Mort (Discworld 4)

'You're right. If I had my time all over again I wouldn't reincarnate. And just when I'm getting the hang of things, the lads come down from the temple looking for a boy conceived at the hour the old abbot died. Talk about unimaginative. Stop here a moment, please.'

Mort looked down.

'We're in mid-air,'he said doubtfully.

'I won't keep you a minute.' The abbot slid down from Binky's back, walked a few steps on thin air, and shouted.

It seemed to go on for a long time. Then the abbot climbed back again.

'You don't know how long I've been looking forward to that,' he said.

There was a village in a lower valley a few miles from the temple, which acted as a sort of service industry. From the air it was a random scattering of small but extremely well-soundproofed huts.

'Anywhere will do,' the abbot said. Mort left him standing a few feet above the snow at a point where the huts appeared to be thickest.

'Hope the next lifetime improves,' he said. The abbot shrugged.

'One can always hope,' he said. 'I get a nine-month break, anyway. The scenery isn't much, but at least it's in the warm.'

'Goodbye, then,' said Mort. 'I've got to rush.'

'Au revoir,' said the abbot, sadly, and turned away.

The fires of the Hub Lights were still casting their flickering illumination across the landscape. Mort sighed, and reached for the third glass.

The container was silver, decorated with small crowns. There was hardly any sand left.

Mort, feeling that the night had thrown everything at him and couldn't get any worse, turned it around carefully to get a glimpse of the name. . . .

Princess Keli awoke.

There had been a sound like someone making no noise at all. Forget peas and mattresses – sheer natural selection had established over the years that the royal families that survived longest were those whose members could distinguish an assassin in the dark by the noise he was clever enough not to make, because, in court circles, there was always someone ready to cut the heir with a knife.

She lay in bed, wondering what to do next. There was a dagger under her pillow. She started to slide one hand up the sheets, while peering around the room with half-closed eyes in search of unfamiliar shadows. She was well aware that if she indicated in any way that she was not asleep she would never wake up again.

Some light came into the room from the big window at the far end, but the suits of armour, tapestries and assorted paraphernalia that littered the room could have provided cover for an army.

The knife had dropped down behind the bedhead. She probably wouldn't have used it properly anyway.

Screaming for the guards, she decided, was not a good idea. If there was anyone in the room then the guards must have been overpowered, or at least stunned by a large sum of money.

ooked down, giggled, and changed the dress into something leaf-green and clingy.

'What do you think, Mort?' she said. Her voice had sounded cracked and quavery before. Now it suggested musk and maple syrup and other things that set Mort's adam's apple bobbing like a rubber ball on an elastic band.

'. . .' he managed, and gripped the scythe until his knuckles went white.

She walked towards him like a snake in a four-wheel drift.

'I didn't hear you,' she purred.

'V-v-very nice,' he said. 'Is that who you were?'

'It's who I've always been.'

'Oh.' Mort stared at his feet. 'I'm supposed to take you away,' he said.

'I know,' she said, 'but I'm going to stay.'