Witches Abroad (Discworld 12)

It was certainly the cleanest place they'd ever seen. Even the cobblestones had a polished look.

'You could eat your tea off the street,' said Nanny, as they strolled along.

'Yes, but you'd eat your tea off the street anyway,' said Granny.

'I wouldn't eat all of it. Even the gutters are scrubbed. Not a Ronald* in sight, look.'

'Gytha!'

* Ronald the Third of Lancre, believed to be an extremely unpleasant monarch, was remembered by posterity only in this obscure bit of rhyming slang.

'Well, you said that in Ankh-Morpork - '

'This is somewhere else!'

'It's so spotless,' said Magrat. 'Makes you wish you'd cleaned your sandals.'

'Yeah.' Nanny Ogg squinted along the street. 'Makes you wish you were a better person, really.'

'Why are you two whispering?' said Granny.

She followed their gaze. There was a guard standing on the street corner. When he saw them looking at him he touched his helmet and gave them a brief smile.

'Even the guards are polite,' said Magrat.

'And there's so many of them, too,' said Granny.

'Amazing, really, needing all these guards in a city where people are so clean and quiet,' said Magrat.

roomsticks drifted through the afternoon air.

For once, the witches weren't arguing.

The dwarfs had been a taste of home. It would have done anyone's heart good to see the way they just sat and stared at the dwarf bread, as if consuming it with their eyes, which was the best way to consume dwarf bread. Whatever it was that had driven them to seek ruby-coloured boots seemed to wear off under its down-to-earth influence. As Granny said, you could look a long way before you found anything realer than dwarf bread.

Then she'd gone off alone to talk to the head dwarf.

She wouldn't tell the others what he'd told her, and they didn't feel bold enough to ask. Now she flew a little ahead of them.

Occasionally she'd mutter something like 'Godmothers!' or 'Practising!'

But even Magrat, who hadn't had as much experience, could feel Genua now, as a barometer feels the air pressure. In Genua, stories came to life. In Genua, someone set out to make dreams come true.

Remember some of your dreams?

Genua nestled on the delta of the Vieux river, which was the source of its wealth. And Genua was wealthy. Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn't be called piracy because it was done by the city government, and therefore sound economics and perfectly all right. And the swamps and lakes back in the delta provided the crawling, swimming and flying ingredients of a cuisine that would have been world famous if, as has already been indicated, people travelled very much.

Genua was rich, lazy and unthreatened, and had once spent quite a lot of time involved in that special kind of civic politics that comes naturally to some city states. For example, once it had been able to afford the largest branch of the Assassins' Guild outside Ankh-Morpork, and its members were so busy that you sometimes had to wait for months.*

But the Assassins had all left years ago. Some things sicken even jackals.

The city came as a shock. From a distance, it looked like a complicated white crystal growing out of the greens and browns of the swamp.

Closer to, it resolved into, firstly, an outer ring of smaller buildings, then an inner ring of large, impressive white houses and, finally, at the very centre, a palace. It was tall and pretty and multi-turreted, like a toy castle or some kind of confectionery extravaganza. Every slim tower looked designed to hold a captive princess.

Magrat shivered. But then she thought of the wand. A godmother had responsibilities.

'Reminds me of another one of them Black Aliss stories,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'I remember when she locked up that girl with the long pigtails in a tower just like one of them. Rumple-stiltzel or someone.'