Unseen Academicals (Discworld 37)

The weaselly man removed a cigarette end from his mouth. ' 'orse frowed a shoe.'

'Well? They've got a smith 'ere, ain't they? Speed the mails and all that.'

'He's not speedin' nuffink on account of him just laminating his hand to the anvil,' said the man.

'There'll be the devil to pay if the Flyer don't go,' said the driver. 'That's post, that is. You should be able to set your watch by the Flyer.'

Nutt stood up. 'I could certainly re-shoe a horse for you, sir,' he said, picking up his wooden toolbox. 'Perhaps you had better go and tell someone.'

The man sidled off and the bus came to rest in the big yard, where a rather better dressed man came hurrying up. 'One of you a smith?' he enquired, looking directly at Glenda.

'Me,' said Nutt.

The man stared. 'You don't look much like a smith, sir.'

'Contrary to popular belief, most smiths are on the wiry side rather than bulky. It's all a matter of sinews rather than muscle.'

'And you know your way around an anvil, do you?'

'You would be amazed, sir.'

'There's shoes in the smithy,' said the man. 'You'll have to work one to size.'

'I know how to do that,' said Nutt. 'Mister Trev, I would be glad if you would come and help me with the bellows.'

The inn was huge and crowded, because as with coaching inns everywhere its day lasted for twenty-four hours and not a moment less. There were no meal times, as such. Hot food for those who could afford it was available all the time and cold cuts of meat were on a large trestle in the main room. People arrived, were emptied and refilled in the speediest time possible and sent on their way again because the space was needed for the next arrivals. There never seemed to be a moment without the jangle of harnesses. Glenda found a quiet corner. 'I tell you what,' she said to Juliet, 'go and fetch some sandwiches for the lads.'

'Fancy Mister Nutt being a blacksmith,' said Juliet.

'He's a man of many parts,' said Glenda.

Juliet's brow wrinkled. ''ow many parts?'

'It's just a figure of speech, Juliet. Off you go now.' She needed time to think. Those strange flying women. Mister Nutt. It was all a lot to take. You start the day and it's just another day and here you are, having mercifully not ended up as a highwayman, sitting in another city with nothing more than the clothes you're standing up in, not knowing what is going to happen next.

Which, in a way, was exciting. She had to analyse that feeling for several moments because excitement was not a regular feature of her life. Pies, on the whole, do not excite. She got up and wandered unheeded through the crowds, with the vague idea of seeing what the kitchens were like, but found her path blocked by someone whose sweating face, flustered air and rotund body suggested he was the innkeeper. 'If you could just wait a moment, ma'am,' he said to her and then addressed a woman who was emerging from what looked like a private dining room. 'So nice to see you again, your ladyship,' he said, bobbing up and down a little. 'It's always an honour to have you grace our humble establishment.'

Ladyship.

Glenda looked up at the woman who was everything she had pictured when Nutt had first talked about her. Tall, thin, dark, forbidding, to be feared. Her expression was stern and she said, in what to Glenda were posh tones, 'Far too noisy in here.'

'But the beef was superb,' said another voice and Glenda realized that Ladyship had almost eclipsed a smaller woman, quite pleasant, not particularly tall and with a slightly fussy air about her.

'Are you Lady Margolotta?' said Glenda.

The tall lady gave her a look of brief disdain and swept on towards the main doors, but her companion stopped and said, 'Do you have business with her ladyship?'

'Is she coming to Ankh-Morpork?' Glenda asked. 'Everybody knows she's Lord Vetinari's squeeze.' She felt instantly embarrassed as she said the word; it conjured up images that simply could not fit into the available space in her brain.

'Really?' said the woman. 'They are certainly very close friends.'

'Well, I want to talk to her about Mister Nutt,' said Glenda.

The woman gave her a worried look and pulled her over to an empty bench. 'There has been a problem?' she said, sitting down and patting the wood beside her.

'She told him he was worthless,' said Glenda. 'And sometimes I think all he worries about is being worthy.'

'Are you worthy?' said the woman.