered balloon! The only reason she had any figure at all was because of the wonders of corsetry. And, while he'd heard that fat girls had lovely personalities, she just had a lot, and all of it was Lavish.
On the other hand, she was his age and at least had ambition and a wonderful gift for hatred. She wasn't lazy, like the rest of them. They spent their lives huddled round the money. They had no vision. Pucci was someone he could talk to. She saw things from a softer, female perspective.
'You should have Bent killed,' she said. 'I'm sure he knows something. Let's hang him from one of the bridges by his ankles. That's what Granddaddy used to do. Why are you still wearing that glove?'
'He's been a loyal servant of the bank,' said Cosmo, ignoring the last remark.