Unseen Academicals (Discworld 37)

'As a politician, I must tell you I already know. How is he getting along? Concerned minds would like to know.'

Ridcully glanced at the little carved men on the playing slab as if they were listening to him. In a roundabout way, they probably were. Certainly it was well known now that the hands that guided half the pieces lived in a big castle in Uberwald, and were female and belonged to a lady who was mostly rumour.

'Smeems says he keeps himself to himself. He says he thinks the boy is cunning.'

'Oh, good,' said Vetinari, still seeming to find something totally engrossing in the layout of playing pieces.

'Good?'

'We need cunning people in Ankh-Morpork. We have a Street of Cunning Artificers, do we not?'

'Well, yes, but - '

'Ah, then it is context that has power,' said Vetinari, turning around with a look of unmasked delight. 'Did I say that I am a politician? Cunning: artful, sly, deceptive, shrewd, astute, cute, on the ball and, indeed, arch. A word for any praise and every prejudice. Cunning... is a cunning word.'

'You don't think that maybe this... experiment of yours might be a step too far?' said Ridcully.

'People said that about the vampires, did they not? It's alleged that they have no proper language, but I am told he speaks several languages fluently.'

'Smeems did say he talked la-di-da,' Ridcully admitted.

'Mustrum, compared with Natchbull Smeems, trolls speak la-di-da.'

'The... boy was brought up by a priest of some sort, I know that,' said Ridcully. 'But what will he become when he grows up?'

'By the sound of him, a professor of linguistics.'

'You know what I mean, Havelock.'

'Possibly, although I wonder if you do. But he is, I suggest, unlikely to become a ravening horde all by himself.'

Ridcully sighed. He glanced towards the game again, and Vetinari noticed.

'Look at them. Ranks, files,' he said, waving a hand over the little stone figures, 'locked in everlasting conflict at the whim of the player. They fight, they fall, and they cannot turn back because the whips drive them on, and all they know is whips, kill or be killed. Darkness in front of them, darkness behind them, darkness and whips in their heads. But what if you could take one out of this game, get him before the whips do, take him to a place without whips¨Cwhat might he become? One creature. One singular being. Would you deny them that chance?'

'You had three men hanged last week,' said Ridcully, without quite understanding why.

'They had their chances. They used them to kill, and worse. All we get is a chance. We don't get a benison. He was chained to an anvil for seven years. He should get his chance, don't you think?'

Suddenly Vetinari was smiling again.

'Let us not get sombre, however. I look forward to your ushering in a new era of lively, healthy activity in the best sporting tradition. Indeed, tradition will be your friend here, I am sure. Please don't let me trespass any further on your time.'

Ridcully drained the sherry. That at least was palatable.

It's a short walk from the palace to Unseen University; positions of power like to keep an eye on one another.

Ridcully walked back through the crowds, occasionally nodding at people he knew, which, in this part of the city, was practically everyone.

Trolls, he thought, we get along with trolls, now that they remember to look where they're putting their feet. Got 'em in the Watch and everything. Jolly decent types, bar a few bad apples, and gods know we have enough of those of our own. Dwarfs? Been here for ages. Can be a bit tricky, can be as tight as a duck's arse¨Chere he paused to think and edited that thought to 'drive a hard bargain'. You always know where you are with them, anyway, and of course they are short, which is always a comfort provided you know what they are doing down there. Vampires? Well, the Uberwald League of Temperance seemed to be working. Word on the street¨Cor in the vault or whatever¨Cwas that they policed their own. Any unreformed bloodsucker who tried to make a killing in the city would be hunted down by people who knew exactly how they thought and where they hung out.

Lady Margolotta was behind all that. She was the person who, by diplomacy, and probably more direct means, had got things moving again in Uberwald, and she had some sort of... relationship with Vetinari. Everyone knew it, and that was all everyone knew. A dot dot dot relationship. One of those. And nobody had been able to join up the dots.

She had been to the city on diplomatic visits, and not even the well-practised dowagers of Ankh-Morpork had been able to detect a whisper of anything other than a businesslike amiability and international cooperation between the two of them.

And he played endless and complex games with her, via the clacks system, and apart from that, that was, well, that... until now.

And she'd sent him this Nutt to keep safe. Who knew why, apart from them? Politics, probably.