Pyramids (Discworld 7)

Teppic waited for his breath to catch up with him, and in that moment heard the sound. It was down among the white noise at the edge of hearing, but there was no doubt about it. Someone was waiting just above the trapdoor, and they'd just put their hand on a piece of paper to stop it rattling in the breeze.

His own hand dropped from the bolt. He eased his way with exquisite care back across the greasy floor and felt his way along a rough wooden wall until he came to the door. This time he took no chances, but uncorked his oil can and let a silent drop fall on to the hinges.

A moment later he was through. A rat, idly patrolling the draughty passage beyond, had to stop itself from swallowing its own tongue as he floated past.

There was another doorway at the end, and a maze of musty storerooms until he found a stairway. He judged himself to be about thirty yards from the trapdoor. There hadn't been any flues that he could see. There ought to be a clear shot across the roof.

He hunkered down and pulled out his knife roll, its velvet blackness making a darker oblong in the shadows. He selected a Number Five, not everyone's throwing knife, but worthwhile if you had the trick of it.

Shortly afterwards his head rose very carefully over the edge of the roof, one arm bent behind it but ready to uncurl in a complex interplay of forces that would combine to send a few ounces of steel gliding across the night.

Mericet was sitting by the trapdoor, looking at his clipboard. Teppic's eyes swivelled to the oblong of the plank bridge, stored meticulously against the parapet a few feet away.

He was certain he had made no noise. He'd have to swear that the examiner heard the sound of his gaze falling on him.

The old man raised his bald head.

'Thank you, Mr Teppic,' he said, 'you may proceed.'

Teppic felt the sweat of his body grow cold. He stared at the plank, and then at the examiner, and then at his knife. 'Y's, sir,' he said. This didn't seem like enough, in the circumstances. He added, 'Thank you, sir.'

He'd always remember the first night in the dormitory. It was long enough to accommodate all eighteen boys in Viper House, and draughty enough to accommodate the great outdoors. Its designer may have had comfort in mind, but only so that he could avoid it wherever possible: he had contrived a room that could actually be colder than the weather outside.

'I thought we got rooms to ourselves,' said Teppic.

Chidder, who had laid claim to the least exposed bed in the whole refrigerator, nodded at him.

'Later on,' he said. He lay back, and winced. 'Do they sharpen these springs, do you reckon?'

Teppic said nothing. The bed was in fact rather more comfortable than the one he'd slept in at home. His parents, being high born, naturally tolerated conditions for their children which would have been rejected out of hand by destitute sandflies.

He stretched out on the thin mattress and analysed the day's events. He'd been enrolled as an assassin, all right, a student assassin, for more than seven hours and they hadn't even let him lay a hand on a knife yet. Of course, tomorrow was another day . . .

Chidder leaned over.

'Where's Arthur?' he said.

Teppic looked at the bed opposite him. There was a pathetically small sack of clothing positioned neatly in its centre, but no sign of its intended occupant.

'Do you think he's run away?' he said, staring around at the shadows.

'Could be,' said Chidder. 'It happens a lot, you know. Mummy's boys, away from home for the first time-'

The door at the end of the room swung open slowly and Arthur entered, backwards, tugging a large and very reluctant billy goat. It fought him every step of the way down the aisle between the bedsteads.

The boys watched in silence for several minutes as he tethered the animal to the end of his bed, upended the sack on the blankets, and took out several black candles, a sprig of herbs, a rope of skulls, and a piece of chalk. Taking the chalk, and adopting the shiny, pink-faced expression of someone who is going to do what they know to be right no matter what, Arthur drew a double circle around his bed and then, getting down on his chubby knees, filled the space between them with as unpleasant a collection of occult symbols as Teppic. had ever seen. When they were completed to his satisfaction he placed the candles at strategic points and lit them; they spluttered and gave off a smell that suggested that you really wouldn't want to know what they were made of. He drew a short, red-handled knife from the jumble on the bed and advanced towards the goat-

A pillow hit him on the back of the head.

'Garn! Pious little bastard!'

Arthur dropped the knife and burst into tears. Chidder sat up in bed.

'That was you, Cheesewright!' he said. 'I saw you!' Cheesewright, a skinny young man with red hair and a face that was one large freckle, glared at him.

'Well, it's too much,' he said. 'A fellow can't sleep with all this religion going on. I mean, only little kids say their prayers at bedtime these days, we're supposed to be learning to be assassins-'

'You can jolly well shut up, Cheesewright,' shouted Chidder. 'It'd be a better world if more people said their prayers, you know. I know I don't say mine as often as I should-'