Pyramids (Discworld 7)

The chief sculptor and maker of mummy cases folded up his measure.

'You done a good job there, Master Dil,' he said.

Dil nodded. There was no false modesty between craftsmen. The sculptor gave him a nudge. 'What a team, eh?' he said. 'You pickle 'em, I crate 'em.'

Dil nodded, but rather more slowly. The sculptor looked down at the wax oval in his hands.

'Can't say I think much of the death mask, mind,' he said. Gern, who was working hard on the corner slab on one of the Queen's late cats, which he had been allowed to do all by himself, looked up in horror.

'I done it very careful,' he said sulkily.

'That's the whole point,' said the sculptor.

'I know,' said Dil sadly, 'it's the nose, isn't it.'

'It was more the chin.'

'And the chin.'

'Yes.'

'Yes.'

They looked in gloomy silence at the waxen visage of the pharaoh. So did the pharaoh.

'Nothing wrong with my chin.'

'You could put a beard on it,' said Dil eventually. 'It'd cover a lot of it, would a beard.'

'There's still the nose.'

'You could take half an inch off that. And do something with the cheekbones.'

'Yes.'

'Yes.'

Gern was horrified. 'That's the face of our late king you're talking about,' he said. 'You can't do that sort of thing! Anyway, people would notice.' He hesitated. 'Wouldn't they?'

The two craftsmen eyed one another.

'Gern,' said Dil patiently, 'certainly they'll notice. But they won't say anything. They expect us to, er, improve matters.'

'After all,' said the chief sculptor cheerfully, 'you don't think they're going to step up and say “It's all wrong, he really had a face like a short-sighted chicken”, do you?'

'Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed, I must say.' The pharaoh went and sat by the cat. It seemed that people only had respect for the dead when they thought the dead were listening.

'I suppose,' said the apprentice, with some uncertainty, 'he did look a bit ugly compared to the frescoes.'

'That's the point, isn't it,' said Dil meaningfully. Gern's big honest spotty face changed slowly, like a cratered landscape with clouds passing across it. It was dawning on him that this came under the heading of initiation into ancient craft secrets.

'You mean even the painters change the-' he began.

Dil frowned at him.

'We don't talk about it,' he said.

Gern tried to force his features into an expression of worthy seriousness.