'Heard from any of the others?'
'No.'
Chidder leaned back. 'Cheesewright will make it,' he said loftily, 'and young Arthur. I don't think some of the others will. We could give them twenty minutes, what do you say?'
Teppic turned an agonised face towards him.
'Chiddy, I-
'What?'
'When it came to it, I-
"What about it?'
Teppic looked at the cobbles. 'Nothing,' he said.
'You're lucky - you just had a good airy run over the rooftops. I had the sewers and then up the garderobe in the Haberdashers' Tower. I had to go in and change when I got here.'
'You had a dummy, did you?' said Teppic.
'Good grief, didn't you?'
'But they let us think it was going to be real!' Teppic wailed.
'It felt real, didn't it?'
'Yes!'
'Well, then. And you passed. So no problem.'
'But didn't you wonder who might be under the blanket, who it was, and why-
'I was worried that I might not do it properly,' Chidder admitted. 'But then I thought, well, it's not up to me.'
'But I- ' Teppic stopped. What could he do? Go and explain? Somehow that didn't seem a terribly good idea.
His friend slapped him on the back.
'Don't worry about it!' he said. 'We've done it!'
And Chidder held up his thumb pressed against the first two fingers of his right hand, in the ancient salute of the assassins.
A thumb pressed against two fingers, and the lean figure of Dr Cruces, head tutor, looming over the startled boys. 'We do not murder,' he said. It was a soft voice; the doctor never raised his voice, but he had a way of giving it the pitch and spin that could make it be heard through a hurricane. 'We do not execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or for petty advantage or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all these reasons are in the highest degree suspect. Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the click of evil's scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language.
'No, we do it for the money.
'And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for the a great deal of money.
'There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of all pretence.
'Nil mortifi, sine lucre. Remember. No killing without payment.'
He paused for a moment.
'And always give a reciept,' he added.
'So it's all okay,' said Chidder. Teppic nodded gloomily. That was what was so likeable about Chidder. He had this enviable ability to avoid thinking seriously about anything he did.