Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

“Can you just repeat that?” said Brother Plasterer slowly.

“You can control it. You can make it do whatever you want.”

“What? A real dragon?”

The Supreme Grand Master's eyes rolled in the privacy of his hood.

“Yes, a real one. Not a little pet swamp dragon. The genuine article.”

“But I thought they were, you know . . . miffs.”

The Supreme Grand master leaned forward.

“'They were myths and they were real,” he said loudly. “Both a wave and a particle.”

“You've lost me there,” said Brother Plasterer.

“I will demonstrate, then. The book please, Brother Fingers. Thank you. Brethren, I must tell you that when I was undergoing my tuition by the Secret Masters-”

“The what, Supreme Grand Master?” said Brother Plasterer.

“Why don't you listen? You never listen. He said the Secret Masters!” said Brother Watchtower. “You know, the venerable sages what live on some mountain and secretly run everything and taught him all this lore and that, and can walk on fires and that. He told us last week. He's going to teach us, aren't you, Supreme Grand Master,” he finished obsequiously.

“Oh, the Secret Masters,” said Brother Plasterer. “Sorry. It's these mystic hoods. Sorry. Secret. I remember.”

But when I rule the city, the Supreme Grand Master said to himself, there is going to be none of this. I shall form a new secret society of keen-minded and intelligent men, although not too intelligent of course, not too intelligent. And we will overthrow the cold tyrant and we will usher in a new age of enlightenment and fraternity and humanism and Ankh-Morpork will become a Utopia and people like Brother Plasterer will be roasted over slow fires if I have any say in the matter, which I will. And his figgin.[2]

“When I was, as I said, undergoing my tuition by the Secret Masters-” he continued.

“That was where they told you you had to walk on ricepaper, wasn't it,” said Brother Watchtower conversationally. “I always thought that was a good bit. I've been saving it off the bottom of my macaroons ever since. Amazing, really. I can walk on it no trouble. Shows what being in a proper secret society does for you, does that.”

When he is on the griddle, the Supreme Grand Master thought, Brother Plasterer will not be lonely.

“Your footfalls on the road of enlightenment are an example to us all, Brother Watchtower,” he said. “If I may continue, however-among the many secrets-”

“-from the Heart of Being-” said Brother Watch-tower approvingly.

“-from the Heart, as Brother Watchtower says, of Being, was the current location of the noble dragons. The belief that they died out is quite wrong. They simply found a new evolutionary niche. And they can be summoned from it. This book-” he flourished it- “gives specific instructions.”

“It's just in a book?” said Brother Plasterer.

“No ordinary book. This is the only copy. It has taken me years to track it down,” said the Supreme Grand Master. “It's in the handwriting of Tubal de Malachite, a great student of dragon lore. His actual handwriting. He summoned dragons of all sizes. And so can you.”

There was another long, awkward silence.

“Um,” said Brother Doorkeeper.

“Sounds a bit like, you know . . . magic to me,” said Brother Watchtower, in the nervous tone of the man who has spotted which cup the pea is hidden under but doesn't like to say. “I mean, not wishing to question your supreme wisdomship and that, but ... well . . . you know . . . magic . . .”

His voice trailed off.

“Yeah,” said Brother Plasterer uncomfortably.

“It's, er, the wizards, see,” said Brother Fingers. “You prob'ly dint know this, when you was banged up with them venerable herberts on their mountain, but the wizards round here come down on you like a ton of bricks if they catches you doin' anything like that.”

“Demarcation, they call it,” said Brother Plasterer.

“Like, I don't go around fiddling with the mystic interleaved wossnames of causality, and they don't do any plastering.”