The Truth (Discworld 25)

Mr Longshaft quietly picked up his boiled egg and inserted it into an eggcup.

'There's just too many people in the city,' Mr Windling repeated. 'I've nothing against... outsiders, heavens know, but Vetinari let it go far too far. Everyone knows we need someone who is prepared to be a little more firm.'

There was a metallic noise. Mr Longshaft, still staring fixedly at his egg, had reached down and drawn a smallish but still impressively axe-like axe from his bag. Watching the egg carefully, as if it was about to run away, he leaned slowly back, paused for a moment, then brought the blade round in an arc of silver.

The top of the egg flew up with hardly a noise, turned over in mid-air several feet above the plate, and landed beside the eggcup.

Mr Longshaft nodded to himself and then looked up at the frozen expressions.

'I'm sorry?' he said. 'I wasn't listening.'

At which point, as Sacharissa would have put it, the meeting broke up.

William purchased his own copy of the Inquirer on the way to Gleam Street and wondered, not for the first time, who was writing this stuff. They were better at it than he would be, that was certain. He'd wondered once about making up a few innocent paragraphs, when not much was happening in the city, and found that it was a lot harder than it looked. Try as he might, he kept letting common sense and intelligence get the better of him. Besides, telling lies was Wrong.

He noted glumly that they'd used the talking dog story. Oh, and one he hadn't heard before: a strange figure had been seen swooping around the rooftops of Unseen University at night, HALF MAN HALF MOTH? Half invented and half made up, more likely.

The curious thing was, if the breakfast table jury was anything to go by, that denying stories like this only proved that they were true. After all, no one would bother to deny something if it didn't exist, would they?

He took a short cut through the stables in Creek Alley. Like Gleam Street, Creek Alley was there to mark the back of places. This part of the city had no real existence other than as a place you passed through to somewhere more interesting. The dull street was made up of high-windowed warehouses and broken-down sheds and, significantly, Hobson's Livery Stable.

It was huge, especially since Hobson had realized that you could go multi-storey.

Willie Hobson was another businessman in the mould of the King of the Golden River; he'd found a niche, occupied it and forced it open so wide that lots of money dropped in. Many people in the city occasionally needed a horse, and hardly anyone had a place to park one. You needed a stable, you needed a groom, you needed a hayloft... but to hire a horse from Willie you just needed a few dollars.

Lots of people kept their own horses there, too. People came and went all the time. The bandy-legged, goblin-like little men who ran the place never bothered to stop anyone unless they appeared to have hidden a horse about their person.

William looked around when a voice out of the gloom of the loose-boxes said, "scuse me, friend.'

He peered into the shadows. A few horses were watching him. In the distance, around him, other horses were being moved, people were shouting, there was the general bustle of the stables. But the voice had come out of a little pool of ominous silence.

'I've still got two months to go on my last receipt,' he said to the darkness. 'And may I say that the free canteen of cutlery seemed to be made of an alloy of lead and horse manure?'

'I'm not a thief, friend,' said the shadows.

'Who's there?'

'Do you know what's good for you?'

'Er... yes. Healthy exercise, regular meals, a good night's sleep.' William stared at the long lines of loose-boxes. 'I think what you meant to ask was: do I know what's bad for me, in the general context of blunt instruments and sharp edges. Yes?'

'Broadly, yes. No, don't move, mister. You stand where I can see you and no harm will come to you.'

William analysed this. 'Yes, but if I stand where you can't see me, I don't see how any harm could come to me there, either.'

Something sighed. 'Look, meet me halfway here-- No! Don't move!'

'But you said to--'

'Just stand still and shut up and listen, will you?'

'All right.'

'I am hearing where there's a certain dog that people are lookin' for,' said the mystery voice.

'Ah. Yes. The Watch want him, yes. And... ?' William thought he could just make out a slightly darker shape. More importantly, he could smell a Smell, even above the general background odour of the horses.

'Ron?' he said.