Mort (Discworld 4)

'I reckon so,' he said, 'or someone very much like you.'

Thank you,' said Mort, immensely relieved.

'Don't mention it. I see lots of people every day, no charge. Want to buy any bootlaces?'

'I don't think so,' said Mort. 'What place is this?'

'You don't know?'

A couple of people at the next stall were looking at Mort thoughtfully. His mind went into overdrive.

'My master travels a lot,' he said, truthfully. 'We arrived last night, and I was asleep on the cart. Now I've got the afternoon off.'

'Ah,' said the stallholder. He leaned forward conspiratorially. 'Looking for a good time, are you? I could fix you up.'

'I'd quite enjoy knowing where I am,' Mort conceded.

The man was taken aback.

'This is Ankh-Morpork,' he said. 'Anyone ought to be able to see that. Smell it, too.'

Mort sniffed. There was a certain something about the air in the city. You got the feeling that it was air that had seen life. You couldn't help noting with every breath that thousands of other people were very close to you and nearly all of them had armpits.

The stallholder regarded Mort critically, noting the pale face, well-cut clothes and strange presence, a sort of coiled spring effect.

'Look, I'll be frank,' he said. 'I could point you in the direction of a great brothel.'

'I've already had lunch,' said Mort, vaguely. 'But you can tell me if we're anywhere near, I think it's called Sto Lat?'

'About twenty miles Hubwards, but there's nothing there for a young man of your kidney,' said the trader hurriedly. 'I know, you're out by yourself, you want new experiences, you want excitement, romance —'

Mort, meanwhile, had opened the bag Death had given him. It was full of small gold coins, about the size of sequins.

An image formed again in his mind, of a pale young face under a head of red hair who had somehow known he was there. The unfocused feelings that had haunted his mind for the last few days suddenly sharpened to a point.

'I want,' he said firmly, 'a very fast horse.'

Five minutes later, Mort was lost.

This part of Ankh-Morpork was known as The Shades, an inner-city area sorely in need either of governmental help or, for preference, a flamethrower. It couldn't be called squalid because that would be stretching the word to breaking point. It was beyond squalor and out the other side, where by a sort of Einsteinian reversal it achieved a magnificent horribleness that it wore like an architectural award. It was noisy and sultry and smelled like a cowshed floor.

It didn't so much have a neighbourhood as an ecology, like a great land-based coral reef. There were the humans, all right, humanoid equivalents of lobsters, squid, shrimps and so on. And sharks.

Mort wandered hopelessly along the winding streets. Anyone hovering at rooftop height would have noticed a certain pattern in the crowds behind him, suggesting a number of men converging nonchalantly on a target, and would rightly have concluded that Mort and his gold had about the same life expectancy as a three-legged hedgehog on a six-lane motorway.

It is probably already apparent that The Shades was not the sort of place to have inhabitants. It had denizens. Periodically Mort would try to engage one in conversation, to find the way to a good horse dealer. The denizen would usually mutter something and hurry away, since anyone wishing to live in The Shades for longer than maybe three hours developed very specialised senses indeed and would no more hang around near Mort than a peasant would stand near a tall tree in thundery weather.

And so Mort came at last to the river Ankh, greatest of rivers. Even before it entered the city it was slow and heavy with the silt of the plains, and by the time it got to The Shades even an agnostic could have walked across it. It was hard to drown in the Ankh, but easy to suffocate.

Mort looked at the surface doubtfully. It seemed to be moving. There were bubbles in it. It had to be water.

He sighed, and turned away.

Three men had appeared behind him, as though extruded from the stonework. They had the heavy, stolid look of those thugs whose appearance in any narrative means that it's time for the hero to be menaced a bit, although not too much, because it's also obvious that they're going to be horribly surprised.

They were leering. They were good at it.

One of them had drawn a knife, which he waved in little circles in the air. He advanced slowly towards Mort, while the other two hung back to provide immoral support.