Unseen Academicals (Discworld 37)

'You're telling me. Moonsilver, they call it. We're even having to walk down the catwalk with her. They say it's the coming thing, but I dunno. It won't take an edge and it wouldn't stop a decent blade. You need Igors to help you smelt it, too. They say it's worth even more than platinum. Looks good, though, and they say you hardly know you're wearing it. It's not what my granddad would have called a metal, but they say that we have to move with the times. Personally, I wouldn't even hang it on the wall, but there you go.'

'Girl's armour,' said the other guard.

'What about this micromail stuff?' said Glenda.

'Ah, different pocketful of rats entirely, miss,' said the first guard. 'I hear they set up and forge it right here in the city, 'cos the best craftsmen are here. Just the job, eh? Chain mail as fine as cloth and strong as steel! It'll get cheaper, too, they say, and most of all it doesn't - '

'Wotcher, Glendy, guess who?'

Someone tapped Glenda on the shoulder. She turned round and saw a vision of heavily but tastefully armoured beauty. It was Juliet, but Glenda only knew this because of the milky-blue eyes. Juliet was wearing a beard.

'Madame says I'd better wear this,' she said. 'It's not dwarf if it don't include a beard. What d'you think?'

This time the sherry got in first.

'It's actually rather attractive,' said Glenda, still in mild shock. 'It's very¨Csilvery.'

It was a female beard, she could tell. It looked styled and stylish and didn't have bits of rat in it.

'Madame says there's a place saved for you in the front row,' said Juliet.

'Oh, I couldn't sit in the front row - ' Glenda began, on automatic, but the sherry cut in with, 'Shut up, stop thinking like your mother, will you, and go and sit down in the damn front row.'

One of the ever-present young ladies chose this exact moment to take Glenda by the hand and lead her slightly unsteady feet through the settling chaos, out through the door and back into fairyland. There was indeed a seat waiting for her.

Fortunately, although in the front row it was off to one side. She would have died of shame had it been right in the middle. She clutched her handbag in both hands and risked a look along the row. It was packed. It wasn't exclusively dwarf, either; there were a number of human ladies, smartly dressed, a little on the skinny side (in her opinion), almost offensively at ease and all talking.

Another sherry mystically appeared in her hand and, as the noise stopped with rat-trap sharpness, Madame Sharn came out through the curtain and began to address the crowded hall. Glenda thought, I wish I'd worn a better coat... At which point the sherry tucked her up and put her to bed.

Glenda only started to think properly again some time later, when she was hit on the head by a bunch of flowers. They struck her just over the ear and as expensive petals rained around her she looked up at the beaming, radiant face of Juliet, at the very edge of the catwalk, halfway through the motions of shouting 'Duck!'

... And there were more flowers flying and people standing and cheering, and music, and in general the feeling of being under a waterfall with no water but inexhaustible torrents of sound and light. Out of it all Juliet exploded, throwing herself at Glenda and flinging her arms around her neck.

'She wants me to do it again!' she panted. 'She says I could go to Quirm and Genua, even! She says she'll pay me more if I don't work for no one else and the world is an oyster. I never knew that.'

'But you've already got a steady job in the kitchen... ' said Glenda, only three-quarters of her way into consciousness. Later, more often than she liked, she remembered saying those words while the applause thundered all around them.

There was a gentle pressure on her shoulder, and here was one of the interchangeable young women with a tray. 'Madame sends her compliments, miss, and would like to invite you and Miss Juliet to join her in her private boudoir.'

'That's nice of her, but I think we should be getting - A boudoir, you say?'

'Oh yes. And would you like another drink? It's a celebration, after all.'

Glenda looked around at the chattering, laughing and, above all, drinking crowd. The place felt like an oven.

'All right, but not that sherry, thank you all the same. Have you got something very cold and fizzy?'

'Why, yes, miss. Lots.' The girl produced a large bottle and expertly filled a tall fluted glass with, apparently, bubbles. When Glenda drank it, the bubbles filled her, too.

'Mm, quite nice,' she ventured. 'A bit like lemonade grown up.'

'That's how Madame drinks it, certainly.'

'Er, this boudoir,' Glenda tried, following the girl rather unsteadily. 'How big is it?'

'Oh, pretty large, I think. There must be about forty people in there already.'

'Really? That's a big boudoir.' Well, thank goodness, Glenda thought. That at least is sorted out. They really ought to put proper explanations in these novels.