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Chapter Text

That … that chit! That little baggage!

His training did not allow for any words that were a single whit less polite. That girl thought she'd beaten him! Him of all people! Well, yes, she'd killed him, that was incontrovertible fact, but that didn't mean she'd won.

Jonathan Teatime was seated, tailor-style, beside a blissed-out golem somewhere between This World and The Next. The surroundings were flat gray, and he was sitting on the assumption of down, because there was no visible distinction between ground, sky, and anything else.  There was the impression of sand, somehow. His fists were tucked into the valley made of his crossed ankles, and his shoulders were up 'round his ears, pushing his yellow curls out of order. Nobody could sulk like a disappointed Teatime, and he was really putting his mind to it.

He'd only been doing his job, you see. Sort of. Extra-curricular stuff, if you wanted to be particular about it, since he had technically fulfilled the contract and rid the world of the Hogfather. The entity that went by that title had been what could be called, for an anthropomorphic personification, eliminated; it wasn't Teatime's fault that the teeth and spell that had been used to achieve this effect were scattered afterward. He certainly hadn't thrown himself over the railing of a balcony several hundred feet up. That was Susan's fault.

Teatime had only wanted to test a hypothesis: Death could die, couldn't he? Or could he? Was there a soul there for collection, and if so, who would collect it? Was nobody interested in the deeper philosophical questions (apart from that swotty wizard with the spectacles, who clearly was only interested in the questions themselves rather than field research)?

The point was that Susan didn't get it. That's what made the whole situation insufferable to Teatime. She was not superior to him and hadn't earned her victory. She was alive not because she'd killed him; she was alive because Teatime had chosen not to inhume her. He would have to pull off both boots to count on the decently countable parts of his body to enumerate how many opportunities he had had – and had ignored – to eliminate her. And unless he could figure out a way to get back on the Disc, she would never know, and she'd wander around all smug and safe and boring and bored. Teatime could think of no worse fate, especially for someone with such potential to be fascinating.

Well. He'd refused to go with Death to the Elsewhere that waited for mortal souls. Teatime had seen this golem, which had refused to respond to him, no matter what threats he'd made, and had realized there was at least one other option to allowing the Reaper to shuffle him along. Teatime was fairly certain he'd disgruntled Death, and if he, Teatime, couldn't kill him, Death, then at least Teatime could distinguish him-, Teatime, -self in other ways.

And since he'd set the precedent of tossing spanners into the post-mortem works, he saw no reason not to push onward and see what else he could accomplish.

Teatime blinked down at the way the veins in the back of his hands suddenly threw sharp shadows. He frowned, straightening and then getting inhumanly quickly to his feet.

Where the blazes was that light coming from? And why was it getting brighter? And why was it blue?

He lifted one hand to shield his eyes.

Then he grinned.

Chapter Text

People of the Disc are familiar with Igors these days. They had come out in ones and twos from their great Clan in Uberwald early on, but as internal pressures (like mad werewolf overlords) and external opportunities (Ankh-Morpork somehow lured millions to its teeming, steaming avenues. Accidents happen. So do Assassins. Body parts were just about everywhere.) arose, the trickle of migrating Igors became a steady flow. This had caused non-Uberwaldians some concern for many years, but a person tends to change his mind when his heart's beating robustly not all that long after it had just stopped from fright at seeing a greenish little man sewn together from several different body parts.

Most are helpful little meddling beggars, weird as all hell but decent enough overall. When someone was injured, an Igor would put him back together unless there was something horrendously wrong or if the patient subscribed to one of the more finicky religions. When that person couldn't be patched up, an Igor came to claim parts that could be passed on to someone who had a better chance of survival. It was a matter of fairness, of justice, of share-and-share-alike. If you refused, however, no Igor would help you or your family or, in the case of the more traditional Igors, your town until the debt was paid with a proper donation.

Unfortunately, some Igors latch on to some very bad sorts indeed – they do so like being helpful – and the rare one is a bad egg all his own. He has got Ideas and a Sense of Enterprise, and one of these Igors shows up every century or so and makes things very interesting for a specific percentage of the population (That percentage usually includes the brains and entrails of the population in question.). The other Igors tend to weed these fellows out; they make a bad name for Igors everywhere, and that makes it hard to get jobs in Ankh-Morpork.

Humans tended to be surprised to find that Igors had inviolable boundaries, but such existed. For instance, Igors were not to harvest from sapient beings willy-nilly; one of the Clan couldn't just walk up to a fellow, say, "Nithe weather, ithn't it, thir?" and lop off his ear. Permission was necessary, from the subject prior to death or from the family immediately afterward.

Another restriction governed pay for the Clan's skills. Back in Uberwald, the grateful patients were supposed to demonstrate their gratitude by paying back the favor upon their decease; it was considered polite, but not strictly necessary, to offer the attending Igor some food like bread or a particularly lively coney that could stand some experimentation before becoming hasenpfeffer. Now that more Igors had gone abroad and had to pay rent, they charged close-to-market prices for healing services, or they went into good, old-fashioned service with any Master who would have them.

Buying body parts was particularly frowned upon. It was not unknown, especially when demand outstripped the supply of dying bastards who refused to be harvested. Sometimes, an Igor had to bend the rules a bit; this tended to involve paying a modest commission to a student Assassin, but it didn't do to let one's friends know that one had taken this route. Killing in cold blood was not approved of, but the Clan dealt internally with that if they could; when they couldn't, the killer faced civil justice, like everyone else. The truly stupid who killed in Ankh-Morpork faced Commander Vimes. The Clan pitied such a one but were thrilled to have those genes scooped from the pool.

Only one thing was outright forbidden: To teach the Clan's secrets to one who is not of the Clan. Gods help the Igor who transgressed so.

"I finally had to throw the thwitch on Grandfather," one Igor said as he entered his crypt in Ankh-Morpork. It was small, just the basement level of a two-story, working-class sort of place, but he owned it outright. He was rather proud of it. Just inside the door, he shook the rain from a broad-brimmed oiled leather hat. He groaned when he leaned over to pick up the finger, coil of gold wire, and squishy thing that fell to the floor when he did so.

"Oh, that'th a shame," a voice said from beside a clicking, whirring monstrosity of brass plate, copper wires, and rubber tubes.

There was a grunt, and the crypt went dark, leaving only crackling trails of light to show Igor where he was stepping. Another grunt preceded the return of proper light, and a smell issued from a metal dome on the slab in the center of the room. Smoke wisped up around two wires attached to a pair of complicated knobs on the sides of the dome.

"But cheer up. Here'th dinner done," his wife Igorina said, patting him on the shoulder with the hand he'd given her just last month. "Should thtill be twitching if you belly up to the thlab quickly."

He kissed her, minding the seam between cheek and ear – she was ticklish along the old stitches. "You alwayth know what cheerth me up, love. And I need it after thith latht row with Grandfather. He wath alwayth a bit independent, you know." He said the word as if someone would whap him with a rolled-up newspaper for saying it. "But he wath really preththing me to leave the Marthter and thart up my own thpare partth shop!"

"Well, Igor ith doing a brithk buthinethth across from the Tanty," Igorina reminded him. "The Clan'th tho conthentrated here that we have to branch out a bit, surely."

Approaching the slab with a sidling shuffle, just as his father Igor had taught him to do ages ago, Igor frowned and answered, "Don't tell me you're getting modern, darling. Thervithe ith in our boneth – goeth back for generationth! Bethideth, you don't hear the thort of thingth Grandfather getth to talking about. Damn near blathphemy!"

Curiously, Igorina asked, "What kind of thingth?" He'd never elaborated before.

"Paying for partth! Getting an aththithtant! An Igor hiring help! I athk you!" Igor mounted a stool and then flapped his hands up in the air. "Anyroad, I couldn't bear it, tho I told him I'd dump hith head out of the jar and how would he like that, eh? He thaid, 'I'd like to see you try it, you incompetent! You'd miss and I'd end up attached to you!'" Igor thumped the slab, causing whatever was under the dome to skitter in a panic against the platter beneath it. "Without the lithp, even! He knowth how that getth up my nothe!"

Igorina casually moved a wristwatch with wires and probes on both ends of it from the slab to the console that doubled as her stove, saying, "There, there, dear. It'th over with now, tho don't get exthited. We don't have any thpare heartth around jutht now." Just as casually, she tossed a towel over little mechanical mess. "Now eat up. There'th plenty of children in Muntab who've not theen a combination platter like thith before and would have been happy to have it!"

Chapter Text

It had been building up in Susan for months now, this feeling. She dreaded giving it a name, because that meant that it existed, and then she'd have to do something about it. That was how these things worked. Denial only worked for so long.

The summer had come and passed, and she was anticipating the Hogswatch holiday break more than ever. She'd not looked forward to Hogswatch for nearly five years, and she had reason for that, but this year, the holiday was beckoning her from the distance and was doing so tauntingly. She viewed her own anticipation with skepticism. On the one hand, as a teacher of small children, it was quite normal to welcome the holidays; on the other, fielding a number of near-death experiences while saving the world was exciting enough that she could label it 'traumatizing', and therefore, being wary of the anniversary was normal, too. However, time had dulled the emotions, if not the memories, and Susan was looking forward to some variety in her schedule

Her students, by this time, were finally trained to the behavior she expected in her classroom, and they were attentive and not unduly disruptive on their field trips. Considering the locations and times the granddaughter of Death could take them to, the children had had to be pretty creative to be unduly disruptive. Early on, they'd managed it, somehow, but Susan had nipped that all in the bud. Even the matriculation of the 10-year-old Gawain Gaiter and his new 10-year-old attitude had been cleared up quickly.

Weekly, Susan took tea with her grandfather, who was PLEASED TO SEE HER AT ANY TIME but who frequently had to RUN. DUTY CALLED. She'd finally bullied Albert into merely cutting up the fruit she brought with her to tea, rather than frying it. Deep-fried strawberries had quite crossed the line in Susan's opinion, but that had been two years ago.

And it had been nearly half a year since she'd last sat down to tea with Lobsang, and longer still since he had left a note dated three weeks from now. Quite longer ago, she had shared some… time with him, which involved somewhat adolescent physical activities, but those were things of memory now. With a sigh that most certainly was not disappointed, nor yet even tinged with a bit of Well, of course, what did you expect?, Susan had resigned even that small excitement in her life.

Finally, one crisp, late autumn day, after removing her greatcoat and muff and hanging them on the coat tree in her small flat not far from Unseen University, Susan fixed herself with a stern expression in the looking glass and announced, "I am bored."

There. It was said.

Her imagination, permitted just a little bit of fancy for a moment, rolled a pair of dice and chucked them against a wall. Susan glanced left and right, feeling her shoulders tense minutely. The clock on the mantelpiece kept ticking its even tocks. The setting sun streaming light into her living room kept shining. The wind that was making the street sign across the way wobble maintained its steady fifteen miles an hour.

Then she rolled her eyes and gusted a sigh and started for her galley-style kitchen. She was in a cross mood all night, one that neither bath nor a handful of chocolates could fix. But worst of all, she couldn't tell if she was cross at herself for complaining about a life that was at long last normal. Or for tempting Fate. Or for feeling vaguely cheated by a Fate that resisted temptation.

The mood kept her up half the night, and she woke up with a screaming headache the next day. And she was grateful for the change.

Chapter Text

Death was not smug, per se, when he was right about something. For one, he was usually right about most things that didn't involve being human; for another, the closest he could come to smug was inevitable. And that just didn't have the same sneer to it.

But Susan would rather start a traveling variety show with chimney sweeps than admit to her grandfather that the normal life she'd fought so hard for had grown dull. Normal was, of course, at times, boring. Sometimes, it could even reach stultifying. Susan read the newspapers and had read autobiographies in Death's domain, so she had a good intellectual understanding that normal had the tendency to be repetitive and tedious. The fact that she had as much practical understanding of normal as Death had of being human was past her ability to admit at present.

So, instead, she made a point of mentioning a few weeks later, while taking tea with her grandfather, how well things were going.

"Lady Sybil managed to pin down Commander Vimes long enough for them to formally interview me," she was saying over a small plateful of pecans; she'd given a bag of them to Albert to fry as he liked just as long as he left her portion alone. "Young Sam is to start coming in half-days to 'see if he'll get overexcited'. With parents like that, it would require an entire army of elves dismantling the city to make him blink. His age is immaterial."

I SEE.

"The commander was even there long enough to start interrogating me about my background."

AND? He perked up.

She sighed. Death was always a little put out at her insistence on usually excluding him from the official family tree. She could see his point, but he couldn't see hers: Normal people think having Death The End No Really This Is It I'm Serious Just Get In The Casket as a forebear is a bit unnerving and makes running a small educational business pretty difficult, even in Ankh-Morpork.

"A clerk arrived from Lord Vetinari just then," she answered, as relieved to dodge the question now as she was at the time of the interruption. "Evidently, somebody's gone and murdered a number of Igors. Lady Margolotta sent a representative in from Uberwald to liaise with the Watch, it seems."

AH. SO THAT'S WHY THERE HAS BEEN A SLIGHT UPTICK OF IGORS. YOU KNOW HOW LONG THEY MANAGE TO KEEP GOING. THEY ARE ALL SO UPSET WHEN I ARRIVE THAT I CAN HARDLY MUDDLE THROUGH THE LISPS. EVEN THEN, IT IS MOSTLY OUTRAGE AND REQUESTS TO PUT ME ON THE SLAB.

And since these sorts of tangents were the norm in their conversations, Susan let this pass with a noncommittal hum.

I CANNOT REALLY COMMENT ON THE SURROUNDINGS WHEN I'VE COLLECTED THEM, THOUGH. IT'S AGAINST THE RULES; I'M JUST THERE FOR THE SPIRITS. BESIDES, IGORS ARE A BIT DIFFICULT. THERE ARE SO MANY BITS AROUND THAT ARE TECHNICALLY STILL ALIVE THAT I WOULD HAVE TO TAKE SPECIAL CARE TO INVESTIGATE. IF SOMETHING TRULY OUTSTANDING COMES UP, HOWEVER, I SHALL PASS IT ALONG.

Susan felt her brows swing low into a glower. Forcing them back into a more neutral area, she said over her teacup, carefully swaddling the words in nonchalance, "No one's asking you to."

I'M DISTINCTLY REMEMBERING YOUR COMPLAINING THAT I HAVEN'T DRAGGED YOU INTO ANOTHER ADVENTURE.

"I've done nothing of the sort!"

One long, naked phalanx bone reached up to tap at Death's skull; it knocked a hollow thok from the frontal plate. The sound echoed around the miles of parlour for much longer than it should have.

Well, hard to argue with the "remembering everything no matter when" talent. She'd got it herself, after all.

Very carefully, Susan controlled the urge to huff. "Fine. No adventures recently. But we are overdue. We started with a solid two- or three-year pattern. It's been five. I'm getting nervous, all right?"

Death glanced down at the desk with that attitude he got when he was trying to solve the problem that was Human. An air of bewilderment and, when it involved Susan, an eagerness to please surrounded him; the effort was almost tangible, and Susan's hand shifted forward an inch, as though to try to touch it.

I MAY BE ABLE TO THINK OF SOMETHING.

"No! No, don't trouble yourself. Really!" Susan stood from her chair almost quickly enough to topple it. Only a well-timed kick allowed her to hook one of the legs with her boot; she dragged the chair back toward the table and started for the door with as few steps in between as possible. "I'm perfectly content as I am!" she insisted over her shoulder. "I'm certain that the little adventures in life will present themselves in due time. No need to manufacture them. Thank you for the thought."

Susan paused briefly in her stride when she realized that that last statement was sincere. She was grateful. And though she would take the time later to allow that to worry her, Susan felt her stance and expression soften. It was rather… sweet, she supposed.

As she reached the coat tree at one side of the parlour door, Susan turned. Death had risen and was following her at a distance of some yards. When he reached her, he took her coat and held it expectantly by the collar. Susan turned and pushed her arms into the sleeves.

"Grandfather."

YES, SUSAN?

"You're trying to spoil me – give me what I want."

YES.

"That's very grandfatherly of you."

THEN I'M DOING IT RIGHT? The hope in his voice was a little pathetic and even a tiny bit endearing.

She turned and answered, "As right as we can be, considering circumstances."

Death, lacking flesh to smile – he was always grinning – or terrible posture to suddenly straighten with pride, still managed to perk up a bit. Then he lifted a hand to his skull, tapping the chin thoughtfully. I SUPPOSE THAT IF COMMANDER VIMES SPEAKS WITH YOU AGAIN, HE WILL BRING UP YOUR FAMILY LINES AND HISTORY AGAIN.

"Probably." Unsure where this was going, and used to non-sequiturs, Susan waited.

PERHAPS YOU SHOULD TELL HIM THE TRUTH.

"Grandfather. I'm trying to be normal, remember? Having the Commander of the City Watch, and a member of the peerage to boot, know that I'm Death's granddaughter is not normal." All of Susan's unfamiliarly warm, fuzzy feelings evaporated like dew under a nuclear bomb.

THIS IS SAMUEL VIMES WE SPEAK OF, Death reminded her, wagging a finger in admonishment. DO YOU THINK HE WILL REST WHEN THERE IS A MYSTERY ABOUT THE WOMAN WHO IS TO TEACH HIS SON? IS IT NOT BETTER FOR HIM TO HEAR IT FROM YOU THAN FROM A WIZARD OR ANOTHER CHILD?

And damned if he wasn't right. Or at least right enough to make Susan worry.

And Death saw that Susan had taken his point. I COULD OFFER EVIDENCE, IF IT SUITS YOU TO PURSUE A MYSTERY ABOUT DEAD IGORS. I HAVE WALKED BESIDE COMMANDER VIMES MANY TIMES BEFORE. TALKING WITH HIM, RATHER THAN AT HIM, SHOULD PROVE INTERESTING.

"No." Huffing a short sigh, Susan closed her eyes and shook her head. Better end this before it could begin. "No, Grandfather. Thank you. Let the insanity find me on its own, if it must."

ARE YOU SURE?

"I don't want you to go looking for it. I certainly won't."

Chapter Text

He found himself standing on Misbegot Bridge, blinking away afterimages of an oblong of light so bright it went past octarine into the blue of infinity and pure nothing. The first thing he did was move over next to some ragged fellow and surreptitiously knife him. Just to make sure his technique hadn't atrophied.

"Milennium hand and shrimp! Buggrem, the lot," muttered the man, who was preceded by a truly hideous mutt on a string and followed by a scent that had upgraded into scentience. It was only because Teatime was watching carefully that could he see the beggar shiver and pass a hand over the side that had been stabbed.

"That usually works," he said, inspecting his dagger, as if it were at fault. "Or at least gets a bigger reaction." He turned the knife this way and that; it caught the sunlight that made it through the ever-present Morporkian fog as it always had (that is to say, dimly and only if you were looking closely). Well, almost. Teatime usually couldn't see the ground through the blade.

From ankle height, a voice scoffed, "Yes, well, you're a ghost, ain't you? And you just tried to off one of the Canting Crew, wearin' the Assassin's black. 'Snot like anyone's gonna stop you, izzit?" The intended subject of the first experiment of Teatime's afterafterlife had stopped and was scratching himself in a personal way. The man's dog was glaring up at Teatime through mucus-rimmed sort-of-brown eyes.

Teatime went from standing to crouching without much in the way of intervening movement. His blade was, only at the atomic level, not touching the dog's throat. "Interesting," he chirped. "I usually get on well with animals. I'd like that to continue to be the case. I should hate to do anything… unpleasant."

The dog's slightly cross-eyed expression of exasperation sharpened into disgust. "You ain't too bright, are you?"

"We don't seem to be hitting it off, do we?" Teatime smiled a trifle sadly. He flicked the dagger forward and out in an arc and frowned when it went through the dog's throat and left unmarred… well, intact… well, not-cut skin in its wake.

"Oi! That's cold!" The dog snapped its teeth in Teatime's direction. It began walking again, towing the muttering beggar behind him. "If yer too damn thick to get that yer a bloody ghost," it growled, "You should at least remember that while the Watch don't much mind Assassins killin'people, people mind people tryin' to kill animals."

Teatime glanced around, and a few bystanders were eyeballing him. Most had the semi-expectant look of an Ankh-Morporkian waiting to see what happened next, but one or two had the beginnings of horror and outrage on their faces.

So he was back, but he was a ghost. This development fitted itself into his psyche with no trouble. And though Teatime wasn't bothered by the threat of a Watchman who minded ghosts trying to kill dogs, he hadn't taken into account ghostliness when he'd made up plans for his return to Ankh-Morpork. It was time to think. So he crossed the entire bridge in two steps, aiming for his favorite thinking spot in the city.

It had taken another week for Commander Vimes to catch up with her, and considering their respective schedules, Susan supposed that was enough of a miracle to agree to talk with him. She hadn't even had to do her trick of making him not notice her; they'd crossed paths once in Sator Square, and they'd nodded and kept going. Susan had taken the intervening time to consider what she would allow him to know and how much she'd in turn relate to her grandfather.

Susan passed him a small plate of plain biscuits, which went well with the citrusy tea she'd prepared. They'd exchanged brief, polite words as the tea had steeped; they'd touched on Lady Sybil, Young Sam, the children in her classes and the weather. Now they were in the awkward pause between small talk and business.

"Now that that's done, perhaps you'd like to ask your question, sir," she suggested, as one of Nature's bullies to another.

"You're keeping something back from me, and I want to know what it is, Miss Susan."

They'd hammered that out at the first interview. Each of them despised people Your-Gracing them and had made clear what was the proper mode of address. They may have been natural bullies, but by gods, they had principles.

Bluntness also being a quality they both preferred, Susan answered, "I'm not entirely human."

Vimes gave her a flat look. "Why haven't you signed up for the Watch?"

"Sorry?"

Vimes' flat look softened to one of exasperation. "I practically run a halfway house for new species in this city. It follows I should expect hybrids next."

"Lord Vetinari's grand plan, then."

All she got in response was an affirmative grunt and the most expressively rolled eyes she'd ever witnessed.

"To answer your question, I don't like my work following me home, and I try to avoid Dea- I avoid getting shot." Vimes' expression softened minutely further into curiosity at her hasty correction. She took a sip of tea just to justify the pause in conversation; the correction had been habitual, and she knew she'd have to have it out, anyway.

"To answer your central question, I am part Death."

The cup in Vimes' hand paused halfway up to his mouth as he considered and discarded a number of responses. Finally, he set the cup down and asked, "Which part?"

She leveled a schoolmarm's reproving glare at him, and Vimes looked rather like he wanted to squirm. "Are jokes necessary, Commander Vimes?" she asked. "My heritage has been a bit of a burden to me, and I'll thank you not to make light of it. I have spent a considerable amount of money to get Twurp's Peerage to remove some of the information on my family from their pages. I am only giving you this information because I respect you and know that you would be displeased to find about it by the longer route of police work; your displeasure has a habit of becoming high-profile incidents. I am saving us both much inconvenience, sir, so I must insist that you be serious."

"Miss Susan," Vimes said a trifle repressively, "The only other responses I had lined up were 'What?' and 'Pull the other one; it's got bells on.' I've heard some whoppers – and believe me, they've done some considerable whopping – but this takes it a bit far."

She frowned at him.

Then she disappeared.

Vimes, by now accustomed to weird things, blinked at the unexpected burning that started in his eyes as he stared at an empty chair. Only instinct – and a recent past full of the odd, occult, inhuman, and just plain weird – kept Vimes calm and attentive. He was in a woman's flat, but he suddenly wondered why, and faced with uncertainty, Vimes tried to collect information. He couldn't trust his suddenly malfunctioning eyes, so he focused on his hearing; if the flat's occupant were near, he'd hear it. In fact, he was aware of the faint in-out of breathing across from him. And even though he was unsure why he was rubbing at his eyes and listening to a chair breathe, Vimes was certain it was important.

So, confused and angry at being confused, Commander Vimes struck out at the chair the same way he would strike out in the pitch black of an Ankh-Morpork night at a thicker-than-usual shadow.

His hand closed on the suddenly-visible shoulder of Susan Sto-Helit, who was sitting just as she had been. She glanced down at his hand, and he removed it.

Feeling the need to assert himself, Vimes growled, "Whatever that was, don't do it again."

"I'm actually quite impressed," Susan replied, flicking at the wrinkles he'd pressed into her sleeve. "It usually requires a wizard's talents and a great deal of stubbornness even to remember that anyone was there."

"Any other unsettling talents I should worry about?"

"Walking through walls, manipulation of time, the ability to locate individuals anywhere on the Disc." And she said all this with a nonchalance that made Vimes uncomfortable. That, in turn, made her a little uncomfortable, too, he could tell, and he couldn't blame her. Vanishing could make a person a little shaky, Vimes thought.

"And this 'heritage has been a bit of a burden'," he quoted. "Had some problems of late, then, I suppose? Death-defying – excuse me, self-defying adventures? Dangerous quests?"

"Yes."

"And this is supposed to convince me to enroll my son in your school?"

Susan cocked an eyebrow that failed to be as effective as Vetinari's only by lacking forty years of practice. "No. I'm presenting my history to keep you from wasting your time and mine by ferreting it out in classic Watch fashion. That's it." She sighed and passed a hand over her eyes. "Look, sir, my grandfather is Death. The Death. He sometimes wanders off; sometimes, he uses me to fix problems because he isn't allowed to do anything about them himself. It's been years since he's done either, and when I confronted him about it last week, he said he foresaw nothing of the kind."

"Death."

"Yes. He says he's walked beside you many times, and, knowing some of your adventures, sir, I believe him. Have you never managed to see him?"

Vimes felt his face take on a wooden aspect, the kind only used when faced with an interrogating Vetinari or crowds that needed addressing by a man in a shiny breastplate. "No," he replied.

"Really? HE TALKS LIKE THIS, if that helps any."

Vimes jumped and actually went a bit pale. "That was –"

"Yes."

A brief pause preceded the hoarse command, "Please never do that again, either, Miss Susan."

"I'll try not to." And she sounded like she meant it.

There was a shadow near an exhaust pipe on the High Energy Magic Building on the campus of Unseen University. There was a shade in that shadow, and he was muttering to himself in a high, odd tenor. He occupied himself thusly for a good half-hour and seemed to cover quite a lot of mental ground.

With a decisive nod and sudden expression of purpose, the ghost of Jonathan Teatime stepped out onto the thin air and was suddenly on the ground and moving fast.

From the shadow near the exhaust pipe, another shadow emerged. It wore a bowler hat. It more prosaically walked to the next shadow. Then it, too, was gone.

Chapter Text

Much later, after the pink haze and pinpoint focus had faded, Susan was able to piece the memory of that afternoon together and both question her sanity and goggle at a masterpiece of naked audacity. It would take years before remembering this day would result in anything less than a leap in blood pressure and a terrible headache; she would typically relieve herself by yelling.

Commander Vimes had listened politely to a digest version of her Hogswatchnight adventure of five years previous (She decided that the Commander of the City Watch did not need to know about Teatime's ultimate fate. How convenient it was that his penultimate fate had been falling three hundred feet into a pile of children's teeth in a realm well outside Vimes' jurisdiction.). Being Vimes, he'd been skeptical, but he hadn't outright called her a liar. And, because he was doing a background check on her and was neither obliged nor inclined to share his past with a twenty-three-year-old schoolmarm-duchess, Vimes refused to elaborate much on the warning, "I hope you aren't mixed up with any monks with brooms."

Primly, she'd answered, "I doubt anything I do outside Time would fall under your jurisdiction, Commander."

He'd glared the weary glare of a policeman faced with what could have been cheek if he could just prove it. "Miss Susan, I don't care when it happens, but if a crime happens in Ankh-Morpork, you may be sure it's in my jurisdiction."

It was at this point that a sociopathic blond ghost strode through her door – and it was more than disconcerting to see anyone but herself or Granddad using that trick – and complained, "You moved. Do you know how difficult it is to get directions from people who won't stop screaming? Especially after you threaten them with a dagger that can't actually hurt them?"

In the later recollections of this afternoon, Susan would marvel at the relative calmness of her response. She knew ghosts when she saw them, and, being who she was, had no reason to fear them. But she was mostly human, and this ghost had threatened her, tried to kill her, tried to kill her grandfather, had actually killed gods knew how many people, and was all around as mad as a box of spoons.

She could be forgiven, then, for going paler and suffering a sudden jump in heart rate before pointing at the door and ordering, "You turn right around and go back to where you came from this instant!"

Both Teatime's and Vimes' hindbrains heard the tones of a Teacher; neither could decide between standing to attention or falling into a sullen slump.

"But Susan," Teatime began, "I just –"

"No. You are dead." That's right. He was dead. Death had sent his spirit on and had taken the body somewhere. Wait. "Where's my grandfather?" All logic declared that Death could not be killed, but one must make allowances for emotions and how much faster they could go than logic.

The expression that accompanied this demand was close enough to a threat that Teatime went immediately from scolded schoolboy to top Assassin and was suddenly six inches away.

"Who knows? But I'm here with a purpose," he chirped. "I'm a restless spirit!"

Sam Vimes was a quick man; he'd had to be to survive nearly forty years in the Watch. But even his reflexes couldn't get him to his feet any earlier than this. In his best Commander voice, he snapped, "Step back from the lady. Now."

Without breaking eye contact with Susan, Teatime answered, "I'm not about to hurt Susan, sir. My purpose here is merely… educational."

"Educational," Susan repeated in tones that waved at incredulous as they swung 'round to meet mater-of-fact, which was approaching from the opposite direction at speed.

"Yes! There's something you have to know."

And because of his tone – and because it was a ghost who was saying it, and because it was this ghost – Susan and Vimes allowed the dramatic pause to happen.

"You didn't win."

To his manservant, Death said, THERE IS A DRAFT, AND I AM HAVING DIFFICULTY LOCATING IT.

"Haven't noticed a thing, Master," Albert answered over his shoulder. He was picking up after tea and heading for the doorway that led to the hall that in turn led to the kitchen. Countless miles separated each point; the human brain's tendency to ignore what it couldn't quite reach around edited out most of that distance in Albert's mind.

I MEAN IN THE LAND BETWEEN.

"You'll find it, Master. 'S not like you haven't the time for it." Albert's voice was growing faint on account of distance. Death followed him, catching up in no time.

He answered, I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO SEEK IT, ALBERT. I BELIEVE THIS … LEAK IS MOVING. OR ISN'T ALWAYS THERE. BETWEEN THE DUTY AND COLLECTING EVIDENCE ABOUT THE DEAD IGORS … He tapped a finger against his chin. I WONDER IF SUSAN WOULD LIKE TO LOCATE IT FOR ME. SHE WANTS AN ADVENTURE.

Since Albert was preceding Death into the kitchen, Death couldn't see that he rolled his eyes. He carefully edited his reply from acidic sarcasm to mere skepticism, drawling, "I dunno, Master. She might view finding a moving mouse hole a little demeaning, if you understand me, sir."

DEMEANING?

"Yes, well, she ain't a nipper any more. Hide-n-seek stops being fun at about twelve, I think."

WELL, NOTHING ELSE HAS COME UP. IF I CANNOT FIND SOMETHING TO OCCUPY HER, ADVENTURE WILL FIND SUSAN. AND SHE WILL BLAME IT ON ME.

"I –"

Teatime's smile widened to show off most of his teeth. "I can explain it, if you like."

"You –"

"– could have inhumed you no fewer than twenty-five times, and I chose not to."

To the side, Vimes was slowly, silently fuming himself into a fury. There were only two things keeping him from doing something angrily stupid: The conviction that he would learn something if he just let events unfold a bit more; and Susan's responses, which were surprised rather than frightened. And those responses were more hindered by the ghost's interruptions than by her being speechless.

"Look –"

Teatime leaned a couple of inches closer in his excitement. "I'm only dead because you were lucky!"

The grin on his face blurred when her hand went through it. He dodged backward just a microsecond too late; his gloating had cost him reaction time. Susan hissed at the contact and rubbed at the afflicted hand.

"Of course I was lucky, Teatime," Susan snapped, purposefully referring to the light meal at four o'clock. "There were exactly two places you could've gone when you raised that sword: Behind me or behind my grandfather. I picked one and was lucky." She leaned into his personal space, snapping, "What, exactly, is your point?"

"That was the point," he answered, sounding miffed. "And it's Teh-ah-tim-eh, remember, please."

Susan stiffened into her most duchessy hauteur, putting Vimes strongly in mind of an offended Sybil. "That was the point," she repeated. "So, 'restless ghost'. You're saying you have now fulfilled your purpose."

"I suppose so." He was still sullen.

"So now you can rest in peace, or whatever it is ghosts do." It wasn't a question.

"Hmm. No, I don't think so."

"Sorry?"

The grin reappeared, and the eyes sparkled, even the glass one, which Susan thought had no right to be in an incorporeal head. It, last time she'd seen it, had been helping Gawain collect all the other children's marbles. Teatime said, "I'm having too much fun! I'm not going back."

"Right, this is a bit much," Vimes interrupted. He finally shifted out of his statue-like stillness and crowded into Susan's and Teatime's already crowded collective personal space. "You've done the lines like proper stage players, thanks. What's all this, then? This is the Assassin? From the castle?"

Susan flicked a brief glance at the commander. "This," she said coldly, "is Teatime –"

" – Teh-ah-tim-eh –"

"And it looks like he's decided to haunt me."

Vimes was not asking why. It was clear why, as were certain details absent from the rather incredible story he'd been told. So he just offered, "Shall I go find a priest, then?"

"No," she answered. "I'll do one better. I'm going to take him to my grandfather."

Chapter Text

Vimes had left the pair of them quarreling. He was due at the Palace. Normally, he'd have waited until he had righted things, or at least had gotten them on the right track (and really, was there anything right about a dead madman doing his level best to make a sensible, if weird, noblewoman as crazy as he was?). But Susan had proven that Teatime could do no harm by hacking away at him with a fireplace poker until he'd finally lost patience with dodging and tried to hold Susan at knifepoint.

His form had been perfect and terrifyingly quick. Vimes did not mind admitting that he was quite unnerved by the sight of the Assassin trying to immobilize Susan by wrenching her arm up behind her. His fingers had gone through her forearm like light through water, and Susan had taken two brisk steps forward, sliding her neck right through the blade held against it. And although she grimaced at the discomfort this caused, Susan seemed to take some pleasure in taunting Teatime for forgetting he was a ghost.

Teatime had lit up at that and asked how Susan was going to "take" him to her grandfather. "If I can't touch you, you can't touch me," he'd pointed out. "That will make it difficult to sling me over a horse's back and drag me back to Death's domain. Won't it?"

Vimes, having lunged forward much too late to stop Teatime from grabbing Susan, stood awkwardly in the middle of their argument being quite ignored. Something compelled him to remain watching in frozen horror, rather like the one time Sybil had guilted him into seeing Nobby perform with the Ankh-Morpork Folk Dance and Song Society. Only this time, he didn't want to vomit.

"Then I will bring him to you," Susan had responded. "It doesn't matter who is the subject and who is the object."

Teatime had shrugged. "Then I'll come back. What I've done once I can do again."

That's when the two of them had initiated several rounds of "Not likely" – "Then I'll just find another way" – "Then I'll send you back again" – "Really? How?".

Vimes, now entirely forgotten, had left halfway through the second lap of the circular argument. He strode past the sedan chair waiting for him in the street, unconsciously pulling out and lighting a cigar. He made a mental note both to relate the incident to Sybil, who was rather set on Susan teaching Young Sam, as well as to send a priest of some sort anyway.

When a pair of mismatched eyes, one blue, one green, slid open, they struggled to focus on the gray-green blob hanging above them. The blob wobbled and moved closer, resolving into the patchwork visage of an Igor. The mismatched eyes blinked, and the Igor looked away; a scribbling sound indicated the presence of a clipboard, hand and pen. The consciousness behind the eyes remembered that it, too, should have hands and, just maybe, something that fit the hand like a pen.

Some bits inferior to the eyes and the consciousness wiggled and began a brief fight with gravity. The Igor, his expression betraying nothing but academic observation, noted something else on his clipboard. The world blurred like a wet-on-wet watercolor for a moment before refocusing down a slab.

The consciousness became aware of several things at this point: It was attached to a fit body draped in a not very clean sheet; it was in possession of a head, which was made evident by the pressure of a restraint on the fore- of that head; and there was a draft from somewhere behind the slab.

"Ah, no. Too aware already, and far too quickly," the Igor at the slabside said. He reached over, tugging at something the consciousness could not roll its eyes back to see.

"Beg your pardon."

Then there was nothing again.

For once, his meeting with the Patrician did not include pointed comments about budget or politically expedient new recruits. Vimes had updated Lord Vetinari on two non-Assassin's-Guild-related murders and elaborated on Captain Carrot's recent outreach to the Thieves' Guild. The murders were down to hanging and mistaken identity; the outreach involved weekly trivia events. Vimes was confident of one; Carrot was doggedly optimistic about the other.

"When your wife was last here, she was preening – subtly, of course – about finally bringing you around to letting Young Sam study with Miss Susan Sto-Helit," Lord Vetinari said from behind a page of one of his ubiquitous reports. He put the paper down onto the desk and slid it to the left with an index finger. "I suppose recent developments may delay his matriculation?"

"Depends," Vimes deadpanned. This still managed to surprise Vimes, just how fast Vetinari learned of things. "How dangerous is the ghost to my son?"

"Mr. Teatime –" the four distinct syllables fell from the Patrician's lips with a crispness that would have thrilled the name's owner "– is a superlatively dangerous Assassin. Or was." Vetinari waved a bit dismissively at the detail. "Alive, he was a creative, visionary genius, and I do not mind admitting I admired some of the plans for his inhumations. But he was what Lord Downey called 'inelegant'; he was excessive, impatient, and indiscriminate. What the young man lacked, besides a sense of proportion, was an anchor. He has a sociopathic personality, which is useful in a career that is about, at its core, killing other human beings. But the flaws associated therewith were permitted to flourish. He had nothing to offset those sociopathic tendencies."

"And dead?"

One eyebrow went up. "You were the one who saw him firsthand, Commander. I should suppose he is merely annoying at present." Vetinari leaned back in his chair and affected a distant expression. "And even if he were more than that, there are worse people to have between him and your son than Miss Susan. She is the only person to have dealt successfully with Mr. Teatime."

"She killed him."

" Twice, if reports are to be believed. And in self defense."

Vimes bit back a sigh. "I can see that, sir," he answered, carefully editing it from the intended Even Detritus on a hot day could see it, sir, and also ignoring the twice bit. "But that's given him a reason to haunt her. Can't see that as reassuring."

"Oh, is that what he's doing? How eccentric. Well, I'm sure Miss Susan is dealing with it as we speak."

A snort came out before Vimes could stop it. He drawled, "I left them feeling I should send them both to their rooms on account of bickering like ten-year-olds. If you have pointers, I'm sure she'd appreciate them."

Vetinari's smile was brief and thin, and Vimes only knew it was there because it left the same kind of imprint on his retinas that a speedy mouse did. Vetinari replied, "I rather doubt it."

It had been a long day. Dreadfully long. He hadn't prepared to deal with three corpses; it had taken all day to reduce that number to just two. He supposed he should be grateful for that machine Igorina had installed earlier that year; without it, he'd be down to just himself.

But no matter how tired he was, he was determined to finish this one thing before going home.

The face that gazed critically back at him from the mirror was a hideous patchwork. It ought to have been; only Igorinas were pretty. Even so, Igor, this Igor, was feeling a mite critical. Surely the face needn't have that many scars, nor quite so many raised lumps. And really, there was nothing wrong with symmetry; he'd always wondered what the Clan had against balance. A man could have his eyes set at the same level and still be of the Clan.

"Thuch – such, no, thuch," he amended, frowning, "Terrible work. Utterly maladroit. Too traditional. Nothing for it, though." He lifted a rag soaked in iodine and began to scrub at the left side of his face. This was not going to be pleasant, but one couldn't be an Igor and not do work on his own face without help. That was how the Clan recognized the passage from child to man. Didn't mean it didn't hurt, though.

Igor wasn't hurried. After the first three days of nearly relentless knocking, people had stopped coming to the doctor's door. He wasn't expecting interruptions. Igor supposed the clients were finally giving up on ever getting their needs met. Igor found himself grateful for the office's location. That silly young doctor had decided to strike out on his own, so he didn't have a sponsor or partner with whom he could have set up in a more upscale neighborhood. The street was unfashionable enough to avoid unwarranted foot traffic. The boards Igor had hammered over the windows last week were just the final touch on the impression of the failed, low-end ambition of a young fool. It'd only take another few days, and then Igor's work could continue uninterrupted.

He set down the towel and picked up a scalpel; grimacing at the reflection, he began.

Several neighbourhoods away, Igorina set aside the last of her preparations for supper. The pickles could wait; they weren't going to get any less conductive in their brine. Having attended to all her domestic duties, she could go back to her own little project.

The Clan expected Igorinas to go in for decorative work, which, if she'd been of a solidly Igor turn of mind, would have offended her. No reason to think the women couldn't handle the exigencies of detaching and attaching organ and limb to a patient who was dying, cursing, or kicking. Just because tradition had it that women were only good for grafts and tattooed makeup, it didn't mean that that delicate work couldn't be applied to the necessities of reattaching blood vessels and reintegrating nerves.

However, these were all academic questions for Igorina. She wasn't squeamish about the cutting and stitching, and she was a dab hand at clamping off gushing veins and had been quite a lot of help in a number of surgeries. But the flesh did not inspire her. Machines did.

And they are much alike! she reminded herself, wearing still deeper the old paths of arguments trodden and retrodden. Tubes full of oil and hydraulic fluid stood in well for veins and arteries; the rubber-sheathed wires carrying filaments of lightning from one place to another were the nerves. The corporeal hulks of machinery were not as mobile and self-motivated as living bodies, but they were just as finicky and intricate, and building one from scratch to do what you wanted it to was nothing to sneeze at. Though with machinery, the parts were gotten easier.

Igorina considered herself quite lucky to have married a forward-thinking Igor who indulged her fascination with machinery. He, in himself, lived pretty traditionally – he even brought her home tidbits he thought she'd like, like her right hand or those pale eyes he'd claimed his grandfather had sent her – but he didn't object to Igorina exploring her options, as long as they didn't actually violate Clan rules. In fact, he'd praised her early efforts and had made good use of a couple of her latest, largest projects. The stove, for instance, was one. He'd even asked her to build another at the doctor's office, which pleased her no end. She'd gotten an exceedingly pretty gift basket of lotions and ointments from Dr. Tolo that, the doctor said in a note, when used correctly, could either hide scars or highlight them.

Igorina's latest work had been with power sources. She could trap electricity in large quantities now, but after reading a few booklets by Leonard of Quirm that she'd borrowed from the University library, she was beginning to scale the lightning cells down without losing storage space. Igor said Dr. Tolo was following her hobby with great interest.

The only downside to marrying Igor, as far as Igorina knew, was the inevitable presence of his grandfather, Igor. The grandfather had been in Ankh-Morpork for a couple dozen years, and rumor had it that he'd been urged to leave Uberwald decades ago to avoid bringing shame upon the Rimwardmost branch the Clan. The newlyweds had moved in with him just to save money and get on their feet; Igor had used a couple of connections to get a position with a wealthy family in Moonpond Lane, but they didn't pay enough to support a young family.

However, Igor's grandfather wasted all their gratitude by spending the entire year being provoking. His critiques on his grandson's choices had been persistent and repetitive. He seemed to think his grandson far too hidebound and traditional. It was through the grandfather's efforts, she assumed, that her husband had left domestic service and had taken up the position with Dr. Tolo. Igor refused to talk about it, the memory hurt him so much.

Grandfather Igor had lingered on Igorina's hobby, spilling vitriol at every possible opportunity, even after he'd had a bit of an accident and ended up as just his head in a jar – which had been Igorina's invention. It wasn't something a person could do with just any head (for the Clan were quite different from other sapient species, thank you very much) and Igorina had been justly proud. Even old Igor had had to tone down his criticism, seeing that he was still able to hold forth as he liked thanks to her "abomination". Even so, Igor had made a point of setting his grandfather up on a lovely shelf at the office; he placed his grandfather next to several medical texts, whose pages Igor periodically turned for his grandfather to read. Of course, now that Igor had "pulled the thwitch" on his grandfather, lingering on the memories was probably a little tasteless, so Igorina put it firmly out of her head.

With a smile of real pleasure, Igorina turned to the back counter and, nodding to the several eyeballs that were looking at her in curiosity from their row of stoppered jars, lifted the towel from her wristwatch-with-wires-and-probes project. Good, no dust had collected on it; dust made mechanical things a bit difficult to work with. This little tangle of found objects represented her latest efforts at capturing electricity and cramming it down into containers one could move without aid of a bullock and cart. She had great hopes, great hopes indeed. If this one worked, she would speak to the University's librarian, for she'd been keeping careful notes, and the Librarian could get her work before the movers and shakers of the inventing world, such as it was. Wouldn't that be one in the eye for the Clan!

Chapter Text

Outside the pillow cocooning Susan's head, a surprisingly pleasant tenor began to sing a children's song. Very loudly. And intentionally off-key.

"… And they'll continue singing it forever just because…"

She grit her teeth and glared into the darkness just a little harder. Her bloodshot eyes focused on a point about a hundred fifty miles from her bed, and her brows were pinching an aching fold of skin between them so hard that she was sure the skull beneath it was wrinkling in sympathy.

Teatime's decision that Susan was somehow interesting and worthy of haunting had met with a calmness that had clearly surprised the ghost. His expression had gone quite blank when she'd said, "Have you taken the time to thoroughly consider this?" It had been unclear if he'd been insulted that she asked the question at all, or if he thought her mad. She'd then made reasonable points like "I spend most of my time reading." and "I am not here for your entertainment, and I'm busy, so you should find someone else to bother." and "I'm living a normal life; most of it is going to be dull."

"I can fix that," Teatime had answered.

And he had done. Susan's gaze shifted slightly and the focus drew back a few miles. The clock ticking away on her bedside table was just visible in the dying firelight. Teatime had been 'fixing' her dullness for a solid six hours now and didn't show any signs of slacking off.

Every time she had adapted to a new tactic, Teatime had devised a new one. Childish questions had become philosophical ones; disgusted sighs had become whining complaints; her name, repeated in varying tones, volumes, and proximities, had become songs. Her hold on her temper had been rock-solid the whole time, having been tried and, well, tempered by several years of teaching over-privileged children of all ages. So she'd restricted herself to glares and the occasional off-hand, bored response.

But weariness was setting in, and she found herself grateful for it.

The song, far from winding down, by design if for no other reason, was blending slowly into an up-and-down drone. If Susan paid attention to the creaking and sighing of the embers in the fireplace across the room, Teatime's song faded fuzzily into background noise. At that point, the situation became the same as reading in the Gaiters' nursery; one only had to keep wrinkle or two of the brain tuned into noises that indicated injury or Things Getting Out Of Hand.

The noise dwindled further. Even the restful sounds of settling embers registered in Susan's brain as the white noise that precedes dreams.

Then something struck her in the back, knocking the air from her lungs and making her blood run cold.

She looked down to see a transparent hand protruding from just below her collarbone; it was clenched into a classic forefinger-first poking formation. She whipped into a sitting position, slinging her pillow through Teatime's retreating hand. The rest of him was too far away to hit.

"If I had wanted a little brother, I'd have asked my parents for one," she snapped. "Go to sleep or whatever it is ghosts do. NOW."

At the Voice, Teatime's edges went a little blurry. When he refocused, he was staring into the distance with a complicated frown on his face. "That felt very strange," he announced. He looked up into Susan's face and said, "Do it again."

The white horse turned its head and whuffled. It was standing, unhappily idle, at one of the infinite, undefined edges of the world that came after Death had happened to the living. Death, himself, was examining what passed for the ground here. He heard Binky's harness jingle and turned to face the horse, who looked longer in the face than usual.

I REMEMBER. NO, YOU MAY NOT.

Having forbidden this, Death turned back to the featureless grayness that had substance if you thought about it. Or, rather, if you didn't. If you assumed it was ground, it worked as ground. If, like Death, you knew better, then footprints were the very devil to track. There were trails upon layers upon dreams of them, and they all led Back. Death did not need another incident, not so soon. Finding and closing this door for spirits to go Back rather than On was second in importance only to the Duty. He'd have to make it work. And to do that, he was going to need a lot of lifetimers, a sack of very odd tools, and Binky to transport the whole unwieldy lot. He was remembering forward and backward again because this door that went Back firmly attached the world and this afterworld.  There were more efficient ways to go about this, but out in the living world, Time had to happen, so he was forced to practice somewhat sloppy methods.

Binky whuffled again, turning to look longingly over his withers. Death returned to the horse, mounted him, and took up the reins. WE MUST LEAVE SUSAN ALONE FOR NOW, he explained, nudging his sharply uncomfortable heels into Binky's sides. As Binky took off into an air-scorching gallop, he continued, WE ALL THREE HAVE WORK TO DO. PERHAPS AFTER THIS IS ALL OVER, YOU CAN STAY WITH HER FOR A WEEK.

Earlier that afternoon, Susan had sent notes 'round to her pupils' families, which announced the cancellation of classes for the following week; another note went to Scoone Avenue thanking Commander Vimes for sending Constable Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets along with his fellow Omnian, Brother Persist-In-The-Face-Of-Protests-Of-Illiteracy.

Brother Persist had only managed to temporarily incapacitate Teatime by baffling him – Teatime had turned to Susan and demanded, "Is this normal? At least for Omnians?" – and then sidetracking the Assassin into a circular argument about the sanctity of life. Susan had taken a handful of pamphlets from Constable Visit and agreed to try to make Teatime read them while avoiding giving her word to read them herself.

After seeing the evangelists politely out the door, Susan had tried to summon Binky and was, to say the least, nonplussed when he failed to appear. However, she'd persevered in her attempts for several hours, which yielded the unexpected bonus of making it very easy to ignore Teatime for a half-hour at a go. He had found that annoying, and Susan had found that pleasantly ironic only because he was in no real way threatening as a ghost. In those moments when Susan could not block out Teatime's questions and comments and occasional pseudo-physical attempts at intimidation, she'd tried to convince him to leave.

"You've delivered your message. Well done. Now, go back."

"I could, I suppose. But it's so boring there, you have no idea."

"Then move on. Plenty of gods operate on reincarnation."

"I'm happy as I am. Sorry. Besides, I've never spent so long in someone else's company since school; I'd forgotten what it was like. You're really quite diverting, when you're not being dull, you know." He had gone into gales of high-pitched cackling at her expression the first few times she'd fruitlessly called for Binky. "I think I'll stay."

In the end, all of Susan's attempts to call Death's horse to her had failed. And after an infinitesimal moment of knee-jerk panic (Had Teatime killed Death to escape the afterlife? It shouldn't be possible, but everything about this situation was anomalous) Susan had reasoned that Binky would already have arrived to drag her off to the Duty if Death had been incapacitated. That meant she was either being ignored or taught a lesson, and those two thoughts kept her mind off Teatime's presence for fully two hours.

At about nine o'clock, she'd given up trying because the fingers she'd snapped all evening were sore, and her voice was starting to wear out. She'd ended up lying down on top of her coverlet fully clothed because Teatime left her no peace, let alone no privacy. Speaking of, she had to use the bathroom. Badly. It was affecting her ability to ignore his antics. Besides, it seemed that he'd now found the one method of irritation that Susan could not ignore, so he not only got a reaction; he enjoyed it.

Teatime still was not tired of jabbing at her to trigger the Voice. Any time she'd fall quiet for more than a few moments, Teatime would poke at her, usually around the shoulder region or face; Susan would jolt at the excruciating cold that felt like the beginnings of a heart attack each time it happened. Then she'd shout at him with Death's voice, and he would blur minutely and sit thinking about it for a few minutes. Longer uses of the Voice yielded longer moments of contemplation, so when he put his whole hand through her neck, she let him have it.

"…AND THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS HOLD YOURSELF TO THE SAME STANDARDS YOU HOLD FOR EVERYONE ELSE!" She was finally starting to wind down, if for no other reason than she could now only go six or seven sentences before needing to draw breath. "IF IT'S RUDE TO RIDICULE YOUR EYES OR YOUR NAME, IT'S ALSO RUDE TO KEEP SOMEONE UP AT ALL HOURS PLAYING SILLY BUGGERS!"

The form of the ghost sitting on the edge of the bed vibrated for many seconds like a guitar string letting a note die. Susan cleared her throat and futilely tried to swallow away the Voice. As it wasn't working, and Teatime was going into the staring-into-the-distance phase of his new game, Susan got up and headed toward the bathroom. The glass she used while brushing her teeth was quick to fill and drain, and she rather thought she should take advantage of the momentary lull. She mightn't have the chance again tonight.

And, indeed, when she turned away from the sink, Teatime was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, blocking very little light. She glared.

Over his crossed arms, Teatime glowered. The effect was rather ruined by his torso being bifurcated by the scene of Susan's bedroom window showing the first signs of a winter dawn. "You have yet to say my name correctly," he complained, "So I don't think that's a very good argument. Double standards, even. And I'm not 'playing silly buggers'; I'm conducting research."

Susan marched forward and aimed a punch at Teatime's face; he dodged backward and out of the doorway only because pride did not allow him to stand and get hit. Having gained that foot, Susan grabbed the doorframe and leaned into Teatime's personal space.

"Teh. Ah. Tim. Eh," she said through clenched teeth. "Teh-Ah-Tim-Eh. Teh-ah-tim-eh." With each repetition, she leaned just a bit farther, and the expression on her face got a fraction fiercer. The ghost's only reaction was to raise his eyebrows. Susan leaned back into a roughly vertical position and said, "There. I've said it right. Three times. I need to use the toilet, and that had better earn me the right to do that privately, without interruptions."

"You could have asked." He had the effrontery to look wounded. And because Susan was all but dancing now that she'd announced her intention, all she did was shut the door in his face.

Chapter Text

When the eyes slid open this time, the left eye had markedly worse vision than the right. When the world held still long enough to allow focus, the consciousness behind the eyes was able to register the interior of a crypt, one that was oddly neat and wallpapered. A distant bell rang in the memory of the consciousness, and slowly, the recalled image of a strange Igor formed.

The world went blurry again – well, blurrier, in the case of the left eye – and then fell still. There were tugs somewhere above the eyes that corresponded with the blurs. Slowly, as the consciousness got accustomed to the weird visuals and weirder, fragmented memories, sound began to filter in.

"… if I connect that lobe to that one with – dammit, not with that wire! I'd hate to bring the girl into it. Not natural –"

Yank! The view from the left eye went black.

"Bah! Wrong nerve!"

Poke! Wobble wobble wobble. The scene stabilized, and light came back in a flare on the left side. From somewhere below the eyes, a reflexive, throaty noise erupted.

"Oh, dear," said the voice doing all the tugging and muttering. A heavy-jowled, gray-green face popped into view from the right. The Igor from before. "You're truly remarkable, do you know that? I very nearly admire it," he said. "I am enjoying working with you, but you keep waking up."

Tug! Poke. Wiggle.

"Quit it."

Teatime had not been all that impressed the last time he'd been at the Unseen University; the wizards had just stupidly stood there, handed him – him! – Death's sword, and watched him stroll out. He found it difficult to give the slightest damn about anyone who had so little a sense of self-preservation. The small, monkeylike bits in the back parts of their brains should have had them shifting toward the exits. Even a cow, the single stupidest organism on the Disc in Teatime's opinion, chose to run when he was near.

And now, it was just insulting. He was surrounded by five of the nosy blighters, as well as Susan, and they were all staring at him, talking as if he weren't even in the room!

"Hix, this is your field, man!" rumbled the tallest, most barrel-chested of the lot. Ridcully. Archchancellor of the University. He'd kept the wizards from reducing the Sto Plains to sludge for years now. Teatime had eavesdropped on him more than a few times during school and while fulfilling the first stages of several contracts; indeed, a carelessly scornful word from Ridcully had led Teatime to the luckless Mr. Sideney. Best to keep that bit of information quiet, at least while Ridcully was four feet away and staring intently.

"I can only act on theory, here, Archchancellor!" protested the one with a tasteless widow's peak and cape. Hix. Necromancer, though the term was out of vogue, as the practice was technically forbidden. Amateur thespian, though Hix resented that term. He added, "In a practical sense, I deal in spirits who want to be bottled up downstairs, or with physical remains and morphic resonance! A vengeful ghost with a broken mind and a penchant for pranks has no precedent!"

Teatime scowled. He'd remember that; he actually took a moment to envision his hand folding up the memory like paper and sticking it into a post box in his head. Really, had Susan led him here just to listen to them talk all day? She'd promised dullness, and she was managing it.

"Then set the precedent, Dr. Hix!" Ridcully boomed. "Show some spine, will you? Are we or are we not the cradle of knowledge around here? Learn how to deal with a cracked dead Assassin!"

At this reminder, Hix blanched and glanced at Teatime, who thought it useful to let a smile spread across his face like butter over hot toast. He, at the same time, filed away Ridcully's comment, too. Surely such rudeness deserved a little payback. Perhaps a loved one's severed hand in a package, except, oh, no, Mr. Lipwig had already written up rules about what could not go through the Post Office – body parts were near the top. Teatime would think of something.

A thin hand swatted through the air where Teatime's head had just been. He leaned up out of his half-crouch and looked reproachfully at Susan. First off, would she ever stop trying to hit him? It was rude and getting a little wearisome. Secondly, would she ever stop trying to hit him? Because she nearly always missed. He supposed she was the sort to keep trying, since, he was embarrassed to admit, she'd had some past success.

"Stop making him nervous, Teatime," Susan snapped, again mangling the name. Then she glared at Dr. Hix, who shrank back a little, and said, "He can't hurt you, and you know it. Stop being scared of ghosts! This is your job!"

Hix flapped his liver-spotted hands a little, and they moved stiffly, clearly not used to the gesture. In his line of work, there was little he hadn't seen and less that could frighten him. "Sorry, my lady!" He shrank back again at the glower she leveled at him. Pathetically, the Head of the Department of Post Mortem Communications explained, "Look, you're the Mortem to which my department is Post! I just –"

With a glare that sent the man scuttling back two steps, Susan interrupted, "Just try to fix my problem with the least amount of silliness, will you?" She undid Hix's retreat with two feline steps that Teatime admired, from one intimidator to another, and added, "Because, really, who is more frightening right now? Him? Or me?"

The man broke out in a sweat, which sent a stream of black hair dye trickling from his widow's peak. "I-I've done as much as I can, ma'am," he stuttered, gesturing at the floor. No one glanced down; the runes scrawled there glowed so powerfully that it caused everyone in the room to look like the villains of a very strange stage play. "There are only a few ways to force a spirit to leave, and if you've already tried a priest, there's little I can do to dislodge him. I'm more of a catch-and-bottle sort of necromancer."

And that was the main problem here, Teatime thought. Somehow, the wizards had trapped him in a circle of glowing chalk, and so far, he'd not found a way out. If he tried to leave the circle physically, he struck a solid surface. Restlessly, he prodded at the barrier with the ghostly dagger he'd somehow retained. It sparked like horseshoes on cobblestones and let off a smell like a fried rock; he felt his hair stand on end, and the memory of his scrying-stone eye glowed softly. Everyone glanced up at him, reminded of his presence. Each of them looked like they were trying to fight a smile – he must look a sight, he supposed – but each of them almost managed to conceal the amusement somehow. Even Susan's look of exasperation was twitching around the corners.

"This is so boring," Teatime complained. He crossed his arms, not even bothering to set his hair right or sheathe the dagger.

"You could volunteer to leave this plane of existence," was Ridcully's prompt, almost off-hand suggestion.

Teatime turned his full attention to the Archchancellor, who didn't so much as blink.  Teatime frowned a bit; he was accustomed to getting some reaction.

Ridcully added a little less off-handedly, "However, I can think of a number of much more interesting things for you to do while you're here at the University. Most of them are experimental and involve a thinking engine."

"Oh, I say, Archchancellor!" This was Ponder Stibbons, whom Teatime had last seen hovering over him with a quill and a lot of silly questions. The younger wizard, who looked like he'd just made the transition from spotty and gangly to slightly pear-shaped and balding with very little time between the two phases, jabbed at the nosepiece of his spectacles. "Please don't bring Hex into this! He's already got all the Bursar's calculations started, and the payroll alone is –"

Teatime tuned them out at this point. Everyone's attention was off of him again, and while he did enjoy being noticed, he'd always felt that being ignored could be useful. At least until he'd pulled of whatever maneuver he'd planned; then full attention was required. He slid his dagger back into its sheath and then moved his hands outward. The left hand struck resistance first; the right came against solid air a full three inches later. Teatime shifted his body to the absolute center of the circle and pressed outward again. The cylinder of air around him was rock-solid and only four feet across. He would not be able to get through. Dr. Hix had made it, and the wizards believed in it. Even Susan believed in it. It would hold.

But.

Outside the spell, Dr. Hix was stroking at his pointy beard. "That's a problem that Hex could challenge itself with, Mr. Stibbons! Just think of the raw data you could collect on ghosts and on the necromantic runes that I've not had to use in my entire tenure here!"

"Really, I don't think we need to bother Hex until we've at least checked with the Librarian," Stibbons replied. His not-exactly-a-chin wobbled in frustration. "There's no need to initiate new experiments if other wizards have already thoroughly explored the problem! Why duplicate research?"

These wizards, though they were now progressive enough not to pitch city-demolishing fireballs at one another when annoyed, were still and forever hidebound. Hardly a full skeleton's worth of creative bones in the entire faculty. And when imaginations stagnated…

Teatime leaned back against one side of the cylinder trapping him and pushed one boot against the opposite side. When he shoved that foot against the air, the air obeyed physics (and rather blew a raspberry at them, as well) and pressed back in just the same way as the inside of a chimney. Teatime smiled, wiggled his shoulders against the barrier behind him, and placed his other foot against the air six inches higher than the first.

"Here, now, I thought I told you to quit waking up while I'm working," a voice complained.

Awareness returned rather more quickly than before. The Igor was standing in front of the consciousness and its field of vision, and it was clear that the consciousness was being held upright by a number of probably-not-very-comfortable straps. It didn't know. Its sense of touch was turned off.

"You're nearly a zombie, you're that defiant!" Igor added, almost cheerfully. "But you're interfering with my learning, and I have limited time."

Igor moved behind the consciousness. Its right eye was dead this time, and it was able to see the crypt in front of it with clear, but oddly flat vision. On the slab that was in the center of the room, a corpse lay covered to the waist with a stained sheet. It was attached by several wires and tubes to a panel in the wall; the sound of clicking machinery came from the panel. The body itself was thin and pale and of the masculine persuasion. The top of its head was covered by a mess of blond curls. The torso was laced with a few old scars and had a much more recently repaired puncture wound just below the ribcage. One of the eyes was clearly missing, leaving an unpleasant depression in an otherwise attractive face.

"I only have enough power to work on one of you at a time," Igor muttered from somewhere behind. "And I'm running out. Wake up again, and I'll pitch you onto the rubbish heap and put all my effort into him."

The world went dark once again.

Chapter Text

One of the Memories overcame Susan as the wizards began to debate what methodology they would employ to study the problem of exorcising Teatime. Normally, when she remembered things from any point in time (like the future and moments from far before her own birth), Susan found just one more reason to resent her weird heritage, but this Memory at least had the courtesy to be well-timed.

The remembered scene itself was brief, and infusing it was an anger that Susan had never felt before. Her pulse thudded in her ears; her hair tangled suddenly on itself. For a moment, all she was aware of was the rage. Then the visuals caught up to the emotions. Teatime's ghost stood before her, solemn and still. In her right hand was a naked blade; her hand spasmed around the hilt. She turned her back on that pensive remembered Teatime and the doorway that framed him and opened into dim, richly appointed room.  Then she stalked across the corridor in which they stood.

"Does your hair always do that?" Teatime's voice, in the here-and-now, inquired from right beside her. Still in the depths of the blinding rage from the Memory, Susan clawed reflexively at him, actually catching a freezing handful of chin as he dodged around her.

"How did he get out?" Susan demanded, catching the attention of the debating wizards. Her hands went up to her hair. It was all slicked down against her skull, even the fringe that framed her face, and it had knotted angrily into a horribly tight bun at the nape of her neck. She hardly dared alter her expression, for fear the tension would tear the skin of her face.

An icy stabbing sensation went through her just above her navel, dragging a low, animal noise from her and making her hunch over in shock. She looked down in time to see Teatime's hand withdraw back through her torso.

"WILL YOU STOP DOING THAT?" she bellowed. The anger from the Memory still dwarfed what she felt right now, but if Susan could have laid hands on Teatime, he'd've been very sorry, indeed.

"Will you stop trying to hit me?" he retorted from somewhere to her left.  His voice oscillated a little in responce to the Voice. Then, he appeared right before her. "You aren't fast enough, and I'm a little insulted that you keep trying."

"Not fast enough? Tell that to the bloody arthritis I'm developing!" she snapped, holding up her right hand, which ached with the recollection of Teatime's chill.

He shook his head. "If I were alive, I'd have been able to inhume you sixteen times in the last five minutes. And that's if I'd been taking my time!" And he said all this very cheerfully. With that tone in his voice, and with that two-toned gaze focused on her from three feet away, Susan remembered Teatime as he had been – less a nuisance and more an unpredictable threat to her and those who mattered to her.

And, well, she got angry.

She took the one stride that separated them and growled, "What is it going to take to get you to LEAVE ME ALONE?" Watching the ghost's form vibrate with the Voice from six inches away did nothing to soothe Susan's nerves.

When his edges had firmed back up, Teatime's expression was one of surprised thought.

From outside this tableau, Susan heard Ridcully mutter, "Good heavens, he's actually thinking about it."

"What could someone that obsessive want more than to torment someone like her?" one of the other wizards exclaimed. Susan didn't dare take her eyes off Teatime; she had a proper sense of the moment's importance, even if they didn't.

"What, indeed, Mr. Stibbons?" Teatime asked, staring back at Susan. The thoughtful expression deepened minutely. "I tried for controlling the world before Susan here killed me." He paused here, just for the drama. Susan supposed it was to make her uncomfortable and to alienate the wizards. It put Susan in mind of when he'd called her a freak to convince Banjo to attack her in the Tooth Fairy's castle. Insofar that her face could move, thanks to her still-angry hair, it went haughty and wooden.

Teatime continued, "But, on reflection, I think that would be dreadfully dull. I'd need to trigger wars just to change the background noise!" He tilted his head and brightened. With the air of someone on the edge of a brilliant idea, he said, "Did you know one thing I always looked forward to while training at the Assassins' school was getting my name on the Wall? Inhumations of note are posted there, you see, with credit given to the Assassin responsible. If you made the Wall, you'd made a Name for yourself. Fame."

Another wizard muttered, "Immortality, in its own way."

Teatime grinned. Susan turned a glare on the wizards; she wished very much to know who'd said that. Immortality. It'd come out of the man's mouth like the words Destiny or Fate. Damn that man for the idea! Wasn't it enough that Teatime had escaped the country of the dead?

"It's been a lifelong goal, you know. All that Death… stuff distracted me," Teatime sighed, drawing Susan's attention again. "And to make my Name, I need to do what I do best. And to do that, I'll need my body back."

She retorted, "It's been five years, Teatime. It'll be little more than bones, if you could find it!"

"I'm sure these gentlemen could be convinced to fix that problem." He grinned a little more widely at Susan. The idea had struck him so well that he let the 'tee-time' pass without comment. "I'm sure they'd find it much easier to do than to deal with you coming in all hours to complain about how I'm haunting you. More pleasant, too." Before Susan could retaliate against him for that bit of pettiness, Teatime said firmly, "Yes. That is what it will take. You get me resurrected – something Death's granddaughter should find no trouble – so that I can make my Name, and I'll find something else to amuse me."

His happy smile went positively beatific.

"I promise."

Chapter Text

She'd refused. Of course she had! There was nothing else to do but refuse. Killing Teatime had been nearly the greatest act she had ever done for humanity; saving Imp y Celyn was just a merit badge compared to her ending Teatime. What he 'did best' was kill, but what he 'did best' he did messily, indiscriminately, and with no regard for the subjects of his attentions and those nearby. Of course she had refused to bring him back to corporeal life.

She refused every day. For two weeks. Because Teatime asked daily, usually when Susan had gotten exhausted enough from interrupted sleep or when she lost her temper with him, which was happening much more frequently. His persistence was remarkable, she thought, considering the magnitude of his attention deficit. She was inventing new and creative ways to use the toilet, and her baths were all taken at about 3 A.M. Needless to say, school had gone on winter break rather early.

Susan also was looking forward to giving her grandfather what-for. Not only was Binky not responding to her summons but Death also had canceled their weekly teas by note. All of this – Teatime's presence and the sudden distance of Death – seemed more than just a bit coincidental. When she and her grandfather did end up within the same neighborhood, they were going to Have Words. She was entertaining thoughts of setting rat traps and waiting for the Death of Rats to arrive; since she actually liked rats, she couldn't quite bring herself to do it.

She had gone to visit the wizards three times already; the Librarian had led her to one of the stranger aisles in the Library, but Teatime had kept her from learning anything remotely useful, because getting icy fingers in the neck rather distracted her from a good study session. When she asked Mustrum Ridcully about the rite he had performed to force her to appear when she had briefly been Death, he'd shrugged and offered to give it a try next Octeday, apologizing for the delay. "Important banquet," he'd excused himself. "Can't interfere with the guts of city politics, you know."

It was almost a relief to receive notice on Thursday at 6 A.M. that she had an appointment with Lord Vetinari.

SQUEAK.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'THIS WASN'T PART OF THE JOB DESCRIPTION'? Death looked down at the Death of Rats, where it stood ankle-deep in the layer of diatomaceous earth that circled the greatest concentration of Jonathan Teatime's footprints in the mists between worlds. The circle was quite large. Teatime had roved like a Bassett hound with an interesting scent up its snout.

The Death of Rats managed to look sulky. IK. SQUEAK!

AN APPOINTMENT? THAT'S NOT LIKELY. I'VE BEEN PAYING RATHER A LOT OF ATTENTION TO THAT LIFETIMER, AND IT HAS PLENTY OF SAND LEFT.

SQUEAK EEK EEK SK. This time, the Grim Squeaker sounded smug. Its whiskers wiggled in a little ratty chuckle.

Death heaved a breathless sigh. OH, NO. DON'T LET'S DETAIN HIM, BY ANY MEANS. There was the sense of rolled eyes. He began to tuck his tools into a fine black leather sack that had lots of flaps that didn't open. IS THERE ANY CHANCE THAT THIS DOESN'T INVOLVE SUSAN OR MR. TEATIME?

A shrug. SQUEAK.

AND SINCE WHEN DO YOU CARRY MESSAGES FOR HIM?

Susan and Teatime only had to wait five minutes. She initially supposed this was just to maintain appearances – it had just gone half six, so they must be the first appointment of the day – but the Postmaster General and Master of the Royal Mint came out of the Oblong Office looking rather like he needed a nap. He lifted the golden winged hat when he saw Susan and informed her, "His Lordship says for you both to go in. Good luck. He's in a cheerful mood today." This last sentence was dry enough reduce the relative humidity in the room, and Mr. Lipwig headed for the door with a weary smile.

When they entered, Lord Vetinari was just handing a thick bundle of papers back to his secretary. "Mr. Teatime," he said, accepting a thinner stack of papers from Drumknott, "Do us the courtesy of controlling your impulses for the next ten minutes, thank you. A little patience may prove rewarding." All Teatime did was tilt his head, puppylike, to the right – Susan had begun to recognize this as the time he took to decide whether he was offended or not. On the one hand, his name had been said correctly; on the other, he wasn't the kind of person to respond well to others' attempts at controlling him.

"Miss Susan, please do be seated," Vetinari continued, gesturing at the one, straight-backed chair facing his desk. Then he looked up and past Susan and added with dignity, "My lord, please do not think me impolite in failing to offer you the same. My aunt taught me the importance of attending to ladies' needs."

I CONFESS MYSELF MORE INTERESTED IN FINDING MYSELF HERE AT ALL, LORD VETINARI.

Susan's hair frizzed in surprise and annoyance, and she made a show of turning slowly to look at her grandfather. His seven-foot frame managed to loom in an office designed to make visitors feel small and nervous. Teatime, still with a look of curiosity on his face, had nonetheless made a point of shifting out of the range of Death's scythe.

"Miss Susan's school has gone on early holiday, my lord," Vetinari replied. "And she has been using some of this time to request aid of the wizards of the Unseen University, who are currently occupied with an important sport-related matter, in exorcising this spirit." He pointed at Teatime. "It is to the benefit of all, but most of all to the city, that I attempt to assist where I can."

Susan only just managed not to gape at him. He was implying that she was the problem, here? "I beg your pardon!" she began in the most instinctive of Duchess tones.

I SEE, Death replied before she could elaborate. BUT YOU MUST REMEMBER THAT THE ONLY INTEREST I CAN POSSIBLY HAVE IN THE AFFAIR IS SUSAN. WHAT HAPPENS IN YOUR CITY IS YOUR CONCERN.

Vetinari acknowledged the point with a nod. "I do not wish to be contradictory, but I must bring up Mr. Teatime's presence," he said, all syllables correct and accounted for. All eyes went to the ghost, who was looking particularly pleased about Vetinari's pronunciation - correct twice in a row! "It seems that in the course of an illegitimate contract through the Assassin's Guild, he met his end. The perpetrators of the fraudulent contract are, alas, outside my jurisdiction, but as their Discly agent has reemerged, I may now take appropriate action." This time, it was Teatime's turn to look affronted.

Death reminded the Patrician, MR. TEATIME IS BEYOND THE REACH OF HUMAN PUNISHMENTS. EVEN YOURS. HE HAS ALREADY SUFFERED THE ULTIMATE PENALTY.

"Perhaps that penalty was a bit harsh –" Vetinari said.

Susan gasped, "Now see here –"

Vetinari spoke over her without raising his voice a single decibel, "– as the entire episode was predicated on a fraud, and the Assassin in question was only in the position he found himself due to orders."

THERE ARE RULES.

"Many rules were broken." Vetinari steepled his fine-boned hands in the heavy silence that followed. "And Ankh-Morpork merely wants to see justice served. The city requests Mr. Teatime be resurrected to be tried and, if found guilty, sentenced commensurate to the crime."

The clattering of a toppled wooden chair punctuated this announcement and prevented any reply. Susan, on her feet and with her hair writhing loose from its bun, sidled just far enough sideways to pin all the other occupants of the room with a fearsome glare. Drumknott would later pout to himself that he'd done nothing to deserve it.

"That is enough," she ground out. The little nerves in the back of her brain that connected the thinking bits to the parts that controlled things like bowels and hormones were driving metaphorical elbows into her ribs and kicking her in the shin. Mouthing off to the Patrician was usually either an oral suicide note or an application for a government job; Susan's instincts wanted nothing to do with either option. Her rising anger overrode those instincts.

"I killed that man because he was in the act of trying to kill my grandfather," she hissed, jabbing an accusing finger in Teatime's direction. "That was not part of the contract, so that is not a loophole you can use to bring him back! And it is transparent that you are trying to manipulate Grandfather into this insane scheme, whatever it is, with your politician's talk of rules and justice! And since Teatime won't leave me alone because he wants me to resurrect him, and because you already know this – of course you do! – you knew he would come along, which means you want him to hear your plans to bring him back."

Vetinari just sat watching her, waiting for her to finish. She wasn't even earning a quelling eyebrow. This, she later reflected, was the moment she probably could have avoided the whole mess.

But she kept going.

"So either I am not needed here any longer, having gotten him in front of you, or you do need me for this. And if that's the case, then I must insist that you tell me what you want from me plainly and very soon."

"Very well," Vetinari said, sounding for all the world like a man properly chastened and yielding to the force of an angry woman. "Find Mr. Teatime's body or a suitable substitute, put him into it, and bring them back reasonably alive. He is to face trial by Spring Prime."

Questions crowded forward behind Susan's teeth – Why Spring Prime? You're already planning to fake the trial, so what are you actually going to do with him? Why me? And you didn't bring up his body just to fluff out the sentence; you know where it is, don't you? And you're not going to tell me, are you? – and while she was trying to figure out which would be the most useful to ask, Death spoke.

ONLY IF MR. TEATIME ALSO FACES CHARGES FOR DAMAGING PART OF MY REALM IN HIS ESCAPE.

"GRANDFATHER!"

Again, Vetinari spoke over Susan's outrage. "The jurisdiction is questionable, but adding a charge of property damage should pose no problem. The sentence and its execution, of course, would be up to you, my lord."

THIS IS ACCEPTABLE.

"It most certainly is not!" Susan protested, feeling furious and getting worse when it was clear that Death and the Patrician were both ignoring her.

From beside her, where he most certainly had not just been, Teatime murmured, "Just let it happen, Susan." When she turned to glare at him, he twinkled back at her. "And when I have a body again, you can try to hit me – really hit me – and we can settle that point, too!" Her glare intensified, if for no other reason than she was too angry to speak. Teatime brightened just that little bit more, adding, "It'll be an adventure! Think of the fun we'll have!"

Chapter Text

"We'll need to go to the Guild. You aren't equipped for a venture like this. Not at all!" Teatime was blipping ahead of her a half a block at a time and zipping back to her side between sentences. "You have some native talent but no time for training. You can get some basic tools and a little advice at the very least."

Susan continued at a ground-devouring stalk, grimly silent. Visually, she only took in enough input to avoid colliding with anyone. Her throat hurt. When she yelled at her grandfather, she usually kept it to human-level growling and iron self-control. This time, in front of Vetinari, Teatime, Drumknott and any god who was paying attention, she'd absolutely lost it on the old fellow. With the Voice.

Luckily, Death was just a little more level-headed than she was today, and after the first sentence – an ear-searing "YOU ARE ALL OUT OF YOUR BLOODY MINDS, AND IF YOU THINK I'M GIVING THIS BASTARD A CHANCE TO HOLD A KNIFE AGAIN, YOU'RE DREAMING!" – Death had stopped time, Disc-wide.

Upside: Though the three humans in the room were present, they were not capable of witnessing the exchange.

Downside: It was a handy way to remind Susan just at whom she was yelling.

However, the outrage, which had gone so far out that it was reaching next-galaxy-over-rage, had been able to propel her for a full paragraph. Being mostly human, though, Susan had found it necessary to draw breath at some point, and when she did, Death had spoken. WHEN YOU ARE DONE WITH YOUR TANTRUM, WE CAN TALK ABOUT THIS, BUT I WILL NOT ENDURE SUCH LANGUAGE FROM MY OWN GRANDDAUGHTER. I WILL SEE YOU ON OCTEDAY.

And then time had restarted, and Death was gone. Susan had noted through her fresh upwelling of fury, that both Teatime and Vetinari took in the scene with sharp eyes and an upraised brow. Susan had perambulated during her rant and was now several feet from her previous position.

Susan had glowered at the Patrician. She'd growled, "You cannot make me do this."

He'd blinked a slow blink at her, which she'd read correctly as Hello? Tyrant?

"You can kill me. You can imprison me and have me tortured – leave me tied to a chair and have Teatime jab at me until I am dead. But you cannot make me do this."

Sighing, Vetinari had said, "True, all of it. And though I can threaten your duchy, it's clearly of but passing import to you, considering the continued administration of your former regent." That had stung, but Susan thought she'd hidden it well. He'd added, "Besides, seizing or destroying hectares of cabbages is a bit wasteful for a goal of this nature."

With a look that said as clearly as Death's words did that Vetinari considered Susan's protests a mere tantrum, he had continued, "I cannot, indeed, physically force you to locate an uninhabited body, bind a soul into it, and bring it back. However, I doubt I will find it excessively onerous to take a page from Mr. Teatime's book and irritate you into it."

Susan recalled the exact feeling of her jaw dropping; she would never forget the sensation of all her facial muscles going utterly slack, of the breath in her lungs leaving on a weak exhale. No noise had come out. Her ability to get any more incensed was tapped right out, and she lacked words strong enough to express her ire.

"I'm honored, sir!"

The first thing Teatime says to anyone but me, and this is what he chooses? Toadying little rotter! Susan had thought, a trifle unfairly. Later reflection would show her that Teatime was being utterly sincere; Vetinari had been trained as an Assassin, after all, and the Guild now refused to take contracts on him. Mimicry by the Patrician was the supreme form of flattery, then.

Vetinari had nodded in acknowledgment but kept watching Susan. Pulling as much dignity to her as she could, she'd nodded the nod of a foreign duchess to a sovereign lord, turned, and left.

"Right, my boy," a voice called from across the room, over the snapping of arcing current. "Up you get."

The consciousness' eyes slid open to a scene that was almost familiar. The blond body on the slab was ringing a bit of a bell. The Igor standing beside it, symmetrically sewn up and with oddly good posture, rang a much bigger bell.

"I'm not very familiar with magic," Igor admitted crossly. He flapped one hand vaguely at the floor. "But I have been fortunate. I've got another batch of what, for lack of a better term, we'll call fuel. I'm keeping it for him, though," Igor said, jerking a thumb at the slabbed body. Its chest rose and fell minutely. The wires that connected the body's head to the panel on the wall vibrated; whatever was behind the panel whirred and clattered horribly. "The remnant of the other batch went into you, and for that, you're going to help me with him." The thumb jerked again. "I don't mind thanking you for the help you gave me getting my head on right, but you're beginning to be more trouble than you're worth."

The consciousness blinked and found itself self-aware enough to worry.

Igor moved across the floor with surprising speed and loomed over the consciousness. And the consciousness remembered fear.

"Up," Igor murmured, his voice like velvet-wrapped steel. When he tapped that voice against a command, it rang brief and soft and wrapped around the consciousness' hindbrain.

"Now."

Susan was a woman of logic; she was able to follow the steps of any problem to its most likely conclusion based on common sense and awareness of necessary details. She also played a vicious game of chess. She, of course, resented it when she was one of the pieces.

However, when faced with the evidence, and having swallowed the humiliation and frustration of being such a game piece yet again, Susan acknowledged that she'd been manipulated into another quest. She didn't have to like it – and she was savoring the dislike the way that an alcoholic savored the whisky that was going to make the next morning a living hell – so it only made sense to just get the task over with.

She was unwilling to say so out loud, though, because Teatime had taken her capitulation for granted the moment she'd exited the Oblong Office and had been talking about preparations for the last ten minutes. Her pride rebelled.

"And of course he knows where my body is. I wonder he didn't say, though. Maybe he's just waiting for you to go back and formally accept the commission. He plays words like music; the words are probably important." Teatime blipped back a few yards, facing the Palace thoughtfully. "Do you think we should go back, since we're still so close? It would save us two trips."

When Susan didn't answer, he turned back to her, saw that she'd gone another half-block without him, and caught her up. "Are you going to be like this the whole time? It's incredibly dull," he informed her.

He probably thinks he's being nice, giving me a warning! If it's boring, he'll do something irritating, so by telling me it's dull, he's giving me a chance to be interesting, she thought, briefly shutting her eyes, worried that she was finding logic in his probable train of thought. This is what I will have to endure for who knows how long. Why me?

They were turning to take the stairs up to Susan's small but expensive apartment (not everyone could afford proper plumbing in apartments, not even in Sator Square), and Teatime leaned in and drawled warningly, "Susan."

Susan spat out the syllables of his name with each step as she ascended the stairs as though she held a grudge against them. "Teh." Stomp. "Ah." Stomp. "Tim." Stomp. "Eh." Stomp.

"Yes?"

In tones so clipped that they had razor edges, she announced, "I am going to sleep. You are going to do whatever you feel is appropriate that does not involve me." Great gods, she was using his name as a form of bribery – how much more insane was this going to get? "I am meeting with my grandfather on Octeday. I have until then to catch up on all the sleep you have stolen from me in the last two weeks. Go away until Monday."

"Isn't this much more pleasant?" he asked with a pleased smile. "I'll be ready Monday." Susan dug her key from a greatcoat pocket, turned it in the lock, and entered her home. As she was turning to shut the door, she saw that Teatime was still standing on the stoop, watching her. He grinned and chirped, "Sleep well!" And then he was gone.

Suppressing tears, Igorina tucked her wristwatch-with-wires project into a shallow drawer beneath the kitchen slab. The jarred eyeballs above the counter gazed down on her with pity. They traced her path across the floor to the door that separated the kitchen from the lab. Had the eyes had ears, they'd have heard sniffling and a few quiet yips before some heavy sobbing became the only sound.

It had been too good to be true, she supposed. Only two weeks ago, Igor had told her not to be too modern, as if Ankh-Morpork had infected her with ideas too nontraditional even for a liberal like him. Her husband was getting to that age at which he began worrying about his standing in the Clan and in the eyes of the world. A man in that mindset wouldn't tolerate a wife who tinkered with clockwork, pumps, wires, and pistons. In the last couple of years, they'd even spoken of decanting their own little Igor or Igorina. With signs like that, she probably should have seen it coming.

Surely it hadn't been necessary to use such strong language, though, to call her work 'foolish twiddlings' and 'unnatural'! It was painfully clear that he'd meant the last word to apply to her rather than to her hobby. She thought so, at least.

It had begun a couple of weeks ago when he had come home quite late from work and found her sitting at the kitchen slab with magnifying goggles on, a blowtorch in one hand and a pair of pincers in the other. He startled her first by growling, "What the devil are you doing?" She'd only avoided crisping the end of a finger because she was of the Clan and instinctively avoided jumping with startlement. But it was a close thing.

About to answer him, Igorina had looked up and gotten her second shock. All the stitching he'd spent years cultivating was gone! His eyes were level, with the protrusive left brow ridge brought back to the same size as the right. The lower lip, which had had such a charming medial division and two distinct colors, was almost human. She had sat there, staring.

"Well?" Igor had snapped. "The food?"

When someone as mild as her husband used that tone of voice and had that kind of look on his newly rearranged face, one did well to move quickly. Igorina turned off the gas for the blowtorch, shoved her whole project away to the foot of the slab, and turned to her custom stove. "Here," she said, lifting the metal dome off the tray of frogs she'd been keeping warm. "Only about five minuteth dead," she added. He usually liked them still twitching, but all they needed was the proper application of salt to liven them up a bit.

He'd told her to give them another zap or two, which took the frogs well past the kicking stage to the stage where the rubbery pink meat started going opaque and white. Igorina had frowned at the smell but had placed the tray before her husband all the same. They had dined in silence.

After Igorina had cleared away the tray, Igor had said somewhat more gruffly and less angrily, "You should get back to flesh, my dear. All the… metal, the lightning… can't be good for your sk – thkillth."

A little wary still, she'd answered, "Oh, but you theemed tho exthited about the air compreththor."

"No arguing," he admonished, pushing up from the slab. "I'll bring home a dog tomorrow for you to work on, to keep your hand in. I'll critique your work when I get home."

Then he'd headed off to bed without another word. He left for work the next morning the same way, silent and symmetrical and cross. Feeling a little defiant, Igorina had done a little more work on her wristwatch-with-wires, but she made sure she was finished well before Igor came back home. Which he did. With a puppy. And a lot of silent glaring at the slab.

He'd left this morning with a parting admonition to reacquaint herself with the basics. And once Igorina had finished crying, she'd anesthetized the puppy, misaligned every symmetrical feature on its body, and then took the extra steps of realigning the corresponding neural pathways so that the puppy would never notice it was lopsided. Igor would probably scold her for the last part, since it was men's work to do deep surgery and women's work to specialize with superficial stitching, but if he was going to insist that she 'keep her hand in', then he was going to see just what she could do!

Chapter Text

The sight that greeted Teatime at the front steps of Susan's apartment bright and early Monday morning was not something he'd likely forget. In fact, he refused to forget it. It was quite interesting and worth revisiting occasionally.

The sun was just cresting the roof of a house across the square, and it was setting the frost that rimed everything aglow. Against the million tiny coronas stood a long-legged white horse wearing a bridle and reins that were trimmed in omega- and skull-stamped silver. And with a groggy, impatient expression that promised unpleasantness to all and sundry, Susan mounted the saddleless horse and took up the reins. Her hair was braided 'round her head, and good heavens me she was wearing trousers.

And then she disappeared.

To be fair, so did the horse, but what did the horse matter? It was Susan who was charged with reattaching Teatime to his physical self. She'd no business disappearing when she knew there was work to do; it wasn't as if Teatime was going to let her do it alone. She mightn't take proper care without supervision.

It was only a fraction of a second later that his mind registered that his proper eye saw one thing, and the scrying-stone eye saw another. Teatime shifted his attention and saw that Susan and her horse were still there at the base of the steps, but she had somehow hidden them from normal sight.

Teatime moved (that's rather how he thought of it; he'd been at it so long that it was no different from walking or running. There were just fewer countable steps) and asked from the vicinity of Susan's left foot, "How did you do that?"

She stiffened and sucked in a quiet, surprised breath. Teatime thought, from what he'd seen, that she'd always been decent at that – masking her fear or surprise. Very few people were able to hide those emotions, but she had a pretty good poker face. And what Susan couldn't hide she buried under rage. It simply amused Teatime that she thought she was hiding it well from him, of all people.

There came the glare. And it was a truly fierce one, fired over her knee and down the tall black boot she wore; all the sleep she'd promised to catch up on gave the glare a force like a physical blow, and it made Teatime grin. He made sure it was one of his leering grins. He knew what those did to ladies; they got him into a number of parties uninvited and allowed him access to several targets.

He dodged backward in a leisurely manner and watched the boot – very good construction, with a sensibly low heel and omegas subtly tooled into the heel counter, made by no cobbler Teatime recognized from Ankh-Morpork – as it whizzed past his nose.

What that smile did to Susan was make her mad. Ah, well; one tool couldn't work the same way on everyone.

Teatime let the grin shift into just pleasure as he jabbed a finger into Susan's calf. "I thought we were done with this," he commented. And he had, he really had. He'd been genuine when he offered to spar with her once he had a body again. It would be good exercise for him, and it would teach Susan her inferiority. But surely that could wait!

"Not if you're going to be insufferable from the beginning of this blasted contract," she snapped. A nudge from the near leg – and my, wasn't it well-turned! – directed the horse to sidestep Teatime. "Now, what is it you think I need to get from this Guild of yours?" she asked. She was positively radiating Let's Get This Over With, Then.

Ah, well. At least she remembered that much, Teatime thought with a mental shrug. "I'll meet you there!" he said. Then he moved.

Once there, he stepped over to the Hubward side of the Guild's open archway, aiming for a reasonably-sized shadow to pop from when Susan arrived.

And from over his left shoulder, he heard her say, "Well? Let's get on with it." He glanced over and up, openly surprised. She added a little distractedly, "We haven't got all the time in the world." She was frowning, but it lacked that subtle curl under the nose that indicated irritation; if Teatime was better at reading people, he might be inclined to say she looked faintly concerned. But that really didn't matter. Something much more interesting had snatched his attention and run away with it.

"How did you do that?" Teatime asked again. No one had been able to replicate his way of moving, not that he knew of. The scrying stone he'd installed when he was thirteen had enhanced his natural agility; so while others may be fast, they could never be as fast as he was. He'd made sure of it! And Susan didn't seem the type to deal in the kind of magic artifact one could nick from a cooling corpse.

"Is it a Death thing?" he asked. It was the only likely explanation. "What else can you do? And why didn't you do it at the Tooth Fairy's castle?" It's like a Zlobenian nesting doll! One finishes looking at one layer, and it turns out there's another one underneath, he thought. He didn't linger on the idea that, for the first time, he wanted only metaphorically  to get inside someone else's head, but that was mainly because Teatime rarely lingered.

Susan replied, "I already answered that one." She dismounted and began to open a pack Teatime was sure hadn't been slung over her shoulders before. "There is no Death there." With some effort, she hauled a large, linen-wrapped bundle from the bag. It was clearly book-shaped, and Susan took great pains to keep it covered.  One-handedly, she slung the bag's strap over the horse's neck; the horse stood and took on a long-suffering expression.

"What have you got there?" Teatime asked. Metaphysical questions could wait. Whatever would Susan bring to the Assassin's Guild with the task they had before them?  Where had it come from?  And, seriously, what was it?  He leaned in over her shoulder, frustrated that he could not just pluck it from her fingers, whisk it safely out of arm's reach and open it.

She turned, and her shoulder went through his chin, triggering a shudder and a snarl. Teatime shrugged. He didn't see what all the bother was. "It's cold!" seemed a feeble excuse, to his mind, for the reactions she gave. When his form passed through hers, all he felt was a wash of warmth, like one feels when slipping into a bath to soak away aches – comforting and pleasant but nothing to shudder over.

"Where is everyone?" Susan demanded. Her voice echoed under the arch and died out as it passed into the wide, airy courtyard on the far side of it.

"In bed like sensible people, at this hour," groused a voice from a window just the other side of the archway.

A middle-aged man poked his head through the window, and Teatime got a familiar feeling that couldn't decide if it was annoyance or smugness when the man's expression fell from irritation to stunned fear. "Mr. Tea-" He swallowed the mispronunciation, pawing reflexively at a knife scar near his collarbone that Teatime remembered giving him. "Mr. Tay-Ar-Tar-May," he continued as well as his accent allowed, "You're a gho– well. Ahem. You're back. Yes." Even the porter at the gate was well-educated enough to limit himself to one redundantly obvious statement. "I'll rouse Lord Downey, then, shall I?"

"Do that, yes," Teatime replied through a smile. "Thank you, Mr. Haynes."

"This way, please."

They followed the porter through a number of doors and past a scant few servants, who were well-trained enough to do no more than blink at the sight of a ghost in the guildhall. The horse followed them only as far as the main entrance; it took up a nonchalant posture, and no one remarked upon it.

As they walked, Teatime looked over it all with pleasure, looking forward to returning to these halls when he'd got a body again. It never entered his head to doubt his return. He had, in fact, completed the Hogfather contract – it hadn't stayed completed, thanks to Susan here, but he was sure some concessions could be made for the interference of Death's granddaughter – so he looked forward to continuing his work as a full Assassin. He mightn't get credit for the Hogfather, but he had plenty of ideas by which he would gain his fame, oh yes.

Haynes knocked at a fine door labeled with Lord Downey's name, and when the master of the guild's personal secretary opened it, the two men exchanged very quiet words. The secretary – Teatime couldn't be bothered to remember the man's name because he was that unmemorable a personality – flicked a glance at the guests, blinked, and disappeared.

In just a few brief moments, the door swung wide, and an incredulous Lord Downey goggled at his guests while wrestling into a dressing gown. "Good gods," he finally sighed, casting a weary look at Teatime, which Teatime rather resented. "Well, come in." Then he turned, flapping a nobbly hand at them, inviting them to follow him.

"Actually, Lord Downey," said Susan, arresting his forward movement with those few arch words, "Would you mind taking this?"

"Your Grace?" he asked, arching a brow at the young woman. His words, while polite, came through a complex tone of voice. He seemed, to Teatime, to be unsure of how he wanted to feel. There was a sneer there, as well as a little scraping and bowing and a considerable amount of confusion.

Susan arched a brow, too. It was somehow more impressive, though it lacked age and about half the hair of Lord Downey's. "We shall discuss that presently," she replied crisply. Then she held out the linen-wrapped bundle that she'd kept clutched to her like a child's last, cherished treasure. "Will you take this, please? I shall need it back in about five minutes."

Lord Downey, wordlessly stunned – Are Lord Vetinari and I the only people on the disc she doesn't affect that way? Teatime wondered – took the bundle from her.

"Thank you."

The sudden burning in one eye and the clear image of Susan walking away in the other indicated to Teatime that she'd done her disappearing trick again. He turned in time to see Lord Downey blinking in shock. The man took himself in hand quickly, and when he turned a glare on Teatime, Teatime shrugged and said, "She does that."

On Octeday, Susan had called Binky to her. He had come at her call, and she set off for Death's domain, refreshed and considerably calmer than she had been. Her grandfather had made a theatrical point of having a nice tea and chat over unimportant topics before addressing the main subject. This he had opened by gently reprimanding her about her words and focusing on how embarrassing it was to be yelled at in front of virtual strangers after being summoned before the Patrician. He insisted that only curiosity and the knowledge that Susan would be there had brought him to the Oblong Office. He didn't feel the yelling had been necessary or helpful.

Susan apologized, in her prickly way, for her language.

THANK YOU. Then he'd done the equivalent of clearing his throat and assumed the Loom (The Loom involved the forward lean and blended it with haughtiness and just a hint of doom). NOW, I FORBID THE USE OF BINKY OR THE LIBRARY.

"What?"

I AM VERY CROSS WITH YOU. THIS IS YOUR PUNISHMENT.

"For shouting at you?" Her force of will was all that kept Susan from beginning to shout again. Thank goodness Teatime had left her alone while she slept. Her reserves of self-control had returned, and this was requiring all of them.

NO. FOR SOMETHING MUCH WORSE. Death contrived to frown disappointedly at her.

"Worse than shouting at you."

YES.

"What?"

I CANNOT TELL YOU. YOU HAVE NOT DONE IT YET.

She bypassed that last statement without comment. She had to. It was the only way to keep herself calm. There were just some parts of the conversations between grandfather and granddaughter that promised circular argument and shouting; this was one of them.

Instead, she closed her eyes, sighed, and then asked, "Can I at least use him to get home? I have, if you remember, a quest that you signed me up for."

Death amplified the Loom by rising to his feet. It took a long time. Once fully upright and radiating disapproval from toe to cowl, he answered, NO. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO LEAVE WHEN YOU ARE ABLE TO LEAVE.

"What is that supposed to mean? Have you been talking to the History Monks again? I've agreed to go find Teatime's body, so I need to get on with it! It's not a task I want to linger on, you know!"

I MUST GET BACK TO WORK, he replied. DON'T WAIT UP FOR ME. He strode from the study in two strides that took him leagues and leagues away. The door swept closed with a thud.

It took the equivalent of two days for Death to return to his home. Susan was in a frightful mood. Albert was in a worse one, because Susan had kept him hustling the whole time. An old wizard like him had to stay alert to keep her out of the library, and Albert was used to a much easier workload. The only time he'd had to himself was when Susan had rushed to the stable – Death had taken Binky, but she'd thought it worth double-checking – and when she'd fallen asleep in her old room. To be fair, though he was only human, Albert was a wizard. So, while Susan could bypass and manipulate a bit of Death's domain, Albert was able to navigate only a step or two behind. And when Death blocked a pathway, it tended to stay closed. Susan gave up after about a day and spent the next one pettily hindering Albert's usual work.

Death's first dinner back was a sorry affair. The fried sausages and potatoes were quite burnt, Albert was sullen, and Susan was trying every trick she'd spent the last two days inventing to convince Death to at least send her back to the Disc himself. He sat silently through bullying, begging and bargaining. Cajoling and dares did not move him. It was beneath Susan's dignity to try the mean tricks Twyla would have attempted. Puppy-dog eyes were beyond her abilities. The best she could do in that area was a silent stare.

Finally, exhausted, Susan propped her elbows on the table and rested her head between upraised hands. "Why couldn't you have waited until I'd done this terrible thing you're so upset about?"

I WON'T HAVE THE CHANCE AFTER.

She jerked back, horrified.

SORRY. I WASN'T CLEAR. NO, YOU WON'T DIE. NOT SO SOON.

Trying to calm a racing heart, Susan glared at her grandfather. "Then what?"

YOU KNOW I CANNOT TELL YOU.

"Well, I can't say I've learned my lesson, since I haven't made the mistake, and you won't tell me," she said. "But I am suitably unhappy. May I go home now? The idleness is driving me mad."

His great, cowled head swung back and forth in a negative arc. WHEN YOU ARE ABLE TO LEAVE, he repeated cryptically, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO LEAVE.

"Well, call her back," Lord Downey snapped, setting the bundle down on the desk with a thump. "I get exactly three minutes' warning from that bloody bowler-wearing messenger from the Patrician that I'm to expect a visiting ghost, find out that it's you of all people, and that you're here with the duchess of Sto-Helit. With that kind of notice, one should be able to expect the business at hand to be handled with some alacrity, Mr. Teeyatimee."

"Teh-ah-tim-eh, sir," he reminded Lord Downey with one of his most effective weird smiles. A little burst of pleasure bloomed in his chest when he saw the sheen of sweat suddenly glisten on the guildmaster's brow. He still had the knack.

He continued, "Time is important in our mission, sir, but Susan's preparedness is more so. She'll need to be more like an Assassin to accomplish our goal."

"Do you mean to tell me that you are here so the duchess of Sto-Helit can take a crash course in Assassin's studies?" The level of incredulity in Lord Downey's tone was nearly operatic.

"Oh, no, sir," Teatime answered. "Just a little weaponwork and stealth."

The eyebrow arched again. Lord Downey drawled, "If you've not noticed, she hardly needs help with the last."

"Everyone has weak points, sir. Even Susan." Teatime sank down into one of the chairs before the guildmaster's desk. He'd discovered at Susan's apartment that he could treat inanimate objects as solid if he concentrated hard enough on it; he'd discovered very early on after his return that anything he stood on and believed himself able to stand on assumed a given value of "solid", as well. Therefore, while he didn't have to worry about sinking through the floor and thence through the Disc and into the Space Turtle, Teatime did have to expend a little effort on sitting on chairs.

"Learning to handle weaponry seems more important anyway," he continued. "I think the only person she's ever inhumed is me, and she was terribly sloppy about it."

Susan had spent the next day in what could only be described as a funk. Albert was still preventing her from going near the library (Death's command was still preventing her actually going in), which was her only resource of knowledge with Grandfather away and Albert himself so crusty. And when she offered a cursory apology (which proved that she had more sense and somewhat less attitude than she'd had at sixteen) and then asked Albert for his help, he'd snorted.

"No good hoping for help from me," he'd retorted. "I've got me own list of 'expressly forbiddens', and helping you's one of 'em. 'Sides, it's likely something to do with your heritage, and I ain't got the least bit of useful information on that, unless it's about mucking about in business that's not rightfully yours."

It took another day for Susan to consider every other method she could try. Persistence was getting her nowhere. Creativity, therefore, was indicated, as was outside assistance. Eventually, she went down the mental list of everyone she knew. The only people who seemed likely able to help her were Mustrum Ridcully and Lobsang Ludd, and their aid depended entirely on her being able to contact them. And as Albert had shut her down, the odds of her reaching Ridcully were nearly nonexistent. Her last chance seemed to be to try to contact Lobsang; though how she was to do that when there was no Time in Death's domain, she didn't know.

"Don't worry about it," his voice said from the entrance. He stood there with a sheepish smile on his face. "I premembered this conversation, so you don't have to leave a note somewhere, hoping it'll get to me."

Susan actually smiled at him. It was a small, close-lipped smile, but it was there and more than most people got. She didn't waste time with questions. The talk they were about to have must have happened because knowing about it had brought Lobsang here; as the son of the anthropomorphic personification of Time (and occasionally that anthropomorphic personification Itself), and as a History Monk, he was able to know about it; as he was still mostly human, he was able to be in Death's domain.

"Then you know what I have to do," she said.

Lobsang grimaced at this and shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah. I do." He sighed and held out a hand. "Things have to happen. You have to do them. I'm here to make sure of it."

Chapter Text

Lord Downey copped out. He was happy to cop out. Eager, even. That scag Vetinari (low though it be thought!) had left a huge Downey-shaped loophole, and Downey dove through it headfirst.

"If the Patrician was that obvious about what is to happen after your … return," Downey said carefully, "Then he clearly has plans for you. I have doubts that they involve your immediately taking up Guild work again."

Teatime's expression took on that cast of slightly disappointed bewilderment that Downey found familiarly disturbing. "I can't imagine what," Teatime mused. "What else could I be fit for?"

A noose? was the sarcastic and strictly mental response. Downey said aloud, "You will have to address that question to Lord Vetinari. I am not privy to all his plans." Fewer, even, than he was willing to admit, but Downey hoped that the plans they were talking about involved a Bonk philosopher, dried frog pills, and, for a preference, Fourecks.

Teatime's gaze suddenly sharpened, and Downey couldn't keep from recoiling just a bit. Not for the first time, he worried that Teatime's odd glass eye allowed him to view others' thoughts. It was bad enough that Ventinari seemed to do it without the aid of magic. Downey could do without a lad who enjoyed killing a little too much knowing what Downey thought of him.

"I do hope Susan returns soon. We have so much to do. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish," Teatime said.

Downey really didn't know what to say to that, and he was a man unaccustomed to being at a loss for words. Manners dictated the asking of open questions. Keep the other fellow talking; this way, he couldn't pump you for information while you were doing it to him. Morbid curiosity – more literally in this case than in most – presented manners with a few questions to ask.

"Tell me, Mr. Tayahtimee, what is it like, post-inhumation?"

"Frightfully dull, sir. At least, at first."

Lobsang had taken her hand and dragged her out of the front door. He'd had to turn the knob to open it, which was something only Albert had really had to do, and that only five years ago at the most recent. The black-and-white surroundings had blurred, flickered blue, and then resolved into a colorfully bucolic mountain scene. Susan blinked around, breathing in the scent of spring flowers.

"Did you take us forward or back?" she asked.

"The spring after the Assassin died," was the uncharacteristically curt answer. Lobsang sighed and rubbed at his face. "Your grandfather is about to collect one of our monks, Lark, and the Abbot is going to keep him talking ten minutes." And when one of the History Monks gave a time, they meant exactly that.

Susan frowned, considering the History Monks and their attitude toward coincidence. "Officially, then."

"Yes. C'mon." He took her hand, and the scenery blurred again. This time, she led the way back into Death's home, making certain to use the doorknob. Sometimes – more and more often, now – she forgot to do so.

Once in the library, she quickly located the appropriate canyon-like aisle of autobiographies. The books, writing themselves, whispered, filling the air with a dry hiss. It was sort of like the lifetimer room, but louder.

"JONATHAN TEATIME," she said, properly, holding out her hands. A volume several inches thick thwapped into her palms from above. It was followed by a shorter, fatter paperback marked "Translations."

"He comes with a dictionary?" she demanded.

Behind her, Lobsang huffed. "Yes, yes, very complex. Can we go now? Death can be distracted only for so long."

"I have one more stop to make, and then we're off."

"Of course you do."

Susan asked Lobsang to hold the books. She brought into being a linen tablecloth and spread it out on the floor; she took back the books and wrapped the cloth around them. "I'm not very comfortable with stealing autobiographies from my grandfather. Sneaking in and reading them is one thing, but taking them…"

Lobsang shrugged. "It happens. If it makes you feel any better, this is why he's locked you out of the library just before you head out to find the Assassin's body. And then, of course, there's the horse theft."

"Binky? Fantastic." She picked up the bundle. It was heavy enough that she had to clutch it close to her chest; her arms were going to fall off if she had to haul these things around much. Binky would be needed for certain, then. She headed off toward the stables, calling a rucksack into being as they walked. Even with the weight slung across her torso and thumping against her hip, she'd be grateful for the horse.

"Lobsang?"

"Yes?"

Susan paused for a moment, because confronting people about emotions wasn't something she usually did. Her parents had been so aggressively practical that even emotions were muted in favor of reason. But Susan's curiosity and utter stubbornness were stronger. "Look, I know you're doing your job, here. It's probably inconvenient. But you've been terribly short with me today." She paused again before soldiering on. "And it's been months since your last note. Are you angry with me?"

"No." His tone, which was in that hinterland between frustrated and sullen, indicated that he was being exactly, precisely accurate. He was not angry with her.

"But you are angry."

Lobsang sighed. "Not anymore, not really. Things happen, and I'm not happy about them. But I knew I'd lose you; I figured it out earlier this year – your 'this year'. I…" He rubbed the back of his neck "I didn't want to torture myself. And I can't tell you any more than that. I couldn't tell you why I stopped writing then, either. Spoilers, you know."

While Susan was still speechless – she was stuck on the "I'd lose you" part – Lobsang turned and took her in a quick hug. "We'll still be friends," he told her with infuriating certainty. "But we both have jobs to do, and if we hang around for another two minutes, Death is going to catch us."

Well, that was enough to get Susan moving. Rather, it was at least enough to get her tangle of emotions blamed on her grandfather, even though it was unfair.

Binky whickered at them over the half-door of his box. It was the work of moments for Susan to get his bridle on. It took even less time for her to shift her clothing to more appropriate attire. She chose trousers and low-heeled boots this time. The last time she'd had an adventure with Binky, it had been the Hogswatchnight she'd killed Teatime; while she liked the cold, she didn't like it quite as intimately as all that. And running up and down the steps of the Tooth Fairy's castle in fashionable high-heeled ankle boots had been a mistake she'd regretted for weeks afterward.

"Binky knows where and when to go," Lobsang told her. "He'll come back here, and I'll get you back to the right time." He grinned. "Then you'll have to figure out how to get out again."

The Igor insisted on being called "Master." He also insisted on the consciousness answering to the name Hiddlesham. The consciousness had just barely regained its proper sense of touch and the ability to walk; it didn't recall a name, so Hiddlesham worked.

Igor had him – and it unquestionably was a him; the Trouser Accident and resultant Changing Incident and Zipper Tragedy had proven it beyond doubt – turn the body on the slab onto its belly.

The body was lukewarm to the touch, as though it were… well, naked on a stone slab. Just not dead. The body breathed, it grew hair that needed trimming, it made messes that needed cleaning about eight hours after the Master injected it with a nutritive fluid. But it just lay there, waiting for the Igor/Master to apply science to it. Now that Hiddlesham had gotten it turned over, he saw that there was a shaved patch on the back of the head, which allowed for the couplings that connected it to the wires and the wall.

Once he had gotten Hiddlesham upright and functioning acceptably, the Master had rambled at him in classic mad-scientist style. "Incredible brain. Broken, surely, but how did they break it? Can it be repaired? I'd love to know what happened to the eye. I heard through the grapevine that he put in a magic one, the mad boy. Love to know where to find that, too. If I bring him back, I'll get all the information I want."

The Master held out a hand with huge knuckles and opened and shut it quickly. Hiddlesham had found out that this meant, "Give me what you have, boy, and be quick about it." Hiddlesham held out his fist, which he now saw had a washrag in it.

"The other one." The Master sounded like he was still had a pretty good hold on his temper. Sometimes he lost it. Hiddlesham proffered the other hand, revealing something like a short-bladed knife. The Master took it from him and said, "Good boy. I'll make a competent aide of you yet – reclaim a little of what you were." He moved around the head of the slab, ducking under the wires that still connected the body's head to a panel on the wall. This panel, Hiddlesham had found, was off limits. It was off limits to the tune of a good electrocuting. That had led to the Trouser Accident, and he didn't like to repeat it.

The Master brought the blade up to the body's head. "Suppose we start with the occipital lobe," he said.

That's funny, the consciousness that was now Hiddlesham thought. He'd known that the Master was an Igor at first glance, all those weeks ago. He'd known how they patched themselves for ages and ages using other people's body parts; he'd known they all were named Igor or Igorina if they were girls. He knew that he thought they were really interesting; it was hard to forget that powerful an emotion. It seemed to be all he had now.

It just hadn't occurred to Hiddlesham until now that the Master had been obsessively avoiding the 'S' sound.

Don't Igors usually lisp their esses?

Hiddlesham wasn't about to ask. There were worse things than the Zipper Tragedy. He wasn't sure what or how, but there just were.

Chapter Text

If Susan's window of opportunity had been slim when she'd taken the autobiography, then it was next to nonexistent now. Death, in the present, was in the middle of punishing her for taking the books. It was probable he had a good idea of what Susan intended. She had to tuck the books somewhere reasonably safe until she'd managed to leave Death's domain on her own. Rather, she'd have to put the books somewhere improbable and inconvenient so Death would have a hard time of it if he wanted them back.

So it was with extreme anxiety that she followed Teatime to the Assassins' guildhall. Even that took too long for her comfort. Once the books were in Lord Downey's hands, she faded out and rushed back to Binky, who tore back off to his home time.

Lobsang met them at the edge of the wheat fields and pulled Susan off Binky's back. She yelped and glared. "The Abbot just said goodbye," he explained. "And unless you want to ride off and confess the theft to your grandfather right now…"

Binky turned, and then there was nothing left of him but a receding ribbon of flame.

"A little warning next time!"

"Right, right." The scenery blurred once more, and they were back, in the same place but in the proper time, insofar as that could happen at the edge of Death's domain. Lobsang turned to her and jerked a thumb at Death's cottage-front. "You'll figure out how to leave, but you'd probably better start now."

Susan sighed. "Thanks. Give me a hint?"

"You know, I bet you're relieved that you haven't forgotten how to open doors," he answered with a grin. His grin widened briefly when she glared at him. "And it'll make life easier for you to apologize to your grandfather, if you can bring yourself to do it."

Rolling her eyes, Susan let this go without comment. "Lobsang, thank you for… all this. And…" Here she frowned down at her feet, cursing her luck and her heritage. If not for that, she wouldn't have had to face two people she cared about who were mad at her for things she hadn't even done yet. "Whatever I do that upsets you – however it is that you… 'lose' me… Well, I'm sorry."

He gave her another quick, fierce hug, one that she couldn't dodge or regain her balance from too quickly. With a sad smile, he replied, "It'll make sense eventually. So stop worrying about it."

Then he was gone.

Death was just strapping a straining bundle of lifetimers onto Binky's back when the horse gave a great shudder and shook its head irritably. Death huffed, or something like it, and yanked at the straps with equal irritation.

SO THAT MUCH IS DONE. I SHOULD'VE BEEN MORE SUSPICIOUS, I KNOW. BUT IT HAD BEEN SO LONG SINCE I'D TALKED TO ANYONE BUT ALBERT AND SUSAN, he complained. The bundle secure, he turned to the incandescent doorway that stood in the void of the country between Life and Afterlife. It wasn't moored to anything like a jamb, and it was only vaguely perpendicular to the bulk of the footprints that Death had corralled with loads of diatomaceous earth and some cursing. It was not too much different from doorways Death himself made and used when it was inconvenient to ride Binky (who, while being a remarkable horse of more than usual intelligence and talents, was still a horse that needed to breathe. Ocean depths and volcanoes were not what one called "horse-friendly"). This doorway simply didn't seem to close.

THAT BOY IS A HAZARD, Death muttered, stretching his arms wide, as though to embrace the door. THERE'S SOMETHING UNFAIR ABOUT IT ALL. IT SHOULDN'T BE EASIER FOR US TO RESURRECT HIM THAN TO SEND HIM TO AN AFTERLIFE. Slowly, he brought his hands together; a wind kicked up from the doorway. Death's robe showed every rib and long bone, every trochanter and symphysis on one side and a great billowing mass of cloth on the other. The doorway glowed gradually brighter as its presence in this realm compressed. By the time Death had brought his hands together and laced the fingers, Binky had had to turn his back to the glare.

I WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS, he growled. His fingers clenched on one another with a huge grinding noise, and the sliver of a doorway flared. Binky screamed but remained where he was. Death barked, CLOSE UP. NOW. And it did.

Death sagged and brought one hand wearily to his head. Binky came up to his master and nudged at the arm swinging loosely at his side. Slowly, slowly, he turned and mounted the horse. I AM GOING TO HAVE TO HAVE WORDS WITH SUSAN ABOUT MR. TEATIME AFTER ALL THIS IS DONE, he sighed. IF SHE CAN'T KEEP HIM OCCUPIED, AND HAVELOCK VETINARI CAN'T CONTROL HIM, THEN I DON'T LIKE TO THINK OF THE MESS. HOME, BINKY.

Binky was careful not to let him fall.

Susan was only in the house for a scant handful of minutes – she didn't even have time to change her clothes back to normal! – before Death came in looking like… Well, if he'd been human, she'd have said he looked like Death. Maybe even Death Warmed Over. But this was Death looking like he wanted to resign from being Death. And Susan was in no way willing to do that all over again.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

NOT NOW, PLEASE, SUSAN. BINKY NEEDS A REST, AND I STILL HAVE WORK TO DO. A huge bundle slung over his shoulder both clinked and hissed. Susan decided not to ask.

"All right, but before you do, I do need to say that I'm –"

IT WILL HAVE TO WAIT.

"I just wanted –"

I SAID NOT NOW.

And since Death had never used that tone of voice with her before, and it hurt – and because her pride was rebelling against the idea of apologizing anyway – Susan fell silent and watched her grandfather trudge down the hall toward the lifetimer room. It only took a moment for the unfamiliar sore feeling in her throat to get consumed by the more familiar anger.

"Fine," she hissed. She turned and headed for the door, her gait just this side of a stomp. And because she felt hurt – No, blast it! I'm angry! – by her grandfather, she made a point of slowly reaching for the doorknob and slowly turning it. He couldn't see it, neither the act itself nor the precise self-control with which she was doing it. But it was the principle of the thing. It was symbolic.

What she wanted most in that last moment before the tongue of metal holding the door shut slid free was to go home, where Grandfather wasn't dismissing her like a child, where her movements weren't restricted, where her mind could be challenged by more than just an elderly wizard with a bad attitude.

Anywhere but here, really.

She swung the door open and stepped through, registering too late that the light that came in was blue. Infinite blue.

Chapter Text

"Sir?"

Lord Downey looked up from his breakfast snifter of ydnarb (he still kept his liquor decanters labeled backwards, even if he had to replace them every week or so when they inexplicably got musty. He was considering changing the decanters from crystal back to glass; maybe there were imperfections in the stone), which he had poured himself about three sentences into Teatime's description of dying and death. He'd been prepared for the graphic description; he had not been prepared for the tone in which it was delivered. Teatime seemed to view it the way a ten-year-old views his first compound fracture: It was unpleasant to feel, but the retelling promised a wonderfully grossed-out audience.

Downey made a hum that indicated his attention and willingness to listen. The ydnarb helped.

"Would you do me a favor?"

Downey repeated his humming noise.

"Will you open that package, please? I have the feeling that it's very important to know what's in it."

The brandy snifter clinked onto the desk beside the package in question. "I rather think whom I'm keeping this safe from is you, Mr. Tayahtimee," Downey answered, patting it with one hand.

When Susan had handed the bundle to him, he'd gotten a very bookish impression from it. Patting it revealed that there were at least two books, one shaped like a coffee-table collection of iconographs, one like a brick.

"Do you really think that likely, sir?" Teatime's open, smiling face folded into a slight frown. "If we're to go and retrieve my body, then surely weboth need access to all the information we can get." That point made, he smiled again.

"Please."

All the decanters on the shelf glittered blue for a moment, and Lord Downey's eyes went wide.

"Open it."

From behind Teatime, Susan grumbled, "Just in time, it seems." There were hints of her grandfather's Voice clinging to her words, and she looked like she'd only just calmed herself down from a towering rage. Teatime pouted just a little.

When Lord Downey placed the bundle into her hands, held out in polite expectation, Susan thanked him gravely. "I'm sorry for inconveniencing you this morning, but you've made it possible to move forward on this task, Lord Downey. I'll be along tomorrow to go over whatever… course of study you and Teatime think I should have. It is urgent that I read these now," she said, hefting the bundle as punctuation.

"Your Grace," Downey began reproachfully. By the gods, he'd been woken up for this?

Susan corrected him, "Miss Susan will do, Lord Downey." She was already turning to leave. "Do not worry. You'll be compensated for your help." She flicked a look down at Teatime in his chair and added, "Well?"

Downey wondered much later how quickly Teatime would have leapt up and hurried after her if she had not been holding that interesting bundle of books.

They walked the whole way back. Teatime complained and then blipped back and forth between Susan and, presumably, her apartment. He asked where Binky was and why she wasn't using him to "move like me". What was that package of books, anyway?

"Death stuff," was her only reply. The two syllables sounded like they'd been through a gristmill.

When they arrived at her home, Susan set a kettle of water to boil and began cutting some bread and cheese for her breakfast. Since time didn't technically exist in Death's domain, she couldn't be sure, but her body was behaving as if it hadn't been fed for more than eight hours. The food would do her good, and the normalcy of preparing it would be calming –

"I believe you're doing this on purpose," Teatime said.

Or not.

"You wouldn't appreciate it if I made you wait half a week to start on a very important commission, showed up with a mysterious package pertaining to this very important commission and then had breakfast. Would you?"

Susan slapped the knife down on the counter and turned to glare at a pouting Teatime. "You are not sincerely trying the 'do unto others' argument on me!" she cried incredulously. "You? Arguing that to anyone? Are you out of your mind?"

"It's a valid argument!"

"You have the natural empathy of an avalanche!" she snapped, picking up the knife again and hacking away at her half-loaf of brown bread. "And you're a hypocrite on top of it! And you are trying to manipulate me because I do have empathy. Well, you can give that tactic up right now."

Sounding quite put out, he replied, "Well, then open those books, and let's get started. I'd like my body back sooner rather than later, you know."

Susan slapped her bread and cheese onto a plate and angrily swiped the crumbs into one hand with the other. One jerky snap of the wrist landed the crumbs in the low fire in the little pot-bellied stove that took up a quarter of the kitchen. Over the sudden crackling, the kettle started to whistle, and she moved it away from the direct heat before clattering about for the rest of her tea things.

"You are the most fundamentally damaged person I know, Teatime, and I don't want to know why. I'd probably go mad myself if I found out," she growled. "I have serious doubts about this entire thing, but the Patrician wants you. So I'm getting this done and handing you right over to him as soon as I can safely do so." She whipped around and pointed a quivering index finger at Teatime, who had dogged her steps the entire time. "And you are going to stop bothering me."

The solemnity of his expression halted her there. He looked much like he did in the Memory that had shown itself to her at Unseen University two weeks ago (in linear time on the Disc – three and some change if one counted, loosely, the time she'd been trapped with Albert). In fact, he looked so like that premembered Teatime that Susan had to stop herself from boiling into the accompanying rage. It required her pointing out to herself that she was holding no knife, and that the surroundings were her own modestly-appointed apartment, for her to calm down.

All this happened in a moment; Susan firmed up her glare, certain that her expression had slipped while in the middle of the Memory. There was nothing to do with her hair, which was wriggling in agitation.

Teatime, in turn, gave her a quick, knowing look. Then he tilted his head and smiled a small, happy smile. "That's right. I'll have so many other things to do."

Susan muttered, "Too right, you will." She tossed some tea leaves into the pot and poured the boiling water over them. That, a cup, the food, and a fine-mesh strainer went on a very small tray; they, in turn, went with Susan into the front room and were settled next to the linen-wrapped books.

"Susan," Teatime said impatiently, leaning over the bundle and pointing insistently down at it. "What is in here?"

When she silently took a bite of bread and cheese by way of reply, he sighed. His face showed mild regret as he shook his head slowly back and forth.

"I do wish you wouldn't play games like this. I have the unfortunate tendency to hold grudges. Terrible habit, I know, but it's just so hard to break."

With a sour look, Susan answered in the same tone of voice, a warning wrapped in a mocking lilt of sorrow, "And I do so wish you'd give a damn about anyone but yourself, if only for strategic reasons." Her tone sank back down into its customary alto – the solidity, weight, and abrasiveness of a grindstone embodied in pitch and diction. "Some of us have to worry about hunger and illness and injury while on this mad adventure. Some of us actually face considerable risk, so try to forgive me if I take a little sustenance while I can!" To punctuate this, she tore off a savage bite off her open-face sandwich, scattering crumbs onto her lap, which she flicked at in annoyance.

"Besides," she added, shoving the food into the pocket of her cheek, "I'm racing time, anyway. There's no telling when my grandfather is going to come for these. I'm not delaying to torment you; I'm not doing it for fun. I'm delaying because I need food."

Teatime gaped a little, and then he erupted into his weird, high-pitched giggle. "You took these from Death? Really?" He sounded incredulous and just a tiny bit impressed. "If you were trying to quell my impatience, you've failed terribly. Please open this package now. You only need to eat with one hand."

Well. Damn. He had a point. And Susan had been telling the truth; she did have a limited amount of time to read what she needed to read. To stall now would be to make a liar of herself. She reached out with her left hand and flicked the overlapping layers of linen away from the books inside.

In later years, she would have a few arguments with Death about going back to this time and stopping herself from opening that bundle. She was unprepared for what came after. But, as Death would repeat many times, when Susan would complain that what was the point of being able to move in time, WHAT IS DONE CANNOT BE UNDONE.

Well, that had been a surprise. Igor had waxed positively poetic about her puppy's modifications. Perhaps he wasn't as traditional as she'd thought him. He might have decided to disapprove her tinkering with machines, but he didn't suffer from the usual Igor's problem with sexism. Perhaps, if he could be forward thinking about her doing big surgeries, then he could be convinced to let her work with technology again.

"There might be a posi – ahem, pothition for you at Dr. Tolo'th, you know," he'd said, still gruff but also, finally, pleased. "He mainly doeth cothmetic work. You could begin with the thkin and work your way in within a year," he continued. He sounded almost excited. That would explain the few times that his lisp failed him. "And you could check on that contraption you put in. It probably could do with a little tinkering."

This last bit came out a little begrudgingly, but Igorina beamed. Her precious machines! She ran over and threw her arms around her husband, pecking him on the cheek, which went bright red; the green had been fading from his skin, leaving it grayer than usual, and the blush made him look almost human.

"There, there, enough," he muttered, gingerly detaching his wife. "I'll bring along a couple more dogth for you to work on. And I'll talk to the doctor tomorrow. He'th embroiled in a delicate project right now, but he may need your help before he'th done with it."

He'd left then, saying he'd be staying at the doctor's overnight, pleading Dr. Tolo's urgent need of his help. And in her glee, Igorina had chosen not to ask questions.

Chapter Text

A wheeze, followed by a deafening clatter, drew Hiddlesham's eyes to the panel on the wall. It was a three-foot-square plate of old, tarnished brass with newer-looking wires and hoses hanging from old, but well-scoured couplings. The noise subsided, and the hoses and wires went from wildly dancing to a gentler back-and-forth waving. Then, Hiddlesham looked back down at the handsome, boyish face he had been told to shave.

"Oh," he muttered (he had found he could speak some days ago, but the handful of words he could recall came out slurred and were often accompanied by a runnel of saliva), dabbing at the line of scarlet that bloomed at the corner of the body's mouth. He sighed and limped over to the usual counter and took up a mostly empty wide-mouthed jar of herbed ointment and a bit of tissue paper. When he got back over to the slab, he saw that the blood had welled up again and had begun to trickle down the pale jaw; lucky for him, it wasn't as deep as the first few, so he wasn't going to get yelled at as much.

Hiddlesham stared down at one delicate, long-boned hand, full of jar and ointment, aware that he couldn't do anything with that; ditto the hand that pinched the bit of tissue like an Assassin greeting his fellow with the traditional hand signal. It took another minute for him to decide to set something down. Eventually, he was able to swipe some ointment on, and then a thumbnail-sized bit of paper joined the growing mosaic that was this man's face.

That done, and the razor flat on the tray, Hiddlesham had nothing to keep him from looking at the panel again. He didn't want to. If his brain could've called up the words "compulsion" or "morbid fascination", he'd have applied them to that panel and the horror it hid. Of that he was sure – that it hid something and that that something was horrible. He was more certain of that horror than he was of himself, of even this half-corpse in his care. There was a knowledge that went beyond the Trouser Accident. The panel was Bad, and what it hid was Worse.

A quick look was all Hiddlesham could bear to spare it. He loathed giving even that much, but the more he tried to resist the urge to examine the cause of the Trouser Accident, the twitchier he got, which led to broken bottles, deeper razor cuts, and an unpleasant Master. So he appeased the hateful impulse with glances and longer looks in reflective surfaces. Anything was better than getting close, and somehow, it was less terrifying to see it distorted by the curve of glassware or the long, narrow edge of the razor.

"Are you done?"

Hiddlesham jumped, turned, and nodded. It was eerie how silently Master could move. Perhaps it was an Igor thing. It certainly made Hiddlesham work as quickly and efficiently as he could, never knowing if Master would surprise him into dropping something breakable.

"Good." Master hurried over to the body, pulling on a glove, one of the new dwarf-made ones that snapped when one let the cuff go. He prodded at the abdomen, at the round scar that went all the way through, the neck; he pinched here and there and watched how the skin returned to its position. Master ignored the rest of the scars, which were so old and overlaid that he'd told Hiddlesham that he'd like to properly reanimate this man just to ask why a nameless "they" had done such things to a child.

"All in order, I think," he finally pronounced. "The body won't get any healthier. Time to try to get a person back in the body." From the wide pocket in his fastidiously patched white lab coat, Master pulled a thin, nasty-looking little book and two pieces of chalk. He thrust the book at Hiddlesham, saying, "Here." It was open to a page with signs and scribbles all over it.

Hiddlesham automatically, if slowly, moved to take it, but when his fingers closed over the binding, he shivered. The cover was stained dark, and the pages were so stiff and wrinkled with a dried fluid that the tome resembled a wedge more than a book. Slowly, as bubbles through mud, a thought and words arose from the depths of his consciousness, and he slurred, "It got wet."

Master grunted a dry laugh, and the look he gave Hiddlesham wasn't pleasant. A second thought followed the first one, and it occurred to Hiddlesham that Master pitied him. It wasn't a pleasant realization and not just because his brain had had to work that hard to show it to him.

"You don't remember it?" Master asked, crouching down. "You and it were both lying in a puddle of truly repellant liquid when I was able to get to you. Luckily, I reclaimed you both." He then turned and began chalking signs on the floor. "I wonder how you got it away from the wizard in the first place. Or why. Whatever your talents are with a blade, you don't have any ability with runes."

Hiddlesham's mind desperately sent one more idea struggling toward the surface; it would be the last for some time, he knew, and that rather saddened him. "…No wizard…?"

"I know, I know," snapped Master. "I've shown no aptitude for magic, either, but what if it's because I've never tried?" He switched colors of chalk. "Failure will be apparent immediately, and it will be a brief experiment. I can get a wizard to modify the first spell, but only if I have to."

The thoughts were done, exhausted. Hiddlesham was left holding the book gingerly as far from himself as he could manage without ruining Master's view of the design he was marking onto the floor. What was left of his brain now had three fears to occupy it completely.

If Susan had been able to predict that she would be sitting in her front room one winter day, turning the pages of a book with her eyes closed, she'd have just spent another month in Death's domain in order to avoid it. It was silly. Besides, she hadn't quite been able to banish the faint feeling of guilt that she'd attached to this book.

The tantrum Teatime had thrown when Susan had shown him his autobiography had been… startling. His incorporeality had left him little more than noise, but it had rather eclipsed the shouting he'd done in the Tooth Fairy's castle. When someone who spoke in the chirpy tenor he used began to yell, really yell, it could set a person back on her heels. Teatime had gone all red-faced and, once his first anger had passed, he'd made clear how hurt he felt about the whole thing.

It had taken this compromise to get him to calm down. Susan could have withstood the rage, startling as it was, but Teatime's kicked-puppy manner was much harder to bear. She'd thought that educating young students had made her proof against all manipulation, but the naive sincerity of Teatime's hurt wriggled past her defenses and made her capitulate. Had she thought he was trying to dupe her, she'd have gone forward with her initial plan, and damn his tantrums. But Teatime was so patently awful at deceit that she'd believed him to be sincere. So, with some exasperation, Susan had promised that she would turn the pages and let him read the text without reading it herself.

But now, shortly before teatime-no-really-the-actual-time-for-tea, Susan was on chapter six and still waiting for Teatime to find anything useful. He was savoring the read, and Susan wasn't sure if it was merely because he was vain or because he was dragging out the silliness to punish her. Her sympathy had faded. To her mind, Teatime had been unduly offended, because it wasn't as if Susan didn't already know some of the worst things he'd done; if he couldn't be ashamed of treating lives like game pieces, then how could he be embarrassed by the rites of passage of youth and childhood?

She switched hands and sighed. Acidly, she reminded the ghost, "We haven't got all that much time, you know."

Patiently, he replied, "You wanted to find a convenient point in my life to put a tracer on me. I haven't found one. Turn, please."

This plan was all Susan had been able to come up with. Rather, it seemed to be the likeliest to work. All her earlier ideas had hit dead ends, so to speak. The autobiography ended with Teatime's death and didn't cover the deposition of his corpse; they'd checked that first, some time after the yelling had subsided. Death had already denied Susan all assistance, so they weren't in a position to ask him where he'd taken the body.

Susan's talents, while weird, were limited. She could sense and locate anyone on the Disc if she knew the name. But when she sought the Assassin named Jonathan Teatime, the bit in her brain that also governed the Voice directed her to the ghost at her side.

And most of the other methods of finding a five-years-dead corpse seemed impractical, time-consuming, or thoroughly embarrassing. This meant that enlisting the aid of Watch, werewolf or the appropriate fraction of Ankh-Morpork's criminal element – or all three at once, if they chose the right Watch House – was not an option.

Between the tantrum and now, there had been an argument – because, although she had yielded to her pity, Susan wasn't going to sit there and let him carry on like that without retaliation – and yet another visit to the Unseen University. There, Susan had had to spend a great deal of time convincing Ridcully and the Librarian that she wasn't going to muck around with causality too much. Once she'd made the appropriate promises, Ridcully had tasked the Librarian and Ponder Stibbons with devising something long-lasting and traceable but, ultimately, perfectly subtle.

"If we succeed – and we must have succeeded – then any damage the tracing spell could have done him has already been done," Susan had reasoned. "We wouldn't be able to repair it or prevent it at this point."

Ridcully had taken Teatime in with a skeptical, head-to-toe glance. "If that's the case, young woman, then you have a number of apologies to make," he answered reprovingly.

This earned him a glare from both of them, which he found amusing enough to store away in that special part of the brain into which men of a certain age put good teasing material. Then he'd sent them off, reassuring them that the two faculty members who worried him the least – today – were on the job, and if the Librarian couldn't engineer a causality-neutral spell, then it just couldn't be done.

Then another argument had happened. Though Susan was no stranger to having tagalongs on the mad adventures her grandfather sent her on, she took it as given that their aid was tangential at best. That Teatime insisted on taking an active role was grating – he'd come to her for help! – but … it was Teatime! It was bad enough that he'd shown up at all. It was worse that Vetinari and Death had set her what was probably an impossible task, but it was just plain unfair for her to have to accomplish it while saddled with a dead sociopath.

"Really, I can do this without your help. I'm not going to put a tracer on you while in the Tooth Fairy's domain, so I'll have my abilities to hide me. It won't be hard, and since you don't remember having caught me, then you won't catch me. I'll just be in and gone in a moment. If you come along, all you'll do is distract me."

Teatime sighed. "Do try not to speak of me as a child you have to babysit. I will not be left behind, and I certainly won't be a hindrance. In fact, I fancy you might be tempted to sabotage yourself – just out of spite. Turn, please."

She did, opening her eyes just long enough to glare at him. "Oh, that's logical," she drawled. "Making things harder for myself will get you out of my hair that much quicker! Thanks ever so for clearing that up for me."

"Now you're just being difficult on purpose," Teatime chided. "It will be easier if you just admit that if I am there in my present form, you can vent your ire at me and not jeopardize the mission." A pause ensued while he scanned the text. "It just stands to reason. Turn, please."

Susan glared again, instead, and Teatime finally looked up when he realized she wasn't turning the page. "It took you all day to bring forward an actual reason to drag your dead weight along," she snapped. "You threw a bloody tantrum for almost an hour and whined the entire time I was compromising with you and commissioning the wizards for a tracing spell, and you have had me thumbing through a book for you – blind! – and you just now deign to speak to me like an equal?" She gripped the edge of the table just to have something to do with her hands that didn't involve plunging it into spectral chill. The entire day had been a trial, her mood had worsened with each hour, and she saw the limit of her patience fast approaching.

When Teatime answered, it wasn't in anger. It was matter-of-fact. "You aren't my equal. But don't worry – no one is, really. It's nothing to be upset about."

Susan's limit flashed past, snatching her self-control as it did so. Her hands slid right through the table, and her hair crawled up and out of its bun. "You're right," she growled. "We're not equals. I am better than you. And the only way I'm not better than you is that when I kill, the body count's lower!"

She was up, out of her seat, striding through the wall, and opening the front door with transportational intent before Teatime was able to get to his feet. But once he was up and moving, he was at the door with her as she got it open. His strange, pinhole eye looked stranger in the blinding light, which flickered between retina-scorching whiteness and infinite blue.

"Oh!" he cried, his retort discarded in his surprise. "I didn't know you had let me out!" He turned and grinned widely at her. "I didn't know you cared!"

She whipped 'round, her own anger forgotten in her shock. "What?"

Chapter Text

Great, wide shoulders used to brachiating through space with 300 pounds of flesh, fur, and thumbed feet in tow shrugged. It was an impressive movement. "Ook," the Librarian sighed.

Giving the Librarian the sharpest look he dared, Ponder Stibbons asked, "You're sure? That's the only way we can insulate the … subject from the magic?"

"Ook."

"Oh, dear."

"Oooook."

Stibbons lifted his spectacles from his nose to his forehead and rubbed at the corners of his eyes. "We had better speak to the Assassin's Guild about him, I suppose. They'd know if he was mad beforehand, as well. You don't suppose we could get a hold of the, ah, original, as it were?"

"Eee! Ook!"

"No, I don't think Hix would go back on his oath. He was quite adamant about not working with Mr. Teatime ever again."

"Ook."

"Damn."

Susan stared for a moment and then said in a tone of voice that sounded like chisel working on granite, "That is not possible."

"The door I left through looked just like this," he answered. He drew closer to the door to examine the doorjamb. "Less the wood, of course."

Susan was careful to pause and think before she spoke. She made sure to apply special effort to the task this time. Teatime's mind was like the University's thinking engine, only it had been put through a mortar and pestle and a cocktail shaker; if Susan continued to just react, he would keep talking her into corners and making her absolutely lose it.

"I did not do it. I would not do it. For any amount of money. Ever." Her throat ached from the effort to suppress the Voice; her jaw hurt from clenching her teeth. Her hair was still being unruly, but there wasn't anything she could do about it now.

"And here I thought we were getting to be such friends," Teatime said. The puppyish tilted head belied only confusion. The lack of anything resembling guile in his expression was only made eerier by the light's reflecting on the pinhole eye. Susan slapped the door shut just to force that pupil to dilate a bit.

"Do you even understand what that means? Really? Because it certainly doesn't mean 'temporary allies whom you kill when they're done being useful'." Susan pointed stiffly behind her and added, "I don't need to read your 'Translations' to know that that's how you think. And if you think that that's how this is going to end – with you alive and me suddenly finding out how much of my grandfather I've got in me – then you'd do well to alter your plans."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about that. Those others were too dull to keep around."

Susan palmed her forehead and shut her eyes. His compliments were worse than his insults. Probably, she thought, because he meant them equally – and what the hell was she if she was neither his equal nor dull enough to dispose of? And why was she even asking this question of herself? Didn't she have enough identity crises?

When she opened her eyes, Teatime had that curious-but-in-the-early-stages-of-rabies-puppy look on his face again. Before he could say something else that sent her into another fit of anger and further derail their task, Susan jabbed a finger at the book on the table. "Look, just finish that page. You'd better hope that what you're looking for is on it, because if it isn't, you're going to have to go from memory. I'm going to the University, and when I come back, we're going to the Assassin's Guild."

He leaned in, his expression going cool and focused. He warned quietly, "I am not your underling, Susan."

And even though her limbic system kicked her heart rate up and shouted at her to run, Susan knew better than to retreat. Instead, she leaned forward, too. "And I'm not yours," she answered. "You were the one in such a hurry that you wouldn't let me sleep. And who knows how much longer we can keep the autobiography; I'm not going to wait for you to savor it. Especially if your only contribution is a load of insults." Without breaking the staring contest they'd gotten into, Susan reached behind her and opened the door, focusing very carefully. The hot blue light made Teatime's single pupil tighten back up into a pinhole in a moment. Two steps backward got her into the doorway; she shifted her grip, ready to close the door before Teatime could reply.

"So you'd best get reading," she said. After a second's thought, she added grudgingly, "Please."

The three puppies had commanded a decent price. Igorina had rearranged everything about them, shuffling body parts like cards, shifting eyes and tails from dog to dog with an efficiency that had almost disgusted her. It had been so boring. Happily, while she'd been taking them on their daily walkies, a wealthy matron had fallen in love with the littlest, curly-haired one with blue eyes. The woman had left, thirty dollars poorer and one puppy happier. In two hours, she'd been back with friends who wore ostrich feathers in their hats and cut-rate rabbit stoles. The two remaining puppies – an unnaturally long-legged corgi mix and a greyhound with a face like a caved-in mine entrance – had gone home with people who were willing to call them "shmoopsie-poo" and hand over six months' rent to a complete stranger.

Igor, on one of the rare occasions that he'd been home the entire night, had accepted the money with distracted thanks. He shoveled his well-done dinner into his mouth and hurried off to bed. When Igorina had joined him there, he was snoring operatically, his ribs rising and falling with metronomic regularity. She didn't even bother to try to wake him for the conjugal caresses they'd once enjoyed; after the first three failures that month, she'd been too ashamed to try again.

Another thing she didn't dare bring up was Igor's vague promise to talk to Dr. Tolo. Her husband was so angry and impatient these days. It was difficult enough to try to live with him in the few hours he was home; it was like she had lost the man she'd married. She couldn't imagine taking on a job where she'd spend her entire day with him.

It was getting to the point that she was relieved when Igor came home after midnight. It gave her time to work on her machines again. As long as she'd cleaned up before suppertime, he need never know.

Chapter Text

What had been a long day just got longer and longer. Late that afternoon, with snow-bearing clouds rising Rimward over the Street of Small Gods, Susan turned to her companion and considered how to get from him what she wanted.

"Gawain," she began, unconsciously putting out a hand to prevent the boy from stepping off the curb. After looking both ways, she stepped down onto some well-maintained bricks and neatly around a pile of horse droppings. "Do you still play with marbles?"

The boy, who now stood nearly to her shoulder, hopped over the road apples – kicking them would really not be worth the trouble of annoying Susan – and considered how he was going to answer her. He ended up rolling his eyes elaborately. "That's for babies, Susan," he scoffed.

She allowed the omission of the 'miss', but only out of school, and only with the Gaiter children.

"Oh? And what do you play instead?"

"Football!" The word was spoken with a reverence usually reserved for chocolate biscuits or an unusually wicked scab. It was all the rage, after all, now that Vetinari had had things done to it; Susan knew little about it and had no real urge to learn. All she knew was that the sport had been dragged up from the gutters, given a scrub behind the ears, and flung into the middle classes, who considered it a jolly good fashion.

"Of course. You and Vincent are both on a team, yes?"

"Oh, yeah! He keeps goal and I'm a striker! You should come to our match on Saturday. It'll be bloody wicked!"

The normalcy of it – the game, the conversation, the rich boy affecting street slang – made Susan's heart ache. Any other time, she'd have declined and have been relieved to avoid the press of shrieking or sullen parents, but today, Susan had to suppress the urge to accept the invitation and smother herself in normal. Boring would be a blessing.

She made the necessary excuses, however, and they continued on their way to the Street of Cunning Artificers. Evidently, a household game of football had destroyed a Quirmian window that morning. Susan had showed up at the Gaiters' home shortly after the event but just before its revelation to the anxious Mrs. Gaiter. Susan had gotten to watch a self-important social climber begin to throw a fit, remember who was watching, cut that fit short, and do some extremely quick thinking. For punishment, then, Gawain had been commanded to go to Eldin Stronginthearm to commission a replacement; Susan had convinced Mrs. Gaiter to let her go with the boy instead of one of the menservants.

"So," Susan said, trying to return to her original goal, "What did you end up doing with all those marbles? I seem to remember you won quite a lot of them."

"Oh, yeah, loads," he answered. "Gave 'em all away las' year. Traded for enough sweets to make me sick." The boy looked at Susan and began to swagger a bit. "I even gave some of 'em to Twyla."

"Yes, well done. Now, did you give all of them away?"

Gawain scoffed again. "She's my sister, but I don't like her that much!"

"I meant the marbles."

Only an hour previous to this conversation, it had been the work of moments to convince the wizard and the Librarian – who, she supposed, was technically a wizard, but that seemed tertiary to the whole Orangutan thing and the Librarian thing – to choose a different item to house their tracer spell.

"I know where the scrying stone is," she said. After a pause, she amended, "At least, I know it's not with Teatime's body."

It helped that Stibbons and the Librarian were intelligent but also, and more importantly, fairly quick thinkers.

"It'll have to be something else, then, in that case," Stibbons said. "We'll think of something. Er, is there some other object that … ah, the subject keeps with him at all times? Something important or cherished?"

"Haven't the least idea."

"Oook." That 'oook' sounded rather like, "Well, ask him."

Susan sighed, "I don't know that it'll do any good."

"Ook." This time, it sounded like, "Worth a shot."

Stibbons scratched at the bit between his lower lip and Adam's apple. "D'you know, I'd still like to get my hands on that scrying stone, if it's all the same." When Susan gave him a Look, his face took on an expression that Mustrum Ridcully would've recognized and shouted at him for; it involved a lot of contrived innocence, and it promised scholarly zeal that could quickly go awry if not appeased. "It would be … inspirational. And besides, the subject's body would be accustomed to that magic. If we replicated the thaumic resonance of the scrying stone, it might take to him and him to it, you see."

Years of dealing with children had taught Susan many things. Amongst them was the crucial understanding of delayed gratification, otherwise known as the Dangling Carrot.

So, she answered, "If you can come up with some more viable ideas, I can probably get it to you tomorrow morning."

"Brilliant!"

"And if you come up with something that works, then you can have it for safe keeping until we return with the body. After that, I should be able to produce it upon demand if I were you. Undamaged and polished, if you don't mind a word to the wise."

Stibbons' eyes, through the preceding two sentences, had, in order: Squinted with the beginnings of defensiveness, brightened eagerly, and widened with sudden visceral fear.

"Er, we'll, uh, get right on it, miss," he finally said.

The Librarian thoughtfully added, "Ook."

And now, sixteen dollars poorer – fourteen for Gawain's champion 'shooter' and two for a silk drawstring bag she could hang round her neck (Wasn't silk supposed to insulate against magic somehow? Susan was sure she'd heard that somewhere.) – and with an uncomfortable weight swaying between her breasts beneath her sensibly high-necked shirt, Susan headed home. She made a point of walking the whole way. This newfound ability to create doors that reshaped space for her was entirely too easy; it was one more thing that she couldn't become accustomed to. If she used it enough to depend on it, then there went her ever-dwindling supply of normalcy. She was unusually grateful to the Gaiters, because after she'd delivered Gawain, Mrs. Gaiter had invited her to join their family for supper. Listening to the self-conscious gossip and dutiful replies to "How was work today, dear?" had been surprisingly refreshing.

It began to snow as she mounted her steps, and she slowed down to observe. The city wouldn't look this nice again for ages; the snow got yellow and disgusting only a few minutes after arriving in the city. Citizens only had two chances with each turn of the Disc to see Ankh-Morpork look pure, clean, and peaceful, and that was during the first snows of each winter. Then, like a newborn who had been fed and bathed, and had finally fallen asleep, the city, with a shriek and a sudden stench, returned to normal.

Susan hurried inside before it could get that far.

"Susan!"

Teatime had sprung up at her entry; if he'd been a dog, he'd have stood with a wagging tail in the middle of a room that had been torn to shreds. As it was, he was almost dancing with excitement, and there were papers all over the floor.

"Look what I can do!"

He turned to the table. On it sat the pile of linen in which Susan had wrapped the autobiography. Beside that were a pencil and the pile of paper she had gotten to write notes on. They'd never gotten as far as writing notes, because Teatime hadn't found anything in his autobiography that he'd wanted to share with her; he'd muttered something about privacy and pertinent information.

The ghost leaned over the table and twisted with his arms held at shoulder height, and with an expression of fierce concentration, he whipped his arms down and around at the table in a movement that was almost too fast to see.

The top sheet of paper shot up and sideways a few inches. It only made it halfway off the table, where gravity was able to take hold. Susan numbly watched the side-to-side descent. Her stomach dropped, too.

"Oh, good," she said faintly. "If we fail, you can become a poltergeist." It was the next best thing to being corporeal. Visions of flying knifes cartwheeled across her imagination.

Teatime shook his head at her. "I can become a poltergeist so we don't fail," he corrected.

She shoved her sense of dread down and piled sarcasm on top of it. "Brilliant. You can give somebody a paper cut from four inches away."

"You have no imagination." A patent untruth but one she was not about to correct.

"You have no morals," she retorted, "No heart, no – well, let's not begin. It's a long list, and we haven't the time." Susan strode forward, undoing the buttons on her overcoat. The movement gave her bustle. Whatever retort Teatime had she overrode with the rustling of cloth and a brisk, "Since you figured that out, were you able to get through the book and find a point we can use to place a tracer?"

Looking like a cat standing across the room from an empty fishbowl, Teatime replied, "Your grandfather took it before I could."

"What?"

"He came for the books not long after you left. Do you know, he wouldn't answer any of my questions?" He pouted briefly. "It seemed so much more logical to ask him where my body was, since he was the one to remove it in the first place."

"And?"

Teatime shrugged. "He picked up the books and stood looking at me for a while. Then he said I was to be helpful and not a nuisance, and if I were difficult, he would make me sorry." He shrugged again, clearly unconcerned about a direct threat from Death. "Then he did this," he added, pointing two fingers at his eyes and then pointing those fingers at Susan.

"That's it? He came, took the books, Loomed at you and left?" Susan resisted several urges, among which were running and hiding, trying her doorway trick to get back to Death's domain, shouting, and finding something strong to drink.

Another shrug was all Teatime offered.

"Well, did you find anything else out before he took the autobiography?"

"No, but I'm sure I'll think of something shortly. Did the wizards have the spell?"

"Not yet. They're working on it, though." Susan calmly resumed folding her jacket and laying it over the back of a chair. She was not avoiding Teatime's eyes, and she was not unduly conscious of the weight beneath her blouse. She bent, gathering the scattered papers. She tapped them together and placed them back onto the table.

Teatime chirped, "To the Guild, then!"

"Go yourself, if you like. It's too late for me to bother Lord Downey again," she answered. Over Teatime's protest, she added, "What with one thing and another, I've not been to sleep for thirty hours. I wouldn't retain anything anyone tried to teach me, and that would be worse than a ten-hour delay, don't you think?"

Teatime subsided into sullenness.

With that point made, Susan said, with calculated precision, "So, Teh-ah-tim-eh, now that's settled, I'm going to bed. We have a lot to do tomorrow, and if I must face it all, I'd like to do so with a full night's sleep."

Chapter Text

Jonathan Teatime had a code by which he lived. It was not conventional – he was convinced Susan would call it twisted and self-centered – but it had stood him in good stead for more than twenty years. However, he had noticed that it had begun to change in minute ways. He wasn't even able to pinpoint all those little changes, nor when they'd begun, though this may have been due to a disinterest in examining them in detail. The net effect, however, was leading him to be a little sloppier; to push just to see how far he could go; to, in short, take greater risks.

He never took risks. He inhumed entire households and pets in order to avoid untimely detection when fulfilling a contract. For him to take risks, then, was strange.

That was why, after nearly a week of leaving the apartment at night to wander the streets of Ankh-Morpork (because the city never slept, even if Susan did), Teatime was at Susan's bedside, watching her sleep. It was something a seamstress had once told him was creepy and something One Should Never Do. But he wasn't doing it for the reason most people would assume, so by his logic, it was permissible.

Susan was hiding something from him. Something heavy that hung beneath her clothing and swung in counterpoint to her movements, disturbing the concealing fabric in a very specific way. And after the baffling and, yes, hurtful invasion of privacy that was her attempt to read his life's story without even asking, Teatime was determined to see what it was she was hiding. She showed no respect for his privacy; he'd show none for hers. There. Fair.

Ideally, she'd have treated him as a friend – or ally, if she wanted to play with semantics – and produced it at once. Sub-ideally, he'd have been able to move more than just bits of paper, and he'd have been able to make her share. People tended to do as instructed much more quickly when a blade was in his hand. Teatime idly let his imagination run down a number of puns that involved the word 'point' and moved on.

Teatime would have to be delicate – Elegant, whispered the memory of Lord Downey in his head – in his handling. He still depended on Susan for his resurrection, after all. He had threatened and would, in fact, carry out the threat of annoying her until he was alive again; if he never got a body, he would annoy her until she, too, had died. However, he'd rather live again than annoy Susan for perhaps another eighty years. Even such an entertaining pastime would grow dull with that much repetition. So he had to consider the angle from which he would approach this thing that was hanging from a silk string and lying quite below the plain edge of a scoop-necked nightgown.

Of course, Teatime could just wait for the dawn to ask, but he was feeling impatient. Besides, he was beginning to wonder if Susan would even tell him the truth. If she couldn't muster the courtesy to ask, "Do you mind terribly if I dig around in the embarrassingly precise and deeply incriminating record of your life?" then he doubted that, if he asked, she would answer, "Oh, this? It's your scrying eye, which fell out when I killed you. Incidentally, I apologize for that. I realize that taking two feet of metal through the liver, diaphragm, and spine must have hurt a bit."

Not likely. Susan probably didn't know enough about the layout of internal organs to know which ones she'd hit.

Teatime sighed a ghost's sigh. He knew that it was his eye (Really, with him being him and Susan being her, and this mission being what it was, what else could it be?), but if he were to confront her about it, he may as well have proof or at least a good one-liner that would stop her mid-denial.

Just now, Teatime could only guess where, exactly, the eye was. Under there and between those were pretty vague coordinates. If he moved forward with only those to guide him, he'd end up with a not-all-that-satisfying handful of warmth, a heretofore-unseen height of rage from someone who was Death part-time, and no body. Ever.

After a moment of thought, Teatime moved to the far side of the double bed. One thing he'd figured out while learning to shift papers in the front room was that it was more a matter of will than of physicality. By that logic, if he got good enough, if he focused enough, he could do away with that ludicrous arm-flapping. It lacked dignity. Theoretically, he would be able just to glare and push someone off a building. But right now, he compromised with a smaller gesture and a great deal of intent. His face folded into an expression of concentration, and he lifted one hand. He shoved it forward, sharply, just a couple of inches.

Gooseflesh rose from Susan's collarbone up her neck. Teatime held his breath – unnecessarily, but habits died very hard – and watched a slight frown come over Susan's face. After a few moments, it faded along with the gooseflesh.

He focused and shoved in her direction once more and watched her shift in discomfort. He got that little thrill that meant the game was on and he actually faced failure, though of course he could salvage the endeavor at the last moment. Susan turned her back to what must've seemed a cold breeze to her, and Teatime considered it a testament to his skill and judgment that she didn't drag the quilt along with her and cocoon herself inside it.

When he moved back to the other side of the bed, he grinned. There it was, a heavy little ovoid about the size of a quail's egg in a silk drawstring pouch one size too big for it. It had slid nearly free of the nightgown's collar, and another inch of movement would have let gravity drag it free and onto the mattress.

Close enough, he thought. Cautiously, he extended a hand, flicking his gaze between the pouch and Susan's face. Seeing no signs of wakefulness, he swept his first two fingers through the fabric, and the world stopped existing.

"Thweetheart?"

"Mm?"

Igorina, just hanging the wide-brimmed oiled leather hat on the hook by the door (for Igor had taken to tossing it onto whatever horizontal surface presented itself), turned a worried look on her husband. He moved to the kitchen slab quickly, hardly shuffling at all, and took a seat at the place that she'd set for him. It was one of the rare days he was home for lunch.

For most of the time they'd been in Ankh-Morpork, Igor had always come home for lunch.  He did this ever since he'd gone into Dr. Tolo's father's employ about twenty years ago and afterward, when he moved to the current doctor's five years ago - that horrid wealthy family who'd employed him before had kept Igor from home for days at a stretch, so Igorina had been glad of the change – but over the last month or so, Igor had begun to insist on taking his lunches quickly and returning to work even more quickly. And he'd started to stay at the office – which was only over by King's Bridge – later and later at night. Why, in the last week, he'd only been home four nights!

A man didn't just break the habit of a quarter-century. Not without reason.

"Ith… ith there…?"

Igor flicked an annoyed look over his shoulder, which had lost much of its hunch; the physical differences he'd affected were part of the problem, too, and Igorina fretted. "Have it out, will you?" he snapped.

And this was the worst. Igor had never been harsh with his wife, in the entire hundred and sixty-two years they'd been married. But in the last month, he'd become impatient and short. It had sent Igorina to bed in tears, which had in turn driven Igor back to his lab at the doctor's.

So this time, she sucked in a deep breath, laced her fingers together and demanded, "I need to know if you are cheating on me."

Igor went very still for a moment, his forkful of fried potato frozen just above the plate. His eyes were wide and staring in terror into the middle distance. In that immobile second, Igorina felt heartbreak – both of them – and she had to put out a hand to steady herself against the wall. She would remember this for the rest of her time on the Disc, every detail embedded in her brain, no matter how many lobes were detached and rewired.

Igor suddenly thawed, his expression going from fear to thought and then from thought to sneer. He turned in the chair and draped his left arm along the back of it; the cuff of his shirt slid back, exposing the wrist, which lacked all the distinctive stitching Igorina had so adored. She shuddered at the expression on his face – another body part he'd done a lot of work on in recent weeks. The smile he wore was scornful and pitying, as if it weren't even worth his time to break his wedding vows.

"Not yet," he answered.

Igorina sagged as he turned back to his lunch.

"But keep annoying me, and I'll give it a try."

The nothingness could have lasted for an epoch. There was no way to gauge time; there were no senses or stimuli. There was just nothing. Teatime couldn't even register his spectral form, which was at least something somewhat physical he had retained in the gray space he'd shared with the spirit of a golem.

All he'd known was his own mind, and he'd known it in a way he never had been able to before. In the world, and in the World After, there had still been a link to his senses and what they registered; in this nothingness, he didn't even have a framework that allowed for metaphors. His ideas did not flit across his mind's eye, scattering rainbows or blood as they passed; there was no eye; there was neither flitting nor color. What happened were concepts that merely existed – questions that lacked answers – memories that were dim without their sensory moorings to keep them lodged in a mind that could understand them. In those memories, the only things that remained clear and whole were Death and Susan.

In those moments, those eons, Jonathan Teatime remembered what it was to fear.

And just before the emotion could overwhelm a spirit long unaccustomed to it, his senses started to flicker back to life.

First came touch. Something like air pressed on him and stirred his hair; the air was frigid. Smell and sound returned, fading in like an oil lamp being turned up; there were the scents of age and stone and wine, and voices were speaking. Great booming voices chased titters, and drawls mocked earnestness. If he paid enough attention, he could catch the occasional word. He had never realized how much flavor the inside of his own mouth had, but, well, one learned something every day, they say.

Finally, his sight came back, showing him that he was situated in an upright position in a gargantuan colonnaded pavilion. Marble stood in bright relief against the native granite of the artistically sculpted caldera that cradled the pavilion.

Teatime was unable to observe more than a quick impression of dozens of humanoid figures scattered around the place mostly because an enormous old man in a toga stepped forward, eclipsing his entire field of vision.

Looking up and up – and with the ghost of the scrying stone, he could tell, exactly, that the new arrival's height was twenty-five feet – Teatime blinked when he found himself looking into a whirling cloud of eyeballs.

"Hello," he said, falling back on his manners. "My name's Jonathan Teatime. You must be Blind Io."

The god's eyeless face tilted downward at Teatime, and a few of the floating eyeballs zoomed down to peer at the Assassin from up close. One was the size of his head. Another was smaller than a thimble. The rest varied in size. Or perhaps they seemed to; they moved too fast to gauge correctly.

"I should never have given Pearson that one eye," the god mused in a voice like hurricanes. "Should have known he couldn't keep a secret. But he did make such nubile simulacra." In ponderous movements that seemed to take weeks to finish, Blind Io crouched down before Teatime, his toga hanging just low enough. "Oh for My sake!" he said, leaning a little closer; the floating eyes all swarmed at Teatime, whose curiosity outweighed his urge to skewer a few on his dagger. "He stuck it in a rock."

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I don't think I understand," Teatime said. One of the human-eye-sized eyes floated up to look into his scrying stone.

Blind Io snorted. "I rather think not. That thing you have in your head, boy, is the corrupted remnant of one of Mine." He waved a hand the size of a cartwheel in Teatime's direction.

"It's not the real one," Teatime felt compelled to say. "The real one is in Ankh-Morpork. I think."

The god shrugged. "They're both one thing. Being in different planes of existence doesn't make them two things. It's one of Mine," he repeated, significantly.

When a huge forefinger jabbed at Teatime's face, he didn't dodge. He couldn't. It was that fast. He couldn't even blink. A shock went through him like a lightning bolt when the finger tapped the stone – and just the stone.

"I imagine you've got better than twenty-twenty in it, though," he heard the god say over half-imagined echoes of thunder. Blind Io leaned a little closer. "Don't suppose you can see the future or other dimensions or anything like that, can you?"

"No."

"Ah, good. Hate to have to kill you. We only allow a few mortals that kind of talent. Keeps things interesting, you know." Finally, and with popping joints that sounded like cannon fire, Blind Io regained his feet. "But you'd probably better toddle back to that girl of yours. Fate's been watching you for a while now, and he gets cranky when there's nothing interesting going on. Throws popcorn. It gets into everything."

Teatime glowered upward. "Sorry?" He had never expected a meeting with a god to be so strange. He'd rather expected to be dashing out the door with purloined fire or something similar. Receiving cryptic remarks from a god who sounded remarkably like a massive version of Mustrum Ridcully had not been part of his imaginings.

"Oh, haven't got that far yet?" Blind Io asked, shaking his head pityingly. "No wonder. Word to the wise: Things'll go faster if you let your tactics graduate from the nursery, lad. Gifts and an offer of dinner wouldn't go amiss."

"Gifts?" Teatime repeated faintly. Whatever was the fellow going on about?

"Gifts. Off you go, then." Blind Io's hands kicked up a gust of wind when he flapped them dismissively at Teatime. Annoyance shifted to shock when that gust of wind swelled into a gale, pushing Teatime off his feet and into nothingness.

And then, he was back. The low fire muttered and shifted in the grate; it showed no signs of the passage of time. All was as he had left it.

He withdrew his fingers – his spectral digits, with their ability to sense temperature and some semblance of pressure if he really thought about it! – from the scrying stone and its pouch and stepped back from Susan's bed. She had not woken.

He would have to think about this. Concentrating, he took a tailor's seat on top of Susan's dresser – she did not keep a chair in her bedroom – and thought.

This morning, the Master did not come back into the lab in that creepy, quiet fashion he had. He slammed into the room. He stomped. He snarled.

"Hiddlesham! Report!" The Master's voice was harsh. Almost as an afterthought, he swiped at the foam at the corner of his mouth.

Through the terror and the sad sludge that smothered his mind, Hiddlesham's response arose. After a few seconds in which the Master worked himself further into his anger, Hiddlesham answered, "He moved."

"Moved? How?"

… "Blinked. Frowned. Shuddered."

"When? For how long? Anything else?"

The questions just kept coming, and Hiddlesham worried when he could no longer provide answers. But the fear propelled him. And the slurring faded. And the thoughts came faster and faster.

Chapter Text

The faint silver light of the winter sun teased Susan toward consciousness; as her eyes blinked open, the sight that met them (one of Teatime frowning at her from about two feet away) launched her into consciousness at speed.

She reared up into a defensive crouch, yanking the bedclothes over her as she went, and hissing something that sounded vaguely Hublandish, though it was, in fact, "Yaa! HHHHHHHHHWHATiswrongwithyou?"

While she worked to keep her heart on the proper side of her ribs, she saw Teatime's eyes take in her movements and the state of her hair. She hunkered low, ready to run. Her mane shifted wildly in its base state, which was rather like a pyramid (it had taken ages for it to get enough length to weigh it down out of the spherical shape it had taken in her youth). Susan saw the analysis going on behind Teatime's eyes as he observed. This troubled her as much as his watching, like a hungry housecat, for her to wake.

"What?" she demanded.

"Why is my eye in your nightdress?"

Every fine hair on the back of Susan's neck lifted, and her hair swept up and back off her shoulders. She only suppressed the shiver that followed with great effort. The last time she'd heard that tone from Teatime had been in the Tooth Fairy's castle, when he asked her, from six inches away, whether she needed to fear the Reaper. The menace in his voice rang clearly through the innocent words (Wait, no, not innocent at all! Susan thought, feeling herself go red), and the ape in her DNA howled at her to move.

This time, like the last, Teatime's eyes drifted down away from her face. Last time, it had been to indicate without words that he knew what the omega sigil on her cloak clasp meant, and perhaps to intimidate her. This time, his gaze followed movement. Susan was embarrassed to notice that her right hand, which she immediately labeled traitorous, had wrapped itself around the eye in question.

"Safekeeping," she rasped. Mentally, she cursed whatever hormone had stolen the air from her lungs and the moisture from her throat. He was a ghost, for heavens' sake! He could not hurt her, so there was no reason for a fight or flight response! Susan pointedly sat down on the mattress with her legs tucked beneath her; she tucked the bedding around her waist and arranged her hands just so on her lap. If she couldn't fully calm herself, Susan reasoned she could at least try to bluff Teatime.

He cannot hurt me in this form. Now, if only that niggling feeling of dread would just go away! She took refuge in the familiarity of her haughtiest glare.

The look Teatime gave her in return was one of a man reaching the end of his patience. "Safekeeping," he repeated in the same menacing tone. "Safe from whom? I can only assume from me, since you failed to mention it at all."

"Well, it's spent much of the last five years rolling across schoolyard pavement," she snapped back. "And now it's not. Sounds rather safe to me."

Her only instinct was to distract him from taking her to task about it. She'd spent too much time in the last several weeks feeling ill prepared and wrong-footed to want Teatime to chide her about something else. He'd manipulated her into admitting that since he was now present, he had the right of consent when it came to reading his autobiography, though he hadn't been able to convince her that she had no right to read it at all, ever – she was part Death, after all. And that business with the Assassin's Guild! If he lectured her once more about having a plan or about her so-called inferiority, she'd guarantee his resurrection just so she could give him a swat 'round the earhole!

"It's been what?"

She went red again; Teatime's gaze flicked to her cheek, where her birthmark was. But, clearly refusing to be distracted, he focused on her eyes again, intent on her reply.

"One of my charges was using it as a shooter," she answered reluctantly. "In marbles."

"Oh. I'm amazed he survived," Teatime answered, finally speaking in his more customary chirp. The rasp of his more serious voice made Susan's skin prickle, and until now, she'd never thought she'd be happy to hear him speak in the tones of a schoolboy.

"It is magic, you know," he added, pointedly looking down at the collar of her nightdress. "A wizard corrupted one of Blind Io's eyes."

She had it off her neck and sitting on the bed in seconds. She felt her hair pull back into a low horsetail, finally out of the way and behaving itself – fear, as always, worked wonders.

"What? Would it have affected the boy?" Susan pinned the ghost with a look more ferocious than any she'd yet used on him. Fear transmuted to anger rather quickly in her system. It was a talent.

Unfazed, Teatime tried to talk over her, to interrupt her. "Why do you have it?"

"Were you mad before or after you got that?" she demanded, waving at the pouch and its contents.

"Why didn't you tell me you had it?"

"Do I need to take Gawain to the University? To a doctor?"

"I thought we were allies, so why didn't you tell me?"

"What has this done to that child?"

"Nothing. Now, answer the question."

This came out in the tightly controlled, lower voice, the one that sounded like it came out of a dangerous man rather than a man-boy with perspective issues. And it brought Susan down from the edge of her protective rage, calling her senses back into the present. She realized that she and Teatime had been shouting at each other from half a foot apart. Going red, yet again, she sat back on her heels and gathered the bedclothes into her lap. The eye had rolled toward the foot of her bed, and she glared at it, happy to see it at a distance.

"The wizards wanted to use it for the tracer spell," she ground out, still staring at the pouch at the other end of the bed. Her hands clawed in the comforter, and it took an act of will not to cross her arms protectively over her chest.

"That makes no sense."

"That's what I told them." She sighed. "I'd forgotten that Gawain had ever had it until they brought it up."

Teatime, who had not shifted back from the position he'd taken for their shouting match, leaned into Susan's personal space. "So why keep it hidden, Susan?"

"Look, it's right there! Just take it and leave me alone!"

Closer. "Susan."

STOP IT.

His outline vibrated, but he didn't stop to examine the experience. "Why, Susan?"

"Look, I don't know! All right?" She glared up, as the ghost was now leaning quite over her. "Control, maybe. Are you happy now?" Fighting bedclothes the entire way, she struggled to the far side of the bed and to her feet. But when she turned back to glare at him, Teatime wasn't there.

"Control?" he repeated from just over her left shoulder. She would have jumped if she hadn't been so angry.

"Leverage! Some kind of currency to buy back some privacy – some normality!" Without really thinking, Susan brought up an arm to shove him out of the way; she sucked in a surprised breath as her arm went numb. The surprise shifted back to anger once she realized Teatime had chosen not to dodge – had used her own actions to stop her cold, as it were.

Oh, to hell with that! she thought. Susan gritted her teeth, ducked her head, and strode right through the ghost. She'd braced herself for the cold, but it was always, always worse than she remembered. Her breath hitched, and she would swear her heart skipped two beats. Worst of all: Since she and Teatime were of a similar height, her head passed through his; something in there dragged against something in Susan's brain, leaving a tingling trail through her mind. She whipped around, trembling and shocked, just in time to see Teatime cover up an expression that implied he'd been smacked by a troll.

Before he could say a word – Something inappropriate and childish, no doubt! – Susan jabbed a shaking finger at him. She hissed, "Every time something weird happens, I suddenly lose my autonomy! It's as though I am a puppet! I am not going to sit quietly and endure it this time!"

And suddenly realizing she'd revealed far more than was wise – more, certainly, than she'd wanted to – she flailed for whatever distraction she could find. "You want your blasted eye, there it is! You can have it, if you can even touch it!"

Teatime shrugged. "I wouldn't be able to hold it," he said, switching once more to nonchalant schoolboy tones. The abrupt switch made Susan dizzy. He interrupted the next rising tirade by adding with a vague wave at his own face, "I have the ghost of it here, anyway. Appropriately enough."

Yet again, Teatime's demeanour changed; he did his weird blipping thing, closing the distance between them, and leaned into Susan's space. "You," he drawled, "Have a problem with respecting others' privacy. I wonder why."

"This coming from you!"

"Yes, from me. Because it's my book! And my eye!"

That's not… ! That's … a valid point. Given that her only options seemed to be doing a stranded-goldfish impression and fuming, Susan chose fuming. She couldn't call him a hypocrite, because that would let him levy the same charge against her, especially now. Pointing up his faults in retaliation would merely be more attempts at distraction. And he was proving very hard to distract today.

But they were important!, Susan protested in her own defense, safely in her mind. And they furthered the mission! The book did, at any rate.

After a few more moments of silence, Teatime pointed out, "Usually, when one is caught out like this, she apologizes. It's only polite."

She glared at him, smiling sourly and trying to tamp down her irritation. "When you apologize for trying to kill my grandfather – without a contract no less – then I'll apologize for keeping your eye from you." Her smile grew into a smug grin as Teatime glowered.

"He's probably actually unkillable," he complained. "I don't see what people have against a healthy spirit of philosophical inquiry."

Momentarily stunned, Susan stared at him. She registered the sensation of her guilt dwindling to embers; it felt just a little like disappointment.

"Right," she huffed. At her left hand, her dressing gown was folded over the bed's footboard. She snatched it up and thrust her arms through the sleeves. Barking out a bitter laugh, she amended her previous condition, "When you're able to live by the moral standards you set for others, then you can dictate who apologizes to you." Then she stalked out of the room, calling over her shoulder, "I'm going to dress. Evidently, I have a long day ahead of me at the Guild."

"Oh, and Vimes?"

The commander suppressed a sigh before turning back from the door of the Oblong Office. "Sir?"

"How is Miss Susan?"

Vimes had already used his 'You tell me' line years ago, so he settled for, "I'm not the one to ask, sir."

"I only mention it because she is due to attend some… workshops at the Assassins' Guild this morning." Vetinari was using that off-hand tone of voice to which Vimes had grown very sensitive; it amounted to an order. Vetinari added, "The lessons should prove useful in her later life."

Vimes waited. The order part was out. All that was missing was the incentive.

"Assuming, of course, that she survives."

Aha. There it was. He respected the girl, and Sybil had pronounced her a "bright, solid young woman"; Young Sam had all but climbed on her lap during his first meeting with her. She was by all accounts an effective teacher and a hell of a protector. And Vetinari had yoked her with that mad ghost of hers on some project or another; so Vimes was to protect the Patrician's investment. It was just as well that Carrot was handling the Igor murders; that had left Vimes with time on his hands.

"Lord Downey should be expecting me, then," Vimes sighed as he left.

Chapter Text

"Ooooook." The sound was soft, tender, and followed by an awed litany of "Ik uk oook ik eee eek ik." It was spoken over a palm the size of a small shield, in which the scrying stone was a scuffed, dull gray pebble.

Teatime glanced questioningly over at Susan, who glowered and sighed at him. "He's admiring the craftsmanship of the spells," she grudgingly told him.

"Ik ook?"

"Certainly not," she retorted, turning back to the Librarian, who surfaced from his awe long enough to frown at her. "There are some questions you don't want the answers to, trust me," she explained.

When the Librarian heaves a sigh, it's less metaphorical than usual. His disappointment stirred the hair around Susan's face and filled the air with the smell of warm, day-old, wet banana. "Ook."

"Look, don't you lot understand anything about plausible deniability? Lord Vetinari's not involved in this for fun!" Susan paused and examined this statement. "At least, not just for fun," she amended.

Ponder Stibbons, who was examining the stone from the vicinity of the Librarian's left thumb, said a bit archly, "The University is autonomous, Miss Susan. If the Archchancellor chooses, he can deny whatever he likes, plausible or otherwise." As if suddenly aware of how that sounded, he hurried to say, "Of course, it is our responsibility, in part, to maintain order in this city. We and the civic leadership share a respect and avoid stepping on one another's toes."

Even Teatime turned a flat, skeptical glance on Stibbons, who coughed. With that sixth sense for buttering important people up at the opportune moments, the wizard added, "Besides, knowing the source of an artifact this exquisitely constructed means we might be able to have a second one made fresh for when you return. This one's a bit dinged up, isn't it?"

"It was a tandem contract – one that third years take on with a graduating prefect," Teatime said. "On a criminally simple wizard named Pearson. I was a bit impressionable at that age, and Robert Selachii thought it interesting to see what a wizard carried around." He shrugged when Susan turned to stare. "He dumped most of the trinkets on me and told me to dispose of them. The stone I held up just to look at. It was beautiful – and such a waste to throw it away. I looked through it, since I couldn't tell what kind of stone it was." He grinned in recollection; the pleasure in it transformed the boyish face into something almost beatific. "I replaced my left eye with it the next day. The matron of the infirmary didn't stop crying for hours."

The assembled onlookers took a moment to digest the information with varying degrees of horror. Then the Librarian closed his hand around the stone.

"Ook," he said with what was clear disgust.

Stibbons jabbed at the nose piece of his spectacles and shrugged at the ape. "Sorry, which one? I was buried in my mastery project at the time. I didn't know my own face in the mirror."

"Ik ook."

"Oh. That one," Stibbons said. He turned to Susan and Teatime and elaborated, "Pearson was one of the dark wizards we try to nip in the bud before they get out of hand. Absolute genius, by all accounts." He glanced at the Librarian's fist. "Clearly true. But obsessive to the point of inattention. He'd walk into closed doors. I suppose that's why his contract was given to students."

Teatime's face clouded over at the slight. Without thought, Susan stepped between man and ghost, one hand held behind her in a warding gesture. The tips of her fingers went painfully cold and then blessedly numb, and she gritted her teeth at the contact.

Stibbons's gaze went back and forth between Susan and Teatime, and his expression changed with every glance – worry, shock, and speculation chased each other across his face and finished up with a second lap of worry.

Through grit teeth, Susan snapped, "Look, I don't care who he was. I just need to know if you can keep this stone safe. Maybe give it a polish?"

"I- O-of course."

"Can you study it without dismantling it?"

"Oook."

"Good," she answered, relaxing minutely. "Because gods help you if he –" and she jerked a thumb behind her "– can't put it back in his head the minute we get back." A giggle erupted from the thumbed-at space; Susan reflected, not for the first time, that this was why she worked alone.

The porter had shown Vimes in with a big, smug smile on his round, red face. Considering what Vimes knew about Lord Downey, Lord Downey's opinions of both himself and of anyone else who was Not Lord Downey, Vimes thought the porter was well within his rights to anticipate some schadenfreude. Vimes, himself, had quite looked forward to ruining the day of a number of irritating people.

And that's what he was doing, starting with Lord Downey Hisownself. And he was enjoying it.

"The clerk brought you the note, Lord Downey," he said. "Official letterhead and everything." He even said it somewhat pleasantly, reverting to the Stupid Enough Not To Be Angered Or Shifted Copper trick. It was fun to do after all these years.

"Her Grace has agreed to my instruction, and that is what she shall receive," Lord Downey answered in tones so smooth and cold you could land a triple Axel on them. "Without interference."

"I'm here to learn something, too, like whether or not the girl will survive when she tries out your instruction on someone who actually knows how to kill," Vimes said. He pulled his little cigar case from a pocket under his breastplate and toyed with it; the dispute hadn't quite gone far enough to justify the rudeness of lighting up in Downey's office, but he was prepared for it. "If it makes you feel any better, I won't be interrupting. Just observing." Mentally, he added, I'll just undo everything you teach her afterward.

He relished Downey's glower.

In the street, well on their way to the Assassins' Guild, Teatime asked Susan, "Why did you do that, at the University? I realize you're a slave to your protective instincts, but without a contract, Mr. Stibbons couldn't have been in any danger."

Susan felt herself go pink, but she ignored it. He was right, of course. Stibbons had been safe. It seemed the only effect Teatime could have had on him was intimidation and an unpleasantly cold sensation. She answered crisply, "The last thing you need to do is find out what a competent wizard can do to a ghost."

The sounds of the city swarmed into the void left after that statement, making Susan want to find Lobsang and bribe him to undo the last five minutes.

"Oh! For my benefit? How friendly!"

From anyone else, this would have been sarcastic; from Teatime, it was sincere. And every time he does something like that, it's like a Lipwigzer puppy has waddled up to me, wagged its tail, and dropped someone's arm at my feet.

Just to change the subject, Susan asked, "Look, what should I expect at the Guild? It's not as if I've time to catch up with even the first years, let alone anyone who knows what he's doing."

"Stealth," Teatime answered without pause for thought. "Evasion. Quick, vicious ways to inhume an attacker."

Susan gave him a withering look. "I'm fine with stealth. My abilities were handicapped only in the Tooth Fairy's castle, and I'll wager good money that your body is not there."

"That can't be the only place your powers don't work correctly," he said. "And what if we have to deal with a wizard or witch? There is the Rite of Ashk'Ente, after all."

Of course he'd know something like that. Aloud, she retorted, "Then they'd get my grandfather. And even if they thought they'd get me with that spell, then they'd still have to know who I am; the possibility is too remote. Not everyone pores over Twurp's Peerage or has a fixation on death the way you do."

"Then not everyone is adequately prepared," he said. Another point occurred to him, and he said speculatively, "And I can't be the only one who has thought to use a magical item to augment his native talents. Even one that's linked to a god. Perhaps I should've told the wizards that."

"I'd take that bet, too."

He shrugged, uninterested in getting sidetracked onto a different argument. "I didn't need the scrying stone to hear a woman's footsteps on the stairs where there should be no women; I didn't need it to see someone in black cloak in a white tower."

Susan sniffed. With only herself available for reconnaissance, the risk of being caught while scouting around was unavoidable; having Bilious and Violet in tow would only have gotten her caught faster and two more people who "went away" from the Tooth Fairy's world.

Their arrival at the Guild saved Susan the trouble of finding a way of making that sound less like she'd been an optimistic child walking into a situation she never should've survived.

Chapter Text

The short, wickedly sharp dagger disappeared from Susan's hand – again – and her wrist went up behind her just far enough to be uncomfortable. Lord Downey pressed the flat of the blade against her throat for one demonstrative second before releasing her.

"Your Grace continues to hold the dagger too loosely and too far from the body," he chided. They had been at the exercise for about an hour, and Downey had had the point made clear to him early on that Susan resented the styling; his using it meant he was losing his patience. His stance and tone eased a bit when he observed, "You seem nearly afraid of it."

Susan was careful to keep her gaze on the grandfatherly-looking Master of the Guild; it served no purpose to reveal that Teatime had had her at the end of a sword a few times. "I don't like knives," she conceded. "Rather, I don't know how to use them on anything that isn't cooked. And I know – very concretely now," she added sourly, "– that a weapon I can't use is one that is used against me."

With careful patience, Downey reminded her, "Knives are the most portable and easiest to learn to control."

He'd said it before, the old traditionalist, and Susan had answered politely the first two times. She drew a breath to answer a little less politely, but Commander Vimes interrupted her.

"What's your preferred weapon, then?" He stood off to the side, leaning against the wall of the wide, high-ceilinged gymnasium they were in; he had one of those foul thin cigars hanging from his mouth. Beside him, Teatime was a transparent statue; he took no notice of the clouds of blue-gray smoke drifting through him.

"Intelligence. Intimidation." Her answers were as stripped of emotion as she could physically manage. She knew her abilities, but appearing arrogant before these three seemed unwise, especially at this moment.

Vimes nodded with a faint expression approval. "And when you need physical weapons?"

"Fireplace pokers," Teatime answered for her in a chirp.

The commander turned a flat look on the ghost, who, innocent of all sarcasm or, indeed, any emotion but helpful cheer, kept his gaze on Susan. When Vimes looked at her with that special quirk of the eyebrow that meant Don't Mess Me About, Right?, Susan shrugged. The answer was true, technically.

"Anything within reach," she clarified. "It helps if it is about arm length and straight."

Trying to regain control of the moment, Lord Downey said, "We do not specialize in mid-range weapons. They're covered in advanced classes and build on the basics of knife fighting. Most Assassins inhume from the extremes – at either bow distance or … more intimately."

Susan maintained a poker face, and Vimes snorted softly.

It was the ellipsis that had done it; if Downey hadn't been conscious of the innuendo and paused in the attempt to avoid it, it would've passed without comment. He cut his eyes at Vimes, who lifted an unapologetic eyebrow. Throughout the whole of the exchange, Teatime had just watched, bored.

Crossly, Downey continued, "Anything else tends to be the improvisations of a seasoned expert, a foreigner, or a novice who is trying not to be inhumed himself."

"Or a Watchman," Vimes added. He carefully scraped the cherry off the end of his cigar with the heel of his boot and then tucked the dogend into a pocket. "D'you have something 'about arm length and straight'?"

Hiddlesham was disturbed. He was even self-aware enough to feel he had the right to be disturbed.

For one, he'd been dead, or something very like it; he knew this because he'd had all those moments of going in and out of consciousness; he'd had his Master digging around in his head and turning his vision on and off.

For another, there had been the Trouser Accident, the Changing Incident, and the Zipper Tragedy.

For yet another, he was playing Igor to an actual Igor. He was probably botching the job, at that, because he was sure he wasn't an Igor, too. This made him simultaneously excited and nervous.

And finally, the Igor who was his Master was barking mad. Not actually barking, of course. And not laughing maniacally and watching the skies for thunderheads, either. Master's madness was characterized by statue-like stillness, followed by silent manic periods of frenzied work, followed in turn by bouts of door-slamming frustration.

The Master's attempt to recreate a magic circle based on the notes in that awful, fluid-stained notebook had failed, and while he'd rather expected the failure, he had not anticipated how difficult it was to acquire a wizard to do the chore for him. Based on his mutterings, Master wasn't rich enough to hire someone mean enough and stupid enough to track a wizard down and force him to do it; neither, it seemed, was Hiddlesham – rich nor mean nor stupid, that is. So Master had had to slog around trying to find people who were not quite dead, though he never said why he needed them. He forbade Hiddlesham to leave the basement; otherwise Hiddlesham thought he'd have been helpful in the task. When Master came home empty-handed, he jabbed at the chalk on the floor with a rusting fireplace poker. He did it almost habitually, as though knowing it would have no effect but trying anyway in a dull sort of hope.

All of this together worried Hiddlesham. Also, the body hadn't done anything interesting since that one moment when it had. Master was getting extremely cross about that, too, and he'd blamed Hiddlesham for failing to observe and record everything about the event.

"Data!" he'd bellowed. "How am I to recreate the phenomenon without knowing what caused it?" Then, he'd commanded Hiddlesham to watch the body day and night. Hiddlesham was allowed a nap only once or twice a day when Master came in to perform experiments and observations himself. When he was done with them, he would kick Hiddlesham awake and command Hiddlesham to "get back to it".

A little cuckoo noise sang out from upstairs. It was time to turn the body. Master had been very clear in his position on bedsores.

"That boy will be my masterwork," Master had said after a particularly vicious scolding over the shaving wounds.

"Until I'm done with him…"

Master lifted the cutthroat razor that still had a drop of blood on the edge, and Hiddlesham couldn't take his eyes off it.

"Every wound on that body…"

Hiddlesham heard the shift of cloth; he saw the blur of moving arm and metal; his cheek flared with pain, just beside the left nostril.

"I will inflict on you."

Hiddlesham had gotten much better at shaving. And every time the clock cuckooed, his feet took him to the slab before he ever knew what he was about.

Once they'd found her a truncheon (It was gray with age and a half-inch deep in dust; truncheons not being stylish enough weapons for Assassins, they'd stuffed it in with some pry bars, which Vimes considered "a bit much" for an evaluation), she and the Commander of the Watch squared up and sparred. Downey had protested, saying something sharply about interference, but Susan had insisted on her showing him what she could do rather than continuing to demonstrate what she couldn't.

"You leave yourself open after those big swings," Vimes snapped as Susan danced back, out of his reach. "Either don't do 'em or lay hands on a second weapon. Some things you won't be able to dodge."

Susan shed her frock coat while keeping a keen eye on her opponent. He was putting her through her paces, and no mistake; she was beginning to breathe a bit deeper and faster, and sweat was making her hairline itch. Luckily, the hair itself had tucked itself into a tight, flat bun on the back of her head.

She was a little surprised he hadn't pressed the advantage in the moments she'd switched hands in order to get out of the last coat sleeve. Annoyed, she tempted the fighter in him by taking the truncheon in her left hand again and unbuttoning the cuff of her white shirt.

This time, he struck. His disapproving look evaporated when Susan's truncheon caught his on the downward swing. In a flash, she'd jabbed her fingers into his unprotected armpit; he grunted and retreated a few steps.

"I'm not ticklish," he reprimanded. "And the chain mail would stop a knife. Come on!"

Susan panted, "Needles. Poison." Vimes' free hand prodded under his arm, his face suddenly very sharp indeed. She used the opening to swat at his left knee. It didn't connect, because he skipped out of the way and aimed a blow at her unprotected back, which Susan dodged in turn.

She whipped around, weapon up, stance wide, ready to move at the least need.

"Nice bluff," Vimes panted. "And you're quick. That'll help you more than anything. But –" He suddenly lunged in with a backhanded strike ready to fly. The truncheons cracked together, and Susan caught his free hand just before it could make contact with her vulnerable side.

A sudden pinprick of ice just beneath the point of her jaw stopped her mid-movement. In her ear, Teatime quietly finished the thought, "Always expect an accomplice."

Comprehending the new lesson and not needing the lecture that would follow if she protested the sudden switch from one kind of demonstration to another, Susan lowered both arms and stepped to the left, away from Teatime's spectral dagger.

Vimes stuck his own truncheon back into the loop on his belt. He nodded at Teatime and Lord Downey; one beamed at him, and the other glowered. Then he squared back up with Susan and said, "I believe Lord Downey planned to go over evasion and stealth. After you're done with that, come up to Pseudopolis Yard. You'll do best on the attack with nasty melee tricks. If I'm not there, try me at home." He nodded at them all once more and headed for the door.

Downey shook his sour expression with visible effort before sighing and turning to his students, former and current. With a shrug, he asked, "How are you at running?"

The contraption that that unnaturally talented girl had installed in the doctor's office had exactly one gauge, and that monitored, roughly, the electricity level stored in the machine itself. During use, the needle dipped low on the vertical semicircle that bore hatch marks but no clue to what units it was measuring. The gauge maintained a steady five-hatch-marks except for the moments when the whole thing shuddered; when the machine rattled like that, the gauge's needle flew to its highest limit and vibrated there. If only Igor could understand what that meant. He could guess, but he couldn't know, not without exposing everything to clever, suspicious Igorina. That was a mess he couldn't afford at the moment.

He was beginning to worry, just a little. Not about his own abilities, of course. He had effected a resurrection before, about a century ago, and everything had turned out fine. The operation typically involved reconnecting the body's communicating parts, hooking up the lightning, and hoping it all worked. It was the anomalous parts of this venture he'd undertaken that concerned him. The science of maintaining molecular life in humans was simple in the short term. You just kept electricity going through the gray matter. The nerves remembered to tell the lungs to breathe and the heart to pump. If you managed to get some nutrients into the stomach without drowning the subject, you could keep the body going for a good week.

The problem was with that pesky soul business. The body's constituent parts might be alive but without a spirit to provide a will to live, then there was nothing that could keep the parts from forgetting why they were working in the first place. Eventually, somatic death was followed by molecular death.

Comas were different. Coma patients tended to retain their spirits; the spirits just couldn't access most of the bodies they inhabited. That was how Igor had gotten Hiddlesham as an assistant, after Igor died.

Poor fool. Hiddlesham never had been much of a fighter, and the two good blows to the head that Igor had dealt him had damaged him severely. In spite of that, Hiddlesham had somehow managed to inflict the killing blow, though it seemed he'd been too damaged to realize that he had done so. One of his bright blue eyes had suddenly started looking way off in another direction, and he'd gotten very unsteady on his feet.

Igor had shouted at the boy from his jar, using small words, directing him to cut off Igor's head. Hiddlesham had done so. Then Igor had shouted for Hiddlesham to put his – Igor's – head on his – Igor's – body. Hiddlesham had obeyed, and he'd managed to align things fairly correctly.

And Igor's death had been so recent that with Igor's head on his shoulders, Igor's body had responded to Igor's commands almost right away.

Quite lucky, that. Because Hiddlesham had chosen that moment to sit down and lean against the wall. He'd then closed his eyes, complaining faintly of how much his head hurt. Then he'd slumped into an unconsciousness that had lasted a full week.

Igor reflected that perhaps he should have tried to take out a contract with the Guild of Assassins, but he discarded the idea almost immediately. For one, the deed was already done, so why bother rethinking it? For another, it would have been troublesome to try to actually make it to the guildhall without anything that resembled limbs. Besides, he didn't think that he could have convinced the attending Assassin to remove his grandson's head and replace it with the one in the jar. He'd needed a body, and for that, he'd needed someone with medical knowledge and a weak will. That meant the poor creature that now went only by his given name, like a dog.

It was unfortunate that Hiddlesham would never be what he had once been. His entrepreneurial spirit had paired quite well with his physician's license, and if he'd been born into the Clan, Igor would happily have teamed up with him. He thought Outside The Box. It was he who'd had Jonathan Teatime's body five years earlier. It was he who had found a way to maintain molecular life for longer than a few weeks, according to the notes in that book, which Igor had found in the comatose man's pocket, soiled with all the things that came out of a wounded body not in control of itself. It was he who had manipulated Igorina into installing that mechanical monstrosity – he who had gotten a wizard to set the original spell that seemed to be the key to the entire enterprise. The loss of such a visionary, impressionable fool was a pity.

But there it was. The damage to Hiddlesham's mind was too great, and Igor's gratitude could only take the form of charity toward a dribbling, child-like husk. He would've been more useful if he could be more than a mere orderly. However, those little everyday tasks he gave to Hiddlesham were little everyday tasks that Igor no longer had to do. Igor could pick up where Hiddlesham had been forced to leave off. He could finish the long-delayed resurrection. And most important – most useful – he could reverse-engineer Hiddlesham's work in maintaining molecular life. With that in hand, he could break free of the Clan and all its restrictions. He could make his Name and live forever.

Chapter Text

It was past midnight when Susan fell face-forward onto her bed and tried to breathe through 500-count cotton sateen and two pounds of down. Exhaustion was the only appropriate descriptor for her condition; she would be sore tomorrow, but that could wait until she'd gotten enough sleep to be aware of the sensation.

This is why I work alone, she reminded herself. If I'd taken on such a ridiculous task by myself, I'd have been there and back by now and enjoying one of Granddad's bits of wisdom. She refused to entertain the memory that about two weeks ago, she'd been complaining of boredom. She wasn't bored now, and not-bored was starting to hurt.

"Isn't that uncomfortable?"

Ah. Her personal poltergeist had followed her through the wall – which she realized, belatedly, she had also done without thinking – and was feeling chipper enough to critique even her bed-flopping form. From the moment he'd joined into Commander Vimes' first demonstration, Teatime had opted to take an active role in Susan's instruction. So, he'd had something to say about virtually every movement she'd made for the last twelve hours.

He clearly thinks it's his right to continue. Even her irritation was exhausted. If I ignore him, he'll leave, she mused, choosing to forget that he would do no such thing.

"Doesn't it make it hard to breathe?"

It's reaction he likes.

"And you have your boots on."

Eventually, he'll learn to communicate like a decent human being.

"And your coat."

Some day it'll happen.

"There's snow on it."

Or at least he'll catch on that lack of reaction means, "Shut up. Go away."

"Susan."

Right?

"Susan!"

With more effort than she'd expected it to take, she rolled her face out of the pillow enough to crack one eyelid in the ghost's direction. "What?" she asked.

"I said –"

"I heard."

And, considering Teatime's uneven application of the principles of courtesy, he silently waited for her to answer his preceding question. She took the time to sink into a doze.

Just as she was dropping down into true sleep, Teatime said, "Susan?"

Grunt.

"Susan?"

"nnnWhat? What? I'm trying to sleep! What?"

The ghost bent at the waist and twisted a bit, putting his head on the same plane as Susan's. From this position, he mused, "You know, I think you overdid it today."

I'm so tired I'm imagining uncharacteristic concern, she thought, frowning. Wonderful.

"Possible," she said aloud. "Got to be prepared, though, because I'm evidently too stupid to survive," she said sarcastically, her crossness overcoming her weariness for a moment.

"Nonsense. You've made it this far."

The irritation gave her a little energy. Susan finally levered herself into a slumping position. "Says the dead man who demands I train before finding his corpse," she groused, tugging at the heel of one boot. The bloody thing was stylish, though she did say so herself, and practical, but dragging her foot out of eighteen inches of clinging leather was a trial.

"Take it from 'the dead man': You can't be too prepared."

She huffed a surprised laugh. That had sounded a little like a joke, and a self-deprecating one at that. But she was surely imagining it, because when she looked up to see if he were joking, Teatime was merely regarding her – right-side up this time – with curiosity.

With a final yank, her right boot came off in her hand. "Once the wizards give us a tracer – and once you think of a point in your life we can plant it on you – we'll be prepared enough." Susan dropped the first boot and shook the remnants of melting snow from her fingers; she regarded the second boot with what on anyone else would have been a pout.

"Yes, and you'll be so sore you won't be of any use," Teatime pointed out.

Weakly struggling with the left boot, Susan grumbled, "Believe me, I know." The boot slid off, and her leg thumped down onto the bed. "But I'd drown if I tried to take a hot bath."

"Haven't you got painkillers?"

"In the kitchen." Finally free of her footwear, Susan toppled backward. Her head landed more or less on the pillow, and her hair billowed out in all directions. Her legs dangled uncomfortably over the edge of the bed. "But there is no force on the Disc that would induce me to get up and get them." She was vaguely aware she still wore her coat and that it did, indeed, have snow on it.

"You'll regret it."

"Not even regret."

He didn't answer. In the restful silence, Susan drifted off, completely forgetting to order him from the room.

Susan started the next day by stretching awake and discovering just how large a bill her body would present her with for yesterday's activities.

And once she'd creaked and groaned into a vertical position, she put her feet down into a chilly puddle. Cursing herself for not removing her boots at the door, Susan glared down at her boots and goggled. The puddle was, in fact, a trail leading from her bathroom to her bedside table. On it was a glass one-third full, standing in a pool of water. Next to it, half-soaked, was a chemist's packet of Dr. Coker's Pain Extractors (100% Willow Bark! No Brassica At All! {Basic mixture manufactured in same cauldron as Sunday's cabbage soup – Claims to contain no traces of brassica not guaranteed by the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Chemists, Pharmacists, and Related Fields}). One end had open flaps, as though nibbled by a helpful and preternaturally fastidious rat.

Susan stared for several uncomfortable minutes. She couldn't decide if the kindly gesture or the evidence of improved poltergeist powers bothered her more. Eventually, though, she'd taken two of the drier tablets, because when she looked around for Teatime (expecting a ghost with a smug "I told you so" on his lips and being quite startled when he was nowhere to be seen), her abused joints had protested so fiercely that she couldn't resist the medicine.

Igorina had heard it through the grapevine, the one staked up on shopkeepers, watered with tears, pruned with viciously sharp words, and partaken of by every female in the city. Not so important anymore, is he, not with Dr. Tolo disappearing? Hardly see him anymore, poor thing; he must be cobbling some kind of income together after the doctor going missing. Poor dear, how are you holding up?

Igor had lost his job.

It would explain so much! One could expect personality shifts if a job suddenly disappeared. And, being the sole moneymaker, he'd be ashamed of being unable to do his duty; he'd hide it! It made so much sense!

But… why hadn't anyone of the Clan let her know? They'd never let her down before. If her husband had lost his job because his Master went mad or left or dismissed him for being merely creepy, then all the other Igors in the city would have scrambled to find him a new position. Failing that, the Igorinas would've brought 'round meals and unsolicited advice.

Whatever did this silence mean? There were some behaviors, some choices, some sins that the Clan would not forgive; those transgressors earned shunning and, sometimes, accidents. But surely her Igor, for all his recent changes, hadn't gone that far. Surely. His grandfather, perhaps. But not him.

Igorina made sure that supper was made and stored in a chilling unit before donning a coat and muffler and leaving the cellar. It humiliated her to admit it, but she had not been observant enough. Since people wouldn't outright tell her what they knew, then she'd go and find out for herself.

"And where were you all day?" Susan asked that night when Teatime slid through the front door. She shot the question, along with a raised eyebrow, over the edge of Dr. K. Follett's Varyouse Applycations of Poisons. While not particularly angry, she was irritated with herself for being as angry as she was. It sounded – felt – wrong to ask such a question of him, as if she were his mother. It implied that she cared. Which she didn't. At all.

"It would have done the wizards some good to have spent some time in the Assassins' school, I feel," Teatime answered with tired offhandedness. "The stupid ones wouldn't have survived, and the ones who survived would have been able to come up with a good idea before they died."

He paused at the fireplace, but to one side, away from the fire irons. Sometimes, Susan had seen that the oddest things would distract him; this time, it seemed to be a Hogswatch card she had gotten in the post the previous week from the Gaiter children. With the expression Susan normally saw on children's faces when they were building things with sticks, Teatime pushed at the air next to the card. It toppled flat onto the mantelpiece. Then, he tilted his hand and made a pulling motion; the card slipped out into thin air and wobbled there, as if knowing it shouldn't be there.

"They're generally recognized as the cleverest men in the world," Susan replied carefully, bookmarking her page with her forefinger. "And apt to throw combat spells around during their teenage years." She considered Teatime and the card, which finally decided that it preferred the power of gravity and flapped to the floor. She hadn't seen Teatime this petulant in a while – irritated and argumentative, yes, but broody and nearly sarcastic… that just wasn't his style.

Before he could answer her and drag her off on another tangent, Susan said, "If you're getting good enough at that to make a mess of my flat, then surely you're good enough to put it right again."

Considering Teatime's disingenuous hypocrisy, Susan didn't expect much from appealing to his formal sense for courtesy, but it might get him out of his funk. It was a gamble, but a wonderfully distracting one; she'd seen it played out in the classroom often enough to know it was worth a try.

"Ah, yes. I beg your pardon! You're right, of course," Teatime chirped. He crouched with both fists extended over the card; he popped vertical and yanked his hands up. Struggling like a wounded bird, the card trembled and wobbled five feet straight up; then the ghost sucked in a perfectly useless breath, glared, and shoved forward. With a sssklik, the card fell to rest on the mantelpiece beside a candlestick.

"I'm afraid that's the best I can do," he said, turning to Susan, looking a little fainter than usual.

A malicious request for him to put those poltergeist abilities to use and leave a note next time died on Susan's lips. Brusquely excusing her sudden concern by reminding herself that Lord Vetinari had set her on this task, she asked herself, And how would he respond if I walked in and reported, "Sorry, my lord, he just faded away. Can I go home now before you decide to poison my regent and annex my duchy?"

Instead, she said, "If a card took that much out of you, I shudder to consider how you looked after the glass of water and the pills – thank you, by the way." She flipped her book back open and added, "Next time, just wake me and tell me where to find you if I must."

There. Her feelings – annoyance, gratitude, the weird concern, and equally weird guilt – vented all in one go, Susan settled in to review the best ways to avoid the passive administration methods of poisons.

"You're welcome!" Teatime chirped.

She grit her teeth. Of course that was the bit that had caught his attention.

"Extract of bloatfish is thee least lykelie Toxin to finde on door-knobbes or the hyndesides of handie Ropes, Drayne-pippes, and other sundry Hande-holdes. Whyle used, itte ys prohibytivelie expensyve." The extra letters and creative capitalization required some concentration on Susan's part; she had a bit of paper and a pencil at hand in case something needed writing down. One note instructed her to conduct more research into slipall and adhesives; these seemed to have potential uses in the classroom.

If her peripheral vision hadn't caught movement, she wouldn't have seen Teatime walk across the room and gingerly take a seat. He was incorporeal, so unless he was being chatty, he made no sound; he was so apt to impatiently blip from one place to another that seeing him move at a sedate pace was a little startling. So startling, in fact, that Susan closed the book on her finger again to observe the Assassin, who leaned back on the couch with his hands loosely crossed at the wrists on his lap; he wasn't slouching, but he usually held himself so perfectly erect that the effect was the same. And after a solid two minutes of her watching him watch something a thousand yards away, she spoke.

"What did they do to you today?"

His eyes – and only his eyes – shifted to look at her, and it made her half regret ever asking the question. That look did weird things to her insides. But then he turned his head, too. "Talk," he answered. "You have no idea how many questions they asked."

Dryly, she said, "I have a small idea, yes." Being Death's granddaughter inspired a slew of them, and that was just in the everyday citizen. Wizards wanted to know more than I Say, Can That Sharp Thing Really Cut My Soul? You're Not Messing Me About Are You?

"Very few of them seemed to pertain to the tracer spell at all," he complained.

"Was one of them, 'Can you do that again, slowly, so I can record each detail?'?"

He grinned. "How did you know?"

"I know Ponder Stibbons," she sighed.

The whole front of Dr. Tolo's practice was boarded up. It looked like it'd been so for ages. Water had dripped from the broken gutters and had warped the boards nailed across the windows; the nails themselves had left drippy rust trails a foot long on the face of the boards. The recent snow had piled in sickish gray drifts against the door and had settled into a two-inch-thick coating on the sidewalk. No one had approached the practice for weeks.

Igorina's hearts sank. It was true. Igor had lost his job with Dr. Tolo because Dr. Tolo had lost his practice somehow. And Igor hadn't told her. And she was afraid to confront him. In his current mood, she couldn't predict what he'd do. His former self, the one she'd married, would have confessed immediately. Their few conflicts had been brief, measured, and resolved with logic and fact-based rhetoric. Their loving bond had never been threatened by anything like anger or doubt.

But now… Well. Was she an Igorina or wasn't she? If he struck her, she'd strike back. With bottled lightning. And one of the Clan's greatest enemies: The Pitchfork.

And then she'd sew them back together after they'd settled everything. While she was at it, Igorina would fix that new, rotten attitude, as well as all the fancy stitching Igor had removed in the last few weeks.

With a brisk nod to herself, she stepped back into the street, dodging a cart and a few pedestrians, to observe the block of buildings to which Dr. Tolo's place was attached.

The unit itself was a narrow, two-story affair, clad with yellow-gray shiplapped pine. The upper story, which should house the doctor and any family he might have, was as abandoned-looking as the downstairs.

But behind and to the right of the peak of the roof, was a stovepipe. And from it issued a faint plume of smoke. And Igorina started looking for an alley.

"I got to spend six hours with your Mr. Mericet," Susan said dryly.

Teatime giggled and clapped. "Well done! You're still alive!"

"Should I not be?"

"He thinks it's funny to try to weed out the unobservant."

"Ah. That's why he kept playing with that can of oil."

It had been a bit troublesome to get to the hind side of this block of buildings – people tended to ask questions of an Igorina timidly poking around alleyways, she'd found – but now that she was back here, she tried to locate the smoking stovepipe. It was going to be difficult; the entire back alley was a welter of rusting metal, smashed pottery, and wiring that only an Igor would understand – and a technologically minded one, at that.

"What in blatheth were they trying to do?" she wondered aloud.

The weak winter sun struggled through a rare tunnel of clear air that cut through the Ankh-Morpork haze to catch on something that glimmered octarine. Igorina crouched and plucked up a small, half-melted ornamental brass box. But for the damage, it looked very new.

She shook the box and muttered, "Where'th the imp? Thith maketh no thenthe. The boardth are monthth old; thith ith thtraight from the shop."

So absorbed was she in examining the impless box that she did not hear stealthy footsteps behind her. The shadow that triggered her survival instincts still hadn't fully registered in her forebrain by the time something heavy and blunt came down on one of the very few vulnerable spots on an Igor's head. She was out cold long before she hit the ground.

Chapter Text

"I'm telling you, I don't recall any moment when a woman came up to me and tapped me with anything," Teatime said rather scornfully. "I would recall something like that. And she would be dead. Surely you can put a spell on my dagger. Then all I'd need to do is stab – like this," he said, flattening a hand and jabbing it through Ponder Stibbons' belly. "The spell would stay in my body. I move too fast, even dead, to be caught or recalled. Even by myself."

The wizard, nonplussed, stepped back and flapped his hands ineffectually at the ghost. "Oh, I say!" he cried.

Teatime cocked his head to the right. "Out of curiosity, would you classify that as 'like a heart attack'?" he asked. "Or just 'cold'?"

Stibbons frowningly jabbed at the nosepiece of his spectacles. His expression was stuck between horrified bafflement and delight at finding a fellow scholar. This was a kind of conversation in which he felt at home. "Cold," Stibbons answered, not-quite-unconsciously rubbing just above his navel. "I should call it unpleasant, but not worse than forgetting to do up a button on a cool day, perhaps. Why?"

"Oh, just something Susan says," the ghost replied casually. "I sometimes suspect her of histrionics."

"Oook."

Automatically, Teatime turned to Stibbons for a translation.

"Interesting point, Librarian," Stibbons said to his colleague before explaining, "Miss Susan is part Death, so, being dead, it stands to reason that your effect on her is different from your effect on others."

Teatime got that look on his face that even the wizards were beginning to recognize; one learned not to ask Teatime what he was thinking at those moments. The answers, if they ever got them, tended to be distressing.

Before Teatime could sink too far into his reverie, the Librarian restarted the conversation Teatime had interrupted with his inquiry. Not even waiting for the expectant look from the ghost, Stibbons began translating while the Librarian spoke.

"There is a … chance that the suggested method would work. We've never attempted to apply – no, that's not it – adhere a tracing spell to a ghostly object befo – very well, an incorporeal object before. We would, of course, have to perform some experiments."

"Eee ook."

Stibbons looked decidedly uncomfortable at that point; the expression only got more pronounced when Teatime looked at him questioningly. He turned back to the Librarian. "Is there no way we can do it without Dr. Hix? He was very emphatic on the point of Mr. Tea- – ah, hrm – Teh. Ah. Tim. Eh."

The Librarian shook his head, and there are very few more definitive negatives than that great red fur-and-leather frown swinging back and forth.

Stibbons sighed, "You had better be prepared to spend your weekends in a small, smoky theatre for the next year or two, then."

Death was getting a little tired of showing up to scythe an Igor's soul from its body only in time to see a shadow skittering just out of sight; he'd invariably look down to see remains that couldn't be described by many other words. Leftovers, perhaps. If the Igors had been jigsaw puzzles, then the remains Death found on these occasions were like an upturned puzzle with a bit snapped off of each piece. The Clan would never be able to put the parts to better use – to save lives or improve someone else's health – because whatever was killing them was spoiling the corpse.

The spirit of each Igor would, as Death had told Susan, be lisping to beat the proverbial band, complaining that he had so much more to do in life and mourning the waste of the ruined body. Then, invariably, each one – even the Igorinas – would request a chance to get Death on the slab. There was nothing to "rummage around in" except the braincase, but the Igors, to an Igor, would compliment the condition of his skeleton. After a polite refusal, Death would take them to the Country Between and let their spirits get on with going on.

After the first two, Death returned to the scene of the death, just to observe. While he couldn't interfere, according to the rules, he could always see what was to be seen. And there was always Susan, if it came down to having to Do Something.

Whatever was committing the murders moved quickly, scattered the bits of the body far and wide, and bit off bits of the body before it managed to die. That is, the damage was done before Death. And that was sometimes a tricky thing, if one considered it bit by bit, because although Igors' spirits departed the body – they did, indeed, die – the body parts still had molecular function, as did most living tissue. Igors just tended to be better about getting the bits up and running again before molecular death occurred.

And although Death wasn't concerned about the deaths in and of themselves – in the grand scheme of things, one person's life was hardly measurable – he did take an interest when things happened in Ankh-Morpork. For one, he had to spend a great deal of time in a place with guilds for Assassins and thieves who could kill in the course of their work. For another, Susan lived there.

Death was beginning to regret letting Susan get involved in Mr. Teatime's mess for many reasons. This was one of them. She would be the ideal person to deal with this mystery murderer, but she was too busy to do anything about it now. And heavens, wouldn't she be angry to go from one adventure straight into another! It had been some work to get her to do this.

But she would do it – seek the body, that is. Death had remembered her stealing his books and horse while doing so long before she did it (he felt justified but just a little guilty for punishing her for it; she'd been so confused!). He had remembered Lobsang's interference, and he had gone and had WORDS with the sometime-personification of Time (the boy had been that blend of charm and pedagogy that Death found not-quite irritating enough, and he'd taken tea with him after the scolding). There was no getting around the fact that she did – would – was in fact in the process of pursuing Teatime's corpse.

However, he couldn't clearly remember forward beyond Susan's putting something into her pocket at the Unseen University and stepping through one of her doors with the ghost at her side.

OH DEAR, he muttered to himself. SHE IS AT A NEXUS POINT. The future that involved Susan was blurry for Death beyond that door. Whatever decisions she made from this point on would determine the path of the rest of her existence – all her potential, her possibilities, her choices would be narrowed drastically in the next few days.

He decided never to tell her about it. She spent enough of her time angry with him.

Something in him tugged at his attention. Hard.

Someone had just died.

And then, before he could respond to the sense of death, it disappeared. He tried to follow where the tug had led, but there was nothing. He hadn't any idea of who had died, nor what had happened afterward, for that life had ended.

Death had attended a number of near-Death experiences – that was the entire point of near-Death experiences – but when someone managed to go back to living, they remained in that still-alive portion of Death's awareness.

This life had ended. And then it never existed.

Worse, even though Death was everywhere, and he had technically been present at this death, he hadn't been. And he could not manipulate time to get there. Whatever this was, it was tied to Susan and her bloody nexus. And he couldn't do anything about it.

"Susan, you're moving too slowly."

She could later credit her marathon sessions with both Mericet and Commander Vimes for her panicked attempts to incapacitate Lobsang first and then dash away to her trusty fire irons to finish the job. That she managed to do neither had more to do with Lobsang than anything else.

"Nice form," he said, tugging saffron robes back into place after he'd released her wrists. He adjusted a large basket that was slung across his back; something inside whirred softly and rattled when he moved.

"What the devil were you about?" Susan demanded. She drew herself up and pretended that she hadn't just tried to hit Time in the nose. Her hair went from that convenient slicked-down style it now took whenever Susan got combative to an irritated, writhing mane.

"Things need to happen," he answered, "And you've left them to the last minute."

Piqued, she retorted, "'There is always time for another last minute.'" She sent a mental thank-you note to her grandfather for the line.

Some of Lobsang's usual humor surfaced in a brief smile, but it disappeared, leaving a dearth of affable and nearly zero happy-go-lucky. Mischief was absent. There wasn't even much room for merely pleasant.

"Your success depends on this. You have to embrace everything about you that is Death. Everything," he repeated, raising a forestalling hand when she sucked in a breath to answer him. "I know what it costs, Susan, more than anyone. But more than just your comfort or that Assassin's life depends on it."

Lobsang came forward and tried to take her hand; she snatched it away but did not retreat. She satisfied her hurt and anger by glaring at him with her chin high and her spine as straight as her beloved poker.

He sighed. "Look. I can't make you do anything. You have to make whatever decision you make; not me. But I can premember little moments from futures where you've made different choices. And I sincerely believe you'll regret this one the least. Truly."

Unable to look at the pleading expression any more, Susan turned her face away from him. "I enjoy hearing lectures as much as you do," she said icily. "Especially vague lectures. Just tell me the one thing you're supposed to make happen so I can be done with this farce. It's starting to really irritate me."

This was the part that was so easy to forget when life went from normal to humdrum: Whenever Susan left the figurative classroom, her life ceased being her own. That powerlessness, especially contrasted with all the power she pushed away with both hands, unnerved her so much that it defied her defensive anger. She hated it. Her traitorous eyes were prickling, and she turned her back on Lobsang to regain command of herself. "Well?" she insisted.

"Bring things back from the dead." Lobsang overrode her automatic snappish answer with, "I mean, command ghostly items. Force them to become part of the world again – and then turn them back." He dragged the basket from his back and set it on the floor. Tugging the light cover off of it, he revealed a Procrastinator. Sitting next to the slowly turning scroll mechanism was a translucent link of a chain.

"You wouldn't believe how much Qu moaned about this," he said. "It took him ages to figure out how to capture and transport a spectral artifact. He loved every second of it."

Feeling as if she'd dared the gods once too often, Susan lamented the loss of everything normal in her life. Even if she went back to teaching, or being a governess, or even being the duchess of a small tract of the Sto Plains, Susan knew she could never just be a teacher or governess or duchess; she would do those things, but she would forever be Susan Death. Even her hair slumped, draping loosely into her face.

"Lobsang, what happens if I don't do this?"

"You know there're too many answers to that question."

She glared. "You're trying to convince me to do the last thing I've ever wanted to do. You only need one." With the return of her anger, her hair took itself in hand, as it were, and bundled back into a bun. "It had better be good."

Chapter Text

Much later, Susan would remember this trip to the University with pride. She'd recall it in that faint way one recalls events through the fogs of adrenaline or rage, and it comforted Susan to know that, even while distracted – disturbed, even – by Lobsang's visit, she automatically turned every doorknob she encountered and crossed every inch of the city that lay between her home and the University on foot. It would prove a useful memory when it prevented her from crying in public. But that was later. Just now, she had conquered her initial urge to cry, her subsequent urge to drink heavily, and a general feeling of self-pity.

She was brought back to proper awareness in the Great Hall of the University by a collision with a sweating, muttering Dr. Hix.

"Sorry! Sorry!" he cried, hauling Susan by her arm back to the vertical. Too upset to bother with groveling and Your Gracing, he moaned, "Oh, I wish Lord Vetinari would leave us out of his schemes! I just want to bring up old scholars to get primary sources for research! Maybe host the odd Dark Sabbath when Charlie gets dull. I'm supposed to deal with the dead, not try to join them!"

"Sorry?" Susan asked, mystified and trying to be polite.

The wizard pulled a black hanky from one of his flapping sleeves and mopped at the black-tinged trickle of sweat that wended down his temple. "I know, I know, I'm supposed to be wicked, right? University statute and all that. I've even got the ring!" He flourished one hand, which sported a death's head ring. "But having – being responsible for bringing that – that madman back to this plane –! And the things he says to me! I'm going to have to transfer to Fourecks!"

"I doubt that would do any good," Susan answered a little dryly.

Hix blanched, and Susan scolded herself for being rather a lot less than helpful. It was hardly Hix's fault that he had a healthy sense of self-preservation.

Because she knew Teatime, she asked, "Has he threatened you?"

"Not as such," was the reply. Hix dabbed all around the high collar of his robes with the handkerchief. "But when I was… well, grumbling, something about this being the death of me, he leaned over and said, casual as you please, 'If you like. After you're done.'" Finally frustrated past decorum, Hix tore at the frogs that held his collar closed and yanked his hat off his head. "I know most people think me a terrible fool – rubber masks, dyed hair, the theatre, all of it! – but miss, I am not stupid! I'm too young to die!"

This being too silly to comment on, Susan put her hand on Hix's shoulder and said, "You're the Head of the Department of Post Mortem Communications, yes? That's my department. There. You're under my protection now, so for heavens' sake, calm down."

She supposed it was that blasted protective instinct of hers. Any children she had, if she ever had them, could at least expect to survive to adulthood.

Leading an unhappy necromancer, Susan sailed into the High Energy Magic Building, and all heads swiveled toward her like sunflowers to the sun. Only much faster, considering actual sunflowers.

Her expression must have been terrible, because a wired-together skeleton turned to Teatime and muttered, "Ooh. Tough to be you, mate." Susan did a quick double-take. Her subconscious had expected the skeleton's voice to come into her head by bypassing her ears and to sound LIKE THIS.

Since the skeleton was not seven feet tall, and he most certainly was not clothed (which she considered to be a little uncalled-for) Susan turned her gaze to Teatime.

"If anyone here turns up dead after this –" she nodded at the skeleton "– or deader than they are already – then it will go the worse for you. They're helping us. They're not disposable, understand?"

Teatime frowned around her, his expression saying, "Tattletale!" far clearer than words could, and before he could blip across the room, Susan stopped time. Caught mid-movement, Teatime was leaning forward, one foot just beginning to leave the ground. Susan strode up to the frozen ghost and wished that for just a moment, he were corporeal; he'd find it difficult to cause mischief if he were shackled or, say, sat upon by a 300-lb orangutan.

It occurred to Susan that this was an excellent time to attempt to command the ghost into being. But when she recalled that her experiments had all been on a non-living item and followed the mental path to where logic and Just Her Luck intersected, Susan had before her the mental image of heavy black cloth collapsing to the floor without flesh to hold it up. The idea of then being followed by a naked sociopathic ghost Assassin made her go pale. And then red.

And of course it was at this point that the frozen gray light of the High Energy Magic Building glittered off the ghost's scrying eye. The orb had to have moved to glint in the light that was caught in time. And it was now fixed on her scarlet countenance.

"It figures," she snarled. "Damn the man who enchanted that stone! Are you aware in there, then?" She moved a step closer before leaning left; the light reflecting off minute imperfections glittered as the orb followed her movement.

"Right." Taking her sternest schoolmarm stance in front of Teatime, she said, "I trust I don't need to repeat the threat. But let me remind you that these wizards are not lackeys to toss aside. They're not inconvenient witnesses you can just off because you like to. They do magic. If they can summon my grandfather, then they can do for you. Not everyone is an idiot like that blunderer you had unlocking that door."

That was true. Not every wizard was that bumbling. Just a large majority of them.

She turned, touched Dr. Hix on the shoulder, and began propelling the suddenly protesting and stumbling man toward the door. It made her feel like a tugboat pushing a noisy, pathetic galleon.

"– and you never said anything about manipulating time!" Hix wailed.

"Yes, yes. The dead, time, and the minds of small children." Susan got him out of the building and advised him strongly to do something odd, like drop in on Archchancellor Ridcully or any of the classrooms with students in them. Teatime would, if she couldn't distract him, start with the more logical places. She hoped. She thought she'd at least bought Hix a running start, and talking with the Archchancellor was not the worst thing he could do.

Then she released Hix's shoulder, leaving him to fade back into the grayness of frozen time. On her return to the tableau she'd frozen time for, she clicked her fingers and restarted it all.

Teatime was at her side in an instant. "When did you learn to do that?" he asked. "And why didn't you tell me? It would've been useful to know."

She replied primly, "I've spoken with Time, and we're running out of it." It pleased her to ignore his inquiring look to ask of the others, "Have you got the tracer figured yet?"

"No, miss," the skeleton said, touching its forehead with a knuckle. It made a soft, hollow sound. "Charlie, miss. We were just about to try an experiment. With him dead," he said, pointing at Teatime, "And with me being somewhere between zombie and dead, well, we thought I might be able to keep the knife closer to this plane than that, y'see."

At Susan's confused frown, Teatime explained with exaggerated politeness, "If we can get the spell onto my dagger –" the blade went from sheath to hand in a blur "– then I can place it. I'm much faster than you, after all."

While her frown deepened at that, Susan chose not to remind him that she'd just demonstrated a technique that amounted to the same thing as his blipping from place to place. With luck, the experiment would work, and Susan could avoid "embracing" the Death side of her for just a little longer.

That didn't mean that she thought it would work. But as a clever old wizard had once pointed out, it was important that she had hope.

"Well," she said, "Carry on. Be quick, mind."

Charlie knuckled his brow at her, Teatime held the dagger out on a flattened palm, and Susan hoped.

He lost track of time, and he only was able to drag himself from his reflection when the crick in his neck became impossible to ignore. When he lifted his head and rolled it back and forth on the neck, causing the cluttered alley to swerve and jive around him, it finally struck him that he was beautiful. Not handsome, for that implied a certain coarseness of bone structure and profusion of bristles; he was beautiful with high cheekbones and a sultry overall appearance that could only be described as sloe-eyed.

The thought finally clawed its way into the frontal lobe: He hated it – the beauty, that is. There was something about that attractiveness that brought to mind hats with yard-long plumes and collars with waterfalls of ruffles – cravats with knots named for long-dead Quirmians and profusions of velvet. And there was something soul-deep that resented that implication. He was a genius, by Io! Or he had been, by Io! How could a fellow achieve anything if he couldn't get others to look at his proposals instead of his face? Surely someone could be found who valued him for his brain and not for his face! He'd show them all! Once he'd perfected the art of –

And the avalanche of outrage settled into stillness.

The art of what? Prodding the thought only brought Hiddlesham back to the panel and its attendant terror.

Well. There was another thing he couldn't think about. If what he was on the outside of his head had any link to the Bad Thing behind the panel, then he need never consider it again. He denied it. He hadn't seen it. He was not that person with that face and those memories.

"I'm no one," he insisted aloud, the stress bringing back the slur he'd mostly shed over the last week or so. Then he took the shovel in his hands and scooped up some soil and began to cover the huge puddle of blood. It calmed him more to obliterate the face he saw in the puddle than to obliterate the puddle itself.

It was another thing not to think about.

There were times when Susan hated to be right.

Charlie had been able to make the blade rock back and forth on Teatime's palm, but one had to take Teatime's word for it. But the wizards were still unable to do anything with a ghost's effects. Damn.

"I suppose we'll have to use the scrying stone," Teatime said, shrugging. "But since Selachii handed it to me, I don't see how we can keep the spell from going to him."

Reluctantly, Susan said, "Just hold still."

Then she cupped her hands a few inches below Teatime's and fixed a hard look on the dagger. There was a weight in her mind as she bent her will on the dagger, as if its substance lay inside her, waiting to be sculpted around the memory of it in Teatime's hand. And the more she willed the thing to cross over, a pressure built – not exactly in her head, nor again in her soul; perhaps the marrow of her bones – and it burst in every fiber of her being for one unbearable moment.

And as the pressure snapped, Susan swept her hands up through Teatime's and around the stubby-bladed six-inch knife, which was solid and keen enough to draw blood. The freezing cold of the ghost made the cut halfway between her little finger and wrist blaze with pain. While the men erupted into cries of astonishment and questions, she cursed and sucked briefly on the cut. It was shallow and would close soon.

"I told you, I talked to Time," she repeated, impatient with the men and their questions. Honestly, they didn't need to know everything, especially at a time like this. Handle-first, she passed the dagger to Stibbons. "The spell," she said. "As close to now as you can manage."

Stibbons, Charlie, and the Librarian hurried over to a long, scarred workbench against the wall. It was covered in magical miscellanea – something that resembled a distillation setup but with coconuts and footballs playing the part of the flasks sat next to a basil plant in a cage – and the wizards went to the far end of the bench, avoiding the near end, on which sat Teatime's scrying stone. As the wizards began their spell, the sparks of not-quite-visible light twinkled off the newly polished surface and sank in, bouncing around the inside of the stone longer than it really should have.

"Susan," Teatime said, sounding like a man surfacing with a realization from an extended period of thought. He took up his usual just-a-bit-too-close stance beside her, his hands clasped loosely behind him. "How many more surprises have you got in you? Because it seems that every day, you're popping up with something new and interesting."

It shouldn't have triggered a blush. It did, and it shouldn't have. To conceal it, Susan moved toward the workbench and the scrying stone. This put Teatime firmly behind her. "It's called getting to know someone, Teatime," she said tartly. "I also can speak four languages and play a decent game of chess. My favorite color is an extremely dark purple."

"So can I. So can the Patrician," he answered, clearly getting the sarcasm enough to ignore the last sentence. She couldn't see him shrug, him being behind her still, but she heard it in his tone. "But not many can play with time and move in space the way you do."

Knowing what she did about Teatime and his methods, this meant that, in the normal way of things, he'd plan to keep her alive a little longer. She would outlive her usefulness if he could do whatever she could; silly Mr. Sideney the apprentice wizard had found that out just in time. Of course, by that logic, Teatime would never kill women, Susan thought. Without trying, I can think of half a dozen things women can do that he never will be able to, and only two of them involve a uterus.

Susan reached out and plucked the scrying stone from its nest of rags and handkerchiefs. The weird light (which, she had been told, was called octarine) faded from the stone a bit as she retreated a bit from the wizards' workings. Idly, she lifted the stone to her face and had to immediately lower it when she looked through it.

"My god," she whispered, raising the stone again and turning toward the wizards. "Is this how you see all the time?"

Teatime moved behind her. "I don't know. How does it look to you?"

The purely physical view of the scene before her was only marginally distorted by the spherical shape of the stone, but it was indescribably sharp. Each leg of the flea behind the Librarian's ear was perfectly defined. If she'd wanted to, she could count every gray hair on the back of Stibbons' head; Charlie's third molar on the bottom wanted some repair work.

But that was just the physical vision. Overlaid on the workroom was… Susan couldn't call it color-coding, because there were no colors. And she couldn't say there were real connections between things (or between people or between things and people); there wasn't a dotted line between one item and another, for instance. But somehow, as she gazed through the stone, she knew instantly which component of the coconut-and-football-distiller had created the nearly-invisible stain on the ceiling. She could tell which bench Stibbons used the most and whom the Librarian's flea had bitten last (oddly, it wasn't the Librarian).

It also immediately gave her a headache.

"Sharp," she finally said. She lowered the stone and frowned. "And if I had to try to describe it, I would need several panes of stained glass, some string, and a load of similes. And it still wouldn't be accurate."

Teatime came forward and shrugged at her. Indifferent, he answered, "Then possibly. But it never made things that much sharper for me." He sounded a little aggrieved at that.

"Well, they did just have it polished."

A shout of triumph cut off whatever response Teatime might have had.

"Your Grace! Miss Susan!" Stibbons leaned around the bulk of the Librarian and waved the dagger; it trailed a flapping silk triangle. "We've done it!" He bundled what turned out to be a silk handkerchief around the rest of the knife, hustled over, and handed the package to Susan. "Don't touch it with anything but the silk," he cautioned. "That's the only thing that will insulate you from the spell. The next living thing to touch the spell will have it transferred to him."

"Right." She stuck the packet into the large side pocket of her frock coat. Holding up the scrying stone, she added, "We'll need this, too, I'm afraid. Lobsang was insistent about it." Without waiting for a response, she dropped it into the same pocket. That was it. That was all they needed. Except…

Hiddlesham never got to see what was in the big bundle Master dragged downstairs. It thudded squishily on each step, and no matter how Hiddlesham tried to keep his mind off it, the bundle was clearly body-shaped. He silently watched Master drag it across the room and though the door in the same wall that held the panel that so worried Hiddlesham.

Then things went wrong.

In a three-second span, a number of things happened in rapid succession:

The Worse thing behind the Bad panel on the wall clanged and shuddered into silence.

A rolling wave of energy – one that couldn't quite be seen but yanked on every lever in Hiddlesham's hindbrain and triggered another Trouser Accident – roared through the room, knocking Hiddlesham off his feet and cracking every glass item in the room.

The body on the slab thrashed – its back arched so far that it was only touching the slab with its head and heels – and let out one short, tortured shriek.

And when it was over, everything was still but for the shuddering whirr of the machinery behind the panel.

Something went, as Charlie would later describe it, KERBLOOEY. Whatever it was, it didn't affect the physical; the ground didn't shake, and no plaster dust rained down from the ceiling. But everything nonphysical went absolutely bonkers.

The entire workshop erupted with sound, hoots and squawks overlaying tinkles and knells. Light flashed from one end of the spectrum to the other, only pausing in the visible section for seconds at a time. Teatime's form blurred as if Susan had spoken with the Voice, and Susan herself sensed something horribly wrong in her bones.

"The thaumic surge on that was – I've never seen such a reading!" Stibbons shouted, waving something that looked like a mutated pocket watch. "I must get the Archchancellor!" He ran out the door without another word.

Susan whirled on Teatime and hissed, "We have to go now. Think of a good place for us to put this spell on you, because this is it."

"I don't remember anything … Wait," he said just a second before his expression went slack. "I… do."

"What year?"

He told her. And he told her the month and the day.

Susan drew a door in the air, and in front of a stunned orangutan and a skeleton whose jaw had dropped with the rattle of lost teeth, led the ghost into infinite blue.

Chapter Text

The Ankh-Morpork they stepped into was not Sam Vimes’ Ankh-Morpork.  It was the Ankh-Morpork that had driven Sam Vimes to drink.  The guilds were still learning how to govern themselves, and Lord Vetinari was still refining his reputation as tyrant, which possibly involved the oft-whispered stories of poisonings and ruthlessness.  Susan did not want to draw his attention, not now.  A brief horror passed through her along with the thought, What if he remembered our coming back to this time?

“If Vetinari has sent us back here just to get killed…” Susan growled, well aware that the Patrician technically had not sent them anywhen.

“I beg your pardon,” Teatime interrupted in tones of great reproach.

This earned him a glare.  “Or what have you.”  She glanced around, wondering how many, if any, people had seen their arrival.  No one was staring, at least, but there were too many people going about their business to be sure.

“All I know is,” she continued, “If this is a set-up, then I am going to be the one meeting him at his death, and I shall not be saying, ‘Hi.’”  There were too many shadows on the street, as well.  Here, now, it was late Secundus Autumn, and the sun had been up for only an hour or so.  Anything not brightly lit was attenuated and faint, and all that did was make her cautious.  “Look, can you go invisible or something?” she asked.

Teatime shrugged.  “I’ve never tried.  There seems no need, since so few believe in ghosts.  Those who do can’t do anything about it.”

He'd a point, she allowed privately. Aloud, she admonished, "Just remember there're wizards now, too, and in this time, they're more apt to vaporize things first and ask questions over supper."

Then she focused on letting people's attention slide right off her. It felt like she was doing it right, but without someone to suddenly look blankly confused, she could never be utterly certain. No one was looking at them now,so at the very least, they hadn't drawn attention.

From beside her, Teatime complained, "That is uncomfortable." When she turned to him, he was blinking and frowning at her. Then he lifted his hand and covered the pinhole eye, and he brightened in relief. "Maybe the man who enchanted my eye is here," he mused.

"Why, so you can kill him before he makes more than one?" Susan sniped. While the mismatched eyes were disturbing, seeing only the scrying eye was almost worse.

Happily, as if he were a teacher whose slow student had finally twigged onto the point of the lesson, Teatime answered, "Well, I'm sure you wouldn't want more of these rolling about. 'Damn the man', didn't you say?"

"Will you just lead us to wherever you are in this time? If I try to locate you, I'll still just point myself to you." She emphasized which you she meant by jabbing her finger at the ghost. "Even if I could sense the younger you, I wouldn't be able to untangle it from your presence as a spirit."

"We need to go to Moonpond Lane."

Igor, having just been sent by his mistress to fetch the cat (a fat thing with folded ears and a breathing problem. Its name was Scrofula, because the mistress had heard that word connected with kings. Knowing that one gave people horrible scars and the other was a bacterial infection, Igor refused to call the beast by name. The master just saw this as more evidence that he'd married for money rather than for love, respect or anything of substance whatsoever, and felt justified in belittling her in public), went down on his hands and knees in the long front yard that separated the large house from the fashionable street. The bloody animal and its stupid mistress and its vicious master were all of a kind, and Igor would be happy to see the back of them someday, especially if the back of them were on the back of some people who'd needed the spare parts. Only the young master, a lad of five, was worth worrying about. Even then, he hoped the boy could be separated from his parents; they were doing a remarkable job of making him into the same breed of monster.

The shadows beneath a gardenia bush took on an odd blue tinge, and Igor sat back on his heels, curious. The light faded as quickly as it had appeared, but Igor thought he'd seen the form of a man caught in the last rays of the blue light. However, when he focused his attention to where he thought the man had been, there was no man there.

Instead, Igor saw the bottlebrush end of Scrofula darting out from under the shrubbery at the street edge of the front yard. Somehow, it dodged the descending hooves of a carthorse, which was more than could be said for Igor, who was in close pursuit.

In all, it only took about ten minutes, and Igor came away with a few lacerations, but he managed to snag the cat and carried it inside by fashioning a sack out of his coat.

He pushed at the servants' door, as was his wont, and when it didn't budge, turned the knob and entered. "Thtrange," he said to himself, dumping the cat onto the floor, where it spread out like a puddle and wheezed. "I'd thwear I'd left it pulled to." He shrugged, toed the cat back onto its feet, and headed downstairs to his lab in the root cellar.

Still maintaining the You Don't See Me field around her that made Teatime's eye burn, Susan walked through the wall at 413 Moonpond Lane. She'd clearly intended to leave Teatime outside and signal for him to enter once she was sure the room was empty, but he followed her right through the wall. To Susan's visible relief, they were alone in the dim mudroom; there was nothing there but boots, benches, and the smells and sounds of breakfast being made in the kitchen a few rooms away.

The smells made Teatime shudder; he felt a little … well, doubt was too strong a word, for he did not doubt anything he chose to do. But Teatime felt something in his chest – not far from his fatal wound – squeeze, and he frowned at it. He chose to label it as impatience to retrieve his body. He briefly considered the value of the idea of trying to possess his younger self; it would explain why he had so few childlike memories. But then I'd be stuck in a loop, and wouldn't that be boring!

Susan distracted him from these thoughts – she was good at that, being a distraction, and that was probably going to be a problem – by trying to shut the outside door silently. She smiled when it creaked and stuck in the jamb just a bit. When Teatime frowned at her, she pointed at her ear. If anyone came in after them, they would hear the intruder's entrance. Then she gestured at the only other door in the room, clearly indicating that he should lead on.

They passed through doors and walls in silence. Boots and benches became shelves of jars and chests full of linens. Off to the side were rooms that Teatime knew contained butchers' blocks and fascinating arrays of knives, as well as the pipes that had made running an upstairs bath possible. Whatever had squeezed in his chest earlier just tightened further; he removed his hand from his normal eye and rubbed at his chest. It was the greater discomfort. He wished it would go away.

When they reached the stairs that led into the family's part of the house, Teatime called a halt. The stairs here made a sound like crickets in mating season when something even as small as Scrofula trod on them. Getting caught here would just be embarrassing; he refused to be a stereotype while breaking into his childhood home. He leaned in very close to Susan's left ear to whisper, "I caught you on stairs last time. Mind the last five here. Step to the left. They squeak."

Susan nodded and hurried forward, failing yet again to conceal that pink color she sometimes took on. Teatime only considered it fair. She distracted him; since he couldn't deal with her the way he'd always dealt with distractions in the past (it usually involved a knife), he could at least exact a little revenge. Besides, when she turned colors, three pale lines showed up on one cheek, and Teatime reminded himself to get her to explain them.

Because he was ascending the stairs behind her, hissing a warning for her to slow down, Susan didn't see Teatime's expression go from annoyance to surprise and consideration when she made it to the top without so much as a creak. But when he drew up beside her with an expression that clearly said, What Was That?, Susan swiped her hand through the wall with an expression that said, Death Stuff.

Ah, yes, the Tooth Fairy's castle. No Death there. What else can she do here? Teatime had to physically shake his head to dislodge the distraction. This isn't good. If this woman could take his mind off of a mission, then she was a danger to it. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Oh, dear.

When Teatime took the lead again, he had an uncharacteristically grim look on his face. Another chill washed over Susan. The last time he'd had that look on his face, she'd been looking at the pointy end of her grandfather's sword. And just moments ago, it seemed like he had been a breath away from pulling her hair and talking about an inner child. It hadn't been until just now that Susan realized how different he was from five years ago. Ally and enemy were different men – or ghosts. Whatever! – and Susan was suddenly unsure whom she was following now.

It doesn't matter, she scolded herself, He can't really do anything as he is. She would place the spell however she had to, and if it were alone, then so be it. Mentally, she stomped her concern down and stuffed it under a rug.

After taking care of that worry, Susan became aware of her surroundings. And she got angry.

To the left of this dining room were massive bay windows framed by heavy drapes and gilt woodwork. Beneath her feet was an intricate carpet that was two inches deep, and that's if she were guessing conservatively. Two unlit chandeliers depended from seemingly endless chains. Morning light was inching up tapestried walls, and once it reached the chandeliers, the room would glitter with rainbows. To the right were a series of sideboards in expensive foreign wood. On the walls hung six- and ten-foot wide paintings that heavily featured naked bodies. The room was nothing in comparison to the dining room in the ducal castle at Sto-Helit, but it was striving and striving hard.

And it was familiar. Her anger was not quite her own, because it was the anger she had once felt in a Memory, but she knew the anger would be fresh and justified in very short order. It almost hurt to control it. She couldn't control the mass of hair that yanked itself into a tight, scalp-hugging bun.

"Teatime," she whispered, reaching out on impulse. The icy burn of her fingers passing through his right arm was a welcome distraction from her rage.

The ghost paused and turned to her, his expression distant; he almost looked unfamiliar with that utter lack of expression on his face. But it wasn't the solemnity of her Memory. In the Memory, he was feeling something; here and now, Teatime was little more than an automaton.

Suppressing a shudder, she drew closer. "Something's… off. Strange. I've premembered this – Death Stuff – but it was a warning. We have to… Just be careful, all right?"

Coolly, he nodded. Then he turned from her and led her into a short corridor. It, too, was deeply carpeted, and the walls boasted pricey gold-and-green wallpaper. It was the premembered corridor; her anger swelled.

Voices came from two doors down. They were arguing.

"I don't give a damn what he costs, Patrick!" The voice was a woman's; it was shrill, and it was clearly trying to shed the thick Ankh-Morpork accent it had been born with. "An Igor is a mark of prestige! Everyone who's anyone has one! Even you can't argue your way out of that status symbol!"

A man's voice answered her in the same Hubward Genuan accent that colored Teatime's speech. "If he did more than chase your godsdamned cat and play around in the cellar, it would be worth it, darling." Susan wouldn't be able to find level of sarcasm this side of Albert. "We've had to fire half the staff just to afford him. Buying you diamonds to keep your gaping maw shut has rather strained us."

"You'd have me walk about like a fishmonger's wife!" the woman complained. "Where the devil is your famed business acumen, then? I deserve diamonds, with what I have to put up with! And little Johnny deserves to go to the Assassin's School! I shall not have him sit with the filthy rabble in a dame school! Be a man, you bloody louse!"

Susan flicked a glance at the ghost. If it were even possible, his expression had gone from distant to positively alien. His eyes, as far as she could tell, focused on nothing on the Disc; if his posture could go any more rigid, he'd ring out a high C-sharp if he were struck.

The next sound drove any thought of her companion out of her head. It was unmistakable. Nothing could sound like the impact of a hand on a face. And the sound that followed it could only be described as the weight of a woman tumbling to the floor.

"And what," the man drawled nastily – in what seemed like a parody of Teatime's creepiest tones – "Would you have me sell to pay for that? Your precious jewels? You? Or perhaps the boy? Little boys go for quite a price if you can avoid the Seamstress' Guild's new rules."

Susan went cold. She didn't even dare to think in words. There were not enough curse words in the world to describe what was inside her head. So, as always, when words were ineffective, Susan went with action.

Stepping in front of Teatime's unfocused eyes, Susan clicked her fingers and froze time. Then she reached out and did what would have amounted to grabbing his shoulder, had he been solid. Her cut on her hand screamed with the cold, but, yanked out of time, Teatime blinked and focused on Susan's face.

Urgently, she asked, "Where are you now? The kid? Where is he?" She grimaced and withdrew as much of her hand from the ghost as she dared.

Teatime, with some effort, nodded at the door closest to them. It was closed. Susan considered their options, and deciding that keeping time frozen, keeping Teatime with her out of time, hiding her own presence, and walking through walls was asking a bit much.

"I'm going to need you to focus, understand?" she hissed. "Can you do that? It's important."

Teatime nodded.

"Good. Let's go." Releasing her hold on time and snatching her hand away from the ghost, Susan turned toward the closed door. To the left, the bickering began again, followed by the thumps and meaty sounds that made Susan want to commit a number of felonies. Both ghost and woman silently went through the door at the same time.

The kitchen staff, which comprised a single elderly splinter off the distant branch of a well-known family tree of excellent cooks, handed off several trays to Igor. It was his duty, now that the butler and waiter had both been dismissed, to deliver the meals to the family. It wasn't so much beneath him as it was not part of the job description he'd been hired to fill. Still, duties were duties, and Igor would fill them until he had secured another position. And goodness, he was looking. His grandfather, Igor, had told him about a family that specialized in family health; it sounded promising.

It took three trips to get the trays up the stairs and into the main dining room. There, he wheeled a cart out of a closet and loaded it with the food. The master and mistress typically took their breakfast in the breakfast room – the mistress insisted on the formality – and the young master took all his meals in the nursery.

Igor also served as a nanny when he could get away from the rest of the chores. Miss Palmer had been dismissed about a year ago, and with one thing and another, the only thing Igor could do was ply his Clan skills on the lad's wounds as soon as they showed up. Each day brought at least a bruise. However, lacerations and burn marks scored the boy's skin more and more frequently nowadays.

He almost had to force himself to notice the argument the mistress and master were having today. It had become almost background noise by now. In about a half hour, he would likely be called in to attend the mistress' split lip and wrenched arm. That was what usually filled his docket. He made a mental note to prepare the finest needles and his freshest lemon and beeswax balm.

The row was starting to wind down; he could hear fewer sounds over the clink of the silverware he was arranging on the trays. But it was still noisy enough that he did not hear the whispers that crept in under the thumps and shrieks.

Now the anger was wholly hers. Susan felt like she must be casting shadows, her anger was so bright and hot. She'd had to back out of the room by way of the closest wall; Teatime had followed her almost out of habit.

Swallowing against the bile rising in her throat, Susan leaned against the green-and-gold wallpaper in the hall; in the corner of her eye, the entrance to the dining room and its furniture were starting to glow in the morning light.

"Is this the moment you were thinking of? Can we place the spell?" she asked grimly. Because there was no other question to ask.

'Are those burn marks?' was stupid, because of course they were burn marks on the child's arms. They were as clear as the bruising that marred the peaches-and-cream complexion of the boy's face.

'Who did this to you?' was willfully ignorant, considering the argument going on down the hall.

And 'Is that why you are what you are?' was both stupid and cruel, and Susan was not willing to be either. Not now.

Teatime nodded, his eyes focusing solemnly on some far-away galaxy. It almost broke Susan's heart. But nothing could overcome the rage. It overrode anything conscious; her hiding behind time failed her; her hair completely escaped her control. And the rage led her to dangerous places in her head.

She had known that Teatime had taken up the killing blade very early in his life. He'd been a foundling scholarship boy at the Assassins' School. She knew Teatime was an orphan. What she didn't know was how he came to be one.

"Teatime," she said correctly. He did not react.

"Teatime," she said again, incorrectly. It should have irritated him into a response; it did not.

Thinking hard and fast, she discarded the option of 'Johnny', as that's what those monsters in the next room called him.

After a moment's thought, she hissed "Jonathan!"

It was as if he'd been struck by lightning. The jolt and shudder would've been visible from yards away; from a foot away, it looked like someone had hit him. For once, being pinned by the mismatched gaze did not shake her.

"Did you do it? You have to tell me the truth," Susan growled. "It's important. Did you kill your parents?"

Fair brows dipped down over the upturned nose. For the first time in what seemed like ages, Teatime was aware enough to be offended. "What?" he demanded.

"Take a second to note that I'm asking and not assuming."

A heavy pause preceded the answer. "You'd be the first."

"So? Did you?"

"No. Someone else did. Years later. But I wanted to."

It would've done injustice to the word 'understatement' to say that Susan was surprised by that answer. She'd always assumed it had been Teatime himself; Lord Downey certainly did. And 'years later' meant that it wasn't Susan, no matter how much her protective side demanded that it should be. It did unspeakable things to her soul to see a child in such a state. And no matter how long she lived after this, she would never see anything like it again.

Susan snatched the dagger from her frock coat's pocket. The silk handkerchief had nearly unwound itself from the dagger, and it was only by luck that she grabbed the silk first. Without a word, she passed through the wall. She set the knife down on the bare hardwood floor and slid it over to the child. The boy looked up quickly at the sudden, unfamiliar sound. The same fair eyebrows furrowed over the same pert nose. Both eyes were pale with pinhole irises, but a nasty black eye did service for the dark replacement eyeball that was in the child's future. Susan watched, hidden, silent, as the boy leaned over and lifted the blade in his hand. She was a little disappointed that the spell didn't flare or sparkle or do anything on contact.

Without a noise, Susan backed out of the room and into the hall, where the ghost still waited. She stuffed the hanky back into her pocket and felt the scrying stone nestle into its folds.

"Now," she said, her voice just barely taking on shades of the Voice. "Did you kill your parents?"

"No." Suddenly animated, almost alive, Teatime tried to grab her arm, invade her space. "But I did choose to be a killer. Right now. Then."

"You always were going to be," she snapped, stepping out of his reach. "My grandfather keeps telling me that what has already happened has happened. You're just aware now of how it happened."

"Do you realize what you've done?" Teatime asked coolly. He pressed closer, and his voice dipped into that frightening tone that brought out Susan's goosebumps. "What you're responsible for? Thank you for my favorite blade, by the way." He smiled a little nastily.

Bristling, she hissed, "I didn't make the monster! And you'd have armed yourself sooner or later! Don't you dare try to guilt me!" And he would become a monster. Knowing why he would later do the things he did didn't erase those acts nor excuse them. He would be horrible, but she would know why, and, perhaps, how to prevent them happening again when they finished their mission.

Both the pinhole eye and the phantom scrying stone glittered at her from far too close; they flicked minutely side-to-side, taking in whatever they could of Susan's countenance. Apparently reaching some decision, Teatime stepped back. "You're right. Of course." He took another step back and added a bit more cheerfully, "And we didn't even need the scrying stone!"

Almost reflexively, Susan pulled the stone from her pocket, the handkerchief tangled around it.

From behind her, a voice bellowed, "How did you get in here? You thtay away from the young marthter!"

In the same moment, the handkerchief slid away from the stone to reveal its incandescent octarine glow, and a heavy hand reached over her shoulder and snatched the stone away.

The octarine light flared in just the way Susan had expected it to. Only it wasn't flaring from the knife, and it wasn't grounding itself in a tiny version of Jonathan Teatime.

Instead, as she whirled to face the hand's owner, Susan watched the tracer spell latch onto a very, very angry Igor.

Chapter Text

All in one moment, Susan skipped back out of Igor's reach, stopped time, and launched into a breathless litany of cursing.

"Damn, damn, damn!" she finally finished. When she looked up at the immobile Igor, she said it again, but this time with feeling.

Teatime had darted behind Igor and had gotten his phantom dagger up under Igor's chin. Susan thought, Instincts die hard even in sociopaths, it seems. See a threat; attack it. And it wasn't as though he could do anything but give Igor a localized case of gooseflesh, for heaven's sake! And it wasn't like Igor was a threat to him! He'd have done as much good in an attack as a fly.

However, what made Susan curse was seeing that, while the dagger was a precise millimeter from Igor's jugular, the arm that supported the blade was protruding from Igor's shoulder. Teatime's left hand was also embedded in the hand that held the scrying stone, caught in the moment of trying to yank it up behind Igor. With them in so much contact with one another, if she tried to liberate Teatime, there was no way to know she wouldn't pull Igor out of time, too.

Knowing that Teatime was alert even when caught like this, Susan groused, "Not that I don't appreciate the impulse, but you've managed to make this far more difficult than it needs to be. I don't know if I can separate the both of you or get at the stone without risking him attacking again." She did a quick circuit of the weird tableau. "And if you suggest that I kill him, I will do my level best to box your ears. Killing is not part of my job." Susan sighed, coming back around to where she started. The ghost and the Igor were too entangled; there was nothing for it but to just try.

She moved back into Teatime's line of sight. The ghostly stone eye followed her. "When I touch you, try to do your blipping thing. Break contact with him before you freeze up again," she instructed.

After a brief consideration, she added, "Go to the right." Something told her that she'd be less than effective at dodging a potential attack if she were busy suffering from the long-anticipated heart attack induced by the passage of a ghost through her body.

Positioning herself behind both … well, men was the most collectively accurate noun, she supposed … Susan took up a stance as though she intended to bodily throw Teatime away from Igor. Which was essentially accurate. She muttered as much for her own benefit as for Teatime's, "Three, two, one!" She buried her hands in the ghost's back, and flung them to the right.

"Where did –" was all Igor could get out before Teatime was fully dislodged; a split-second later, the ghost was out of Susan's hands, and the moment of frozen time reclaimed him and Igor both. Susan tucked her aching hands into her armpits while examining the fruits of her effort.

To her right, Teatime hung in midair in what was an admittedly picturesque athletic pose, all predator's grace and flying coattails. When he touched down, if he ever did – it was not, in fact, guaranteed he would do so – he'd be positioned to launch himself at Igor again, for all the good that would do. On his face was a bright, alert expression. With the knife in his hand, that expression was a bit eerie, but Susan preferred it over the distant look he'd been wearing much of the morning.

In contrast, Igor was only in the first moments of turning to look behind him. The hand holding the stone had turned downward and loosened minutely.

Typical, Susan thought. The situation improves just a little, but it's too much to ask that he just drop the thing so we can leave. She longed for a stick or poker to knock the stone free and leave a weapon in her hand, but with the spell miscast and this part of their mission failed, it was no time to be squeamish. They needed an alternative plan. The blade was lost to them forever, so perhaps they would have to re-spell the stone and hope that the spell grounded in Teatime rather than Lord Selachii's son.

Crouching beside Igor, ready to strike a nasty blow to the knee (which was fragile on every shape that possessed knees), run, and refreeze time if Igor were faster than he looked, Susan cupped her hand beneath the stone.

She struck.

" – they g-" said Igor.

The stone in her hand fizzed in the aftermath of the spell, little lightnings grounding themselves in her fingers. Susan planned to have words with some wizards when they got back. None of them were 'easy', 'as', or 'pie'.

Speaking of getting back… Leaving time paused, Susan called a door into being right behind Teatime's probable landing spot. With a wry look at the ghost, Susan restarted time, and they went through the door at the same time.

Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, flanked by the Librarian (who needed no assistance in flanking both sides of a man), towed a handful of senior wizards out the Great Hall by sheer force of personality.

"Gentlemen," he boomed, "You are to contain the disturbance by any means that does not involve human sacrifice." The great cone of sound he produced crested above his head and crashed down on the men trailing him; it scattered them briefly.

Stibbons, huffing a little, hurried forward to whisper in the Archchancellor's ear.

Ridcully coughed. "Or the sacrifice of any sapient species!" he corrected himself, adding in a mutter, "Dashed political correctness. Surely they know what I mean."

The wizards paused in a nervous cluster that shifted uneasily around Ridcully like chicks around a rather alarming hen. The lot of them were breathing heavily and mopping at their brows. Stibbons looked concerned and kept glancing at a thaumometer. The other senior wizards all looked like they wished to be anywhere else except perhaps a classroom. Only the Librarian and the Archchancellor seemed impatient to handle this new problem.

One of the doormen was standing by fairly unobtrusively. He was covering for his pal Bates and hadn't really expected to have to open the great doors at this time of day. The wizards were never really up and about this early. It was, of course, his luck that Themselves were in a tizzy about some damn thing.

It was this jolly fellow (He was a man of thirty-four by the name of Jenkins. His involvement in this part of University history might imply that he got dragged into a risky adventure and was so unimportant that he became the inevitable Dead Good Guy whose death galvanizes the heroes. So to put everyone's mind at ease, the rest of his story goes like this: He got married three years later to a woman named Molly whom he'd gotten in the family way a bit too early. He won a tobacco-juice-spitting contest two years after that, mortifying his wife in the process. His daughter buried him after he died at eighty-seven.) whom Ridcully snagged by the jacket collar.

"I say," Ridcully said. "Go an' fetch Professor Rincewind, and step lively. When he runs, make sure he's pointed in this direction." Jenkins nodded and trotted off. "And make sure he brings the Luggage with him!" Ridcully shouted after him. He reached out and collared another unfortunate, a student this time, and directed, "Dash a clacks off to the Watch. Tell 'em they should get their airborne chap aloft. We're heading Hubward!"

Most of the senior staff watched the young man head eagerly for the stairs to one of the shorter towers. He was being useful, which pleased him; he was being allowed to stay at the University, which would have pleased them.

"With that much magic flying about, we'll need every advantage," Ridcully muttered. "It's a damn shame Miss Susan isn't back. That time-and-space door trick of hers would be rather useful about now."

Stibbons mused, "I'm uncertain the structure would be able to handle this many of us, Archchancellor. And who knows what effect it would have on the Luggage – or the Luggage on it. I wonder if she would be willing to perform some experiments with it."

"One thing at a time, Mr. Stibbons, one thing at a time." There were times and places, and while Ridcully prized Stibbons more than he let on (who would make day-to-day things happen, like breakfast, if Stibbons didn't get it paid for, after all?), he had to wonder about the young man's priorities.

Ridcully perked up and tilted his head to the side. He fancied he heard the sound of running feet. Dozens and dozens of them. "It's too much to hope that she'll return before we've cleaned up this mess. You did leave a note or somesuch, didn't you?"

He never did get his answer. The arrival of Rincewind perched unhappily on top of the Luggage (a large sapient pearwood trunk with lots of little feet carrying it around, a vicious set of teeth, and a stomach that held who knows what … best not to dwell on it) and wailing dire excuses quite prevented Ridcully's hearing Stibbons' reply.

The second thing Susan noticed on their return to the High Energy Magic Building was how empty the room was. There was what one might call a dearth of people who were able to place tracer spells on objects that needed to wind up in the hands of a young Assassin. Again.

The first thing Susan noticed was Lobsang standing squarely in front of her door. He stepped neatly aside, dodging Teatime as the ghost landed.

Teatime may as well have been aiming, because he didn't so much land and turn to face Lobsang as teleport from airborne to far-too-inquisitively-close to Lobsang. To Lobsang's credit, he merely blinked down patiently at Teatime. Susan couldn't conquer the urge to cover her face with her hand.

"Hello," Teatime began in that bright, not-exactly innocent way.

"You're Mr. Teh-ah-tim-eh," Lobsang interrupted. "Commonly called Teatime or Aaughgurglegurglethump. I'm Susan's friend, Lobsang, and we don't have time to chat. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about." He turned to Susan and said, "Follow the tracer."

"But the spell's in an Igor," she protested, gesturing a little helplessly with the scrying stone as if it would explain things. "And we don't have the other end of the tracer spell."

"Follow anyway. Use the stone. It remembers the spell." Then he disappeared. The manner was so abrupt that Susan felt sure he'd frozen time to do it. She hated when anyone did it to her; she felt like she was missing something in the meantime, as it were.

Teatime turned frowningly to Susan and asked, "Who was he?"

"My friend, Lobsang," she repeated. She took a weird pleasure in the pettiness and the way Teatime's frown took on shades of pout. It eased a little of her stress, somehow.

She looked down at the stone in her hand; the octarine glimmer in it had died down a little, but it still buzzed against her skin like something powered by a manic imp. She swung her hand before her in a slow arc and was relieved when the glow brightened at one end of it. It could act as an occult compass. She'd worried that it would be harder than that.

"I heard his name," Teatime said in tones of patience. "But who is he?"

She replied a little distractedly, "Time, sometimes. And 'killing time' is just an expression, and no, you may not test it." Susan turned around in a tight circle, noting which way she was pointing when the orb brightened the most. Based on the imperfect art of stone-glow, Susan reckoned that once they were outside, they'd have to aim Turnwise and Hubward.

Piqued, Teatime asked, "Who'll stop me?"

"He will, probably." While her tone never deviated from distracted patience, Susan's mind was lighting up, mostly with irritation. Of all the times for Teatime to latch back onto his obsession with killing (especially with killing people who were simultaneously dear to her and anthropomorphic personifications!), he chose this one? "Let's say that to him, everyone is predictable.

"But," she said, suddenly devoting her whole attention to Teatime, "If you try to kill my friend anyway, I will kill you again, and I will leave you that way, understand?"

With a smile that couldn't decide between smug and strained, he warned, "You won't be that lucky again."

"What I've done once I can do again," she snapped. Teatime narrowed his eyes at her – he didn't like having his words thrown back at him. That strange bit of schadenfreude fizzed through her mind again; she didn't turn around fast enough to quite hide a smile. She headed toward the door and tossed over her shoulder, "Let's go."

Hiddlesham came to at the end of a boot. His gaze traveled up the boot, past the bloodstained trousers, beyond the similarly begrimed shirt and coat, and up to his Master's face. Master was frowning around the hand he held pressed to the right side of his face. Blood dripped from between his fingers. It slid down both his wrist and chin, leaving nearly vertical lines that made it seem like he'd recently annoyed an alley cat.

"Up with you," he growled thickly. "I need you to hold a mirror. Be quick. We haven't time to waste."

What followed was a grotesque, fascinating procedure that involved tongs and the finest stitching Hiddlesham had ever seen. Master sat on the edge of one of the workbenches and put a very freshly plucked eyeball – one so pale it seemed to have no iris at all – into the bleeding ruin of his own eye socket. Hiddlesham, who held the mirror as directed, got a front-row seat for the entire performance. He couldn't help but envy and admire his Master's skill.

When Master was dabbing away at the caked-on blood with some sharp-smelling alcohol, Hiddlesham offered, "That was amazing, Master." He got a grunt in response, which was better than the insult or swat he'd expected. He felt bold enough to point out, "Odd color, though."

"I gave it to her," Master answered almost idly, tossing the bottle of alcohol onto the workbench, letting it spill. "Only fitting my granddaughter give it back when I needed it – and she didn't. 'What goeth around cometh around.'"

Hiddlesham hadn't known before now that a lisp could be sarcastic. Unable to answer that, Hiddlesham began to neaten up, picking up the tray of scissors, thread, and needle Master had just used.

A boom and rattle from behind the panel shook the wall and startled Hiddlesham into dropping the tray.

"Leave it," Master snapped as Hiddlesham fell to his knees. "That eruption probably drew the attention of every wizard in Ankh-Morpork. They won't be long coming, and I don't intend to leave them anything to find." He moved toward the slab. His voice went rough with anger and fast with a much more Igor-ish fixation on his project. "I'm going to try to get this fellow stable enough to move. You're to cram the basement and ground floor with anything flammable. Drapery, rugs, broken furniture, anything from the rubbish pile out back. Light the fire and follow me –" He gave Hiddlesham an address; it was in Dolly Sisters, not very far away. Then he went into the room behind the Panel and made a lot of noise.

Hiddlesham began a slow, methodic destruction. He began to weep as he did so, and he didn't know why. And he found as he dragged musty linens from disused upstairs closets that he couldn't stop.

"Can't you make a door?"

"I have to know where I'm going first. The tracer only seems to give a general direction."

"I just don't trust this method," Teatime complained. "It's sloppy. It's unpredictable, not straightforward at all. And there's no logical reason to think this Igor has my body. You know Igors – after twenty-two years, that hand could be back in Uberwald or stuck on a Genuan farmer."

"When the anthropomorphic personification of Time tells you to use a tool in that tone of voice, you should probably use it," Susan pointed out dryly.

She was focusing on the stone, which brightened incrementally with each step she took up the alley that cut Hubward through some low-end blocks of flats. So, when he replied, she didn't see his frown, but she could hear it.

"Do you frequently let this 'friend' command you in that way? That's… uncharacteristic of you."

Susan looked up and stared. He's sincerely hung up on this friendship thing, isn't he? It made her feel a little sorry for him that he couldn't fully understand the concept. And he wasn't even the least bit uncomfortable that he'd just revealed his jealousy – Good grief, that's what it is, isn't it! Instead, he just met her gaze with a confused frown.

Carefully, she replied, "Infrequently. And he rarely commands, and when he does, it's usually for a good reason."

"Like?"

Now the sense of revelation bled away in the face of rising irritation and a kind of embarrassed defensiveness. "Like saving my life. Or causality. Good reasons."

"Oh? Which is it this time?"

Susan's brows went up. Speaking of uncharacteristic… That question had come out of the ghost sour enough to turn milk to aged cheddar, no waiting necessary.

And the answer… Well, Lobsang had given her not just one but three good reasons to embrace her Otherness, but it would have taken more than a petulant ghost to get her to be explicit. But the pause before her response had lingered too long for glibness.

When in doubt, turn the metaphorical mirror around.

Halting just before exiting the alley, Susan turned to Teatime, who'd stopped when she had and not one step later. She leaned into his personal space, and once more, her mind went back to the Tooth Fairy's castle. In tightly controlled tones, she said, "It looks to me like it's saving your life this time." The ghost blinked at her, bewildered. She amended, "Putting it back, at least. Just accept that Lobsang is doing us a favor."

"But why?"

She tossed her hands up, barely keeping a grip on the stone. "Search me!" It wasn't a lie; it was a sarcastic request for more questions. "But I'm done wasting time here having an argument with you when you're in a jealous snit! Now either we move forward with the only lead we have, or we give up on the entire thing – body, resurrection, the lot. Your call."

He paused just a brief moment, and Susan was only aware of it because she was watching so closely. His expression went from aggravated to sullen, but paused at startlement for that fraction of a second. Then he frowned down at the stone Susan held between them and, "Very well, if you have no better solutions."

"Oh, thanks very much."

"You're welcome."

"Shut up."

Chapter Text

When the pale winter sun broke through the crystallizing fog that shrouded the city, it shattered into billions and billions of sparkles, although those sparkles had a kind of greenish overtone. The dazzle overwhelmed the glow of the stone. Susan had to tuck it under her coat to gauge direction, giving her the appearance of a dark egret that was trying to decide whether to sleep for the night or take a walk. It was after the third repetition of this antic that the direction led her left, and as she turned, she caught Teatime's expression. He looked both curious and amused.

"Do you have a better idea?" she snapped defensively, coloring. "I can't see it!"

"I can." He pointed at the stone in his head.

She considered flinging the stone to the cobbles but wasn't sure how sturdy the stone really was, and she wasn't willing to risk destroying it just because Teatime was able to bring out the twelve-year-old in her. Instead, she asked, "Why didn't you say so?"

He shrugged. "You weren't asking for help. And your solution, while slow, seems to work. You're the one in the hurry."

Susan stared.

Thoughtfully, he added, "I don't generally concern myself with others' methods. Either they are my friends – allies, if you'd rather – and they just have to get the job done, or they are not, and they are dead." He paused and tilted his head, looking, perhaps, marginally less like a rabid Lipwigzer puppy than usual. "But with you, it's interesting to see what you sacrifice to reach your goal." He grinned. "In this case, dignity."

The struggle for self-control was mercifully brief. Susan won it, if just barely. She stomped over to Teatime and stood beside him so they both faced one of the poorer Dolly Sisters streets. She waved the stone in an exaggeratedly slow half-circle.

"Which."

The stone swept back, reversing its arc and coming to a halt just in front of Teatime's breastbone.

"Way."

He stepped back out of the way, frowning uncomfortably. With no explanation or word of direction, he jerked his head to one side and started walking.

The wizards were tromping up Washer Lane, the sound of their boots drowned out by wheezing and complaints. Only the Archchancellor, the Luggage, the Librarian, and the two bledlows who'd been roped into the venture were soldiering on in relative silence. Ridcully called a stop. He was careful to do this at the mouth of an alley that lacked purveyors of both food and drink.

"Any clearer direction, Mr. Stibbons?" he asked. He took in measured breaths through his nose, expanding his barrel chest by half a foot. He did have to cough a bit after that, it being both winter and Ankh-Morpork, but he was faring better than the men under his command.

All Stibbons could do in response was pant and wiggle his hand in a "maybe, give me a tick, though" kind of gesture. He collapsed against a wall, crumpling around the thaumometer he held.

The Lecturer in Ancient Runes puffed, "What good – will we be – if we – show up – like – this?" It took a moment for him to suck in enough breath to continue. "We'll be weak – as kittens! I propose – a snack break!"

There rose a wheeze of agreement from the crowd. It was punctuated by the clear addition of "Back at the University!" This was Rincewind's contribution; he'd ridden the Luggage the whole way and was not affected by the labors of running through the city streets led by nothing but a thaumometer and a bad feeling in one's bones. His cowardice was equally unaffected by the running, but it was amplified by the bad feeling.

"Nonsense!" Ridcully cried. "It'll be far too late then! Imagine what must've broken through!"

Rincewind shuddered hard enough to rattle the Luggage. Ridcully reached out and grabbed the back of Rincewind's robes just as the man took a flying leap off the Luggage in the direction of the University.

After the echoes of the resultant thud had died, Ridcully added, ominously, "Imagine the pubs that must have been destroyed. Consider the fate of any unlucky street-food vendor who'd been selling nearby!" He mentally excluded C.M.O.T. Dibbler. For one, if anyone had survived, it would have been him. For another, Ridcully still hadn't forgiven Dibbler for a long night spent on the toilet. "Whatever caused that surge needs containing. We are the last hope this city has, gentlemen."

In the mournful silence that followed, the flapping of a buzzard coming in to land was startlingly loud. Rincewind shrieked and flailed in Ridcully's grip.

"Here, now, cut that out, mister!" The voice seemed to come from the bird. "You're agitating Morag!" A wee human-shaped head leaned out from behind the buzzard's neck and glowered up at Rincewind.

A couple of the senior wizards who weren't accustomed to being outside the University (indeed, who weren't accustomed to being outside) gawked downward as politely as they could.

Used to this treatment, Corporal Buggy Swires, decked out in his gnome-sized aerial-issue Watch uniform, sketched a brief mounted salute to Archchancellor Ridcully.

"Commander Vimes says he's put all semaphore messages from you gents as top priority. Most other clackses are getting rerouted on the towers on the other side of the Ankh. He says to send up a signal when you find your problem in case you need Watch assistance." Swires leaned forward and gave Ridcully a mighty glower, adding, "Though I'd advise you mind how and what you send up as a signal, if you understand me."

Ridcully answered, "I'll aim away from the buzzard."

"His Lordship also says he'll see you at the Palace once the mess is cleaned up."

"That's what he said, is it?"

Swires shrugged. "It's what I got from it. You can probably put it back in the pretty language he used if you've a mind to." He shrugged again and nudged Morag with his knees; the buzzard hopped forward a step or two and turned to face the length of the street. Over his shoulder, he shouted, "Captain Angua's running things down this way, so make sure your signal is clear to her, too! She'll be 'round shortly! I'll be overhead to relay messages!"

Ridcully watched the buzzard hop itself into the air and waited a few seconds to release Rincewind. "Vetinari's let Vimes shut down half the clacks towers in the city," he murmured to himself. "Mr. Stibbons! Get us a bearing to follow! Now, if you please!"

The wizards scrambled to their feet, hauled upward by volume alone.

"And someone find a half-brick for Rincewind!"

Halfway down Lobbin Clout, Teatime said sharply, "It's moving."

Considering that so were they, Susan glared at him. She stopped, the stone held at shoulder height, and asked, "Where?" She was in no mood to be any more polite. He'd already laughed at her this morning, and while she was more or less over that – as well as his decision to drag things out by not offering to help – Teatime had started prattling about how convenient he was finding it was to be a ghost.

"Doors and walls are nothing, now," he had chirped. "They hadn't proved much bother before, mind, but I won't have to scale chimneys anymore!"

"What are you going to do, then?" Susan had drawled, "Startle them and hope they have a weak heart? Perhaps paper-cut them to death?"

"It's all about focus, Susan. Physical limits don't seem to exist for poltergeists. With practice, I could move mountains."

She had rolled her eyes. "Heaven forbid. Someone like you needs limits, you know. Your skills, however horrible they are, come so easily to you that you need obstacles just to keep from getting bored." Then she'd frowned and jabbed a finger at him. "And I will not have gone through all this just for you to tell me, 'Never mind!' Now focus on the tracer spell!"

Teatime peered down at the stone and pointed widdershins of their current position. "We're going to have to take Whilom Alley; the spell's heading away from Endless."

Just as they neared the mouth of the alley, an echoing thwomp rattled the windows of all the buildings lining the streets, and even the cobbles developed their own sharp shadows. They turned to face the source of sound and light, and a warm wind tore the fog away from the street, leaving a clear view of muddied snow and a hundred-foot tower of flame just Turnwise of the direction they'd just come from. It seemed to be only a couple of blocks away.

Susan took a few instinctive steps in that direction. Gods knew who had been hurt in that explosion; they'd need help.

"Susan, the tracer!" Teatime was in front of her, and she skipped to a halt before she could plow through him.

"What if someone died in that? They're going to need help!" She corrected herself, "I mean the ones who didn't die!"

"So? That's not our business."

"So? Not ou- No. I'm not going to argue with you about this! Trying to make you understand the value of life is pointless!" She made as if to go around him.

Teatime pressed his lips into a line in his irritation. "If you'd take a moment, you'd find it strange that it happened just a few minutes after the other end of the tracer spell started moving. That is Watch business," he said, nodding at the fire.

She did take a moment. And he was right. And she was getting a little tired of it, which, she realized, was a completely illogical position to take.

It was with visible effort that she tore her attention from the flames, which had taken on an octarine cast, and lifted the stone. "Whilom Alley?" she asked, trying not to sound grudging. She almost succeeded.

It took only about five minutes for the wizards to make it to the scene. They'd only been a few streets away, but between Rincewind's near-successful escape and the average girth and age of the wizards, Captain Angua still beat them to the block of destroyed buildings.

"I've ordered a perimeter set up 'round the block," she barked as Ridcully pounded up to her. "Swires has got backup coming at a run. We're a bit far from the Ankh to get an effective bucket line organized. I certainly hope you wizards have some way to douse fire."

As the rest of the wizards puffed into formation behind Ridcully, he tore off his hat and swiped at his brow, glowering at the flames.

"Magic for magical fires, Captain," he answered. "A bucket line would've either caught fire or turned into so many potted flowers."

Before she could answer, Ridcully whirled 'round and bellowed, "Right, gentlemen! Antworth's Containment Field No. 7 should do the trick! Set spherical surface area at one hundred twenty-five feet! Anyone who's closer than that's already dead!"

The senior wizards fell into a neat cluster around the Archchancellor. Whatever whining or bickering might have, another time, delayed proceedings were forgotten in the face of Ridcully using his Commanding The Troops voice.

"Professor Rincewind, kindly take Captain Angua aside and explain how we're doing what we're doing, there's a good fellow," Ridcully hastened to add. Everyone but Angua sagged with relief as Rincewind peeled away from the group; no one sagged further than Rincewind did. Angua bared her teeth at the Luggage as it followed Rincewind over, and Rincewind skipped backward a step.

With everyone thus occupied, Ridcully bellowed, "On my mark! Now!"

A sense of pressure built, making everyone work their jaws to pop their ears. And then, with no flare, pomp, or fireworks, a dome of translucent blue overlaid the destroyed buildings and the fire that was doing the destroying. The heat from the fire disappeared, likewise the roar of the flames and the smell of the smoke. One had to actually look at the scene to know that anything was amiss, which was a hell of a feat considering the utter ruckus a hundred-foot tower of magically fed flame could cause.

In the quiet, one could hear the struggling of the wizards. The Senior Wrangler and Professor of Extreme Horticulture leaned on one another, moaning weakly. Stibbons was on his knees, but he was scribbling on a pad of paper he'd pulled from somewhere in his robes.

"How long will that hold, Archchancellor?" Angua asked, waving a relieved Rincewind away.

"Too hard to tell right now, Captain," he groaned, tilting his head back and forward on his neck. "The spell's got a built-in component that runs a sort of diagnostic test on the contents, but that takes a bit to sort out. Mr. Stibbons'll be monitoring that part of it from now on. Once we get our wind back, we'll douse the flames and suppress any magic spilling out."

"How soon?" she demanded, eyes narrowing. "If that fire burns any longer, we'll lose any evidence we can use to trace the person responsible!"

Ridcully narrowed his eyes right back, not at all in the mood to be cowed. "You'll be of no use as a cinder, Captain, nor as a talking begonia. He might have left a trail when he legged it after setting the fire, so I suggest scouring the perimeter. But there's enough magic in this that it's a University matter, not Watch."

Whether it was his authoritative tone of voice or just his rhetoric that did the trick Ridcully never knew, but Captain Angua nodded sharply and jogged up to the edge of the translucent blue and started a circuit of it.

As the wizards continued to recover, they crowded around Stibbons and his notes and thaumometer. In turn, the backup watchmen, led by Sergeant Detritus, crowded behind the wizards; they eyeballed the contained fire with varying levels of fear and incomprehension. Angua, having made her first circuit of the spell, trotted out to meet Detritus before he could interrupt the wizards with questions. A few short words had a steady-looking human watchman pulling white semaphore paddles from his belt; he waved them in quick patterns at a rooftop nearby, where a buzzard perched. A small, rough clacks rig clattered away, relaying the message across the city. Ridcully assumed it was a call for further backup, perhaps an all-points-bulletin about any evidence Angua had found; it didn't matter, it not being his business.

"That's imp magic," Stibbons croaked. Ridcully saw that the younger man had gone milk-white. "Lots of it. More than I've ever seen. And… and something else. I… I think we need Dr. Hix, Archchancellor."

Ridcully bellowed out the order to clacks for Dr. Hix. "Tell him to use a flying broom, or it'll go the worse for him!"

Just as she was about to step from the alley, Susan walked right into Teatime's arm, which suddenly barred the way. The band of piercing cold cut through her just above her waist, and it knocked the air from her lungs. She sucked in a noisy breath and stepped back, swatting at Teatime. That she actually made contact and numbed her fingers did nothing to improve her mood.

"What is it now?"

"Just observing." Hand still raised, he gazed across the street, looking slightly upward at the façade that struggled to give the building behind it the appearance of both height and wealth. "I see no Igors, and it's unusual for one to be in an area this downmarket. For long, anyway."

Susan stuck the stone over his shoulder and said sharply, "What does this say?" Her patience was going threadbare. Lobsang's urgency was pushing her from the back of her mind. Hurry, he'd said; Use the stone, he'd said. Teatime's improvisation was not appreciated.

Ignoring the stone and question alike, Teatime said, "But, interestingly, I've seen a familiar face five times since we've left the University. He's always been at least a half block away."

"We're being followed?"

"Extremely discreetly," was the distracted answer. "I'm impressed. I'm only fairly certain he has left the building across the street. He's definitely an Assassin."

Susan almost dropped the stone, splaying her fingers in the sign that stood Discwide for WAIT WAIT WAIT. "What kind of hat does he wear?" she demanded.

"Bowler. Yes, yes, of course it's one of Lord Vetinari's clerks," Teatime replied, just a little peevishly, as if annoyed she'd made the cognitive leap, as well. "You needn't worry. As you like to point out, I can't very well do anything to him."

Susan, being right beside him and watching closely, saw his eyes flick back and forth, surveying the surroundings. If not for that, she'd have been quite startled at his abrupt about-face and mad grin. As it was, it was merely unsettling.

"Do excuse me a moment," he said and then blipped away.

She turned around, searching every niche and shadow for signs of the ghost. Of all the times to run off…! He's got the attention span of a seven-year-old! And Susan knew seven-year-olds.

In the shadows of the alley echoed the voices of two men; one voice was Teatime's distinct tenor. It took a moment to pinpoint direction, with the sounds bouncing off flaking plaster and frozen mud.

There, up on the second storey of one of the buildings lining the alley! Crouching like a gargoyle on the sill of a boarded-up window was a tall man built like a bulldog. He had the dark skin of a Rimward Klatchian, and he wore a neat not-quite-black suit, as well as a bowler. Perched next to him almost primly was Teatime, who was grinning but was otherwise being unthreatening.

The other man looked down at Susan, clearly for the purpose of acknowledging her gaze. He lifted his hat at her. A sharp word from Teatime drew the man's attention to him; even at this distance, Susan could see the amused expression on the dark man's face.

He said a word or two more, and then Teatime was suddenly before her, blocking her view.

"An old school friend of yours?" she drawled, leaning around Teatime's form. The man was gone. She said, "I'm impressed. You never even pulled a knife."

Teatime's eyes narrowed just a bit. "Yes. Clarke. He's one of the few who say my name correctly," he answered pointedly. "He also says he saw an Igor with a large bundle on his back come up this alley about five minutes ago."

The chill that overcame Susan was most certainly not fear. Nothing like fear. Adrenalin that fueled her ability to swing stick-shaped things at people, perhaps. Maybe a little anger. But not fear. If that wasn't the Igor with the tracer spell in him, then something was dangerously wrong with her sense for narrative causality.

"You did find out which building he went into before you got Mr. Clarke laughing at you, yes?"

Something complex happened with Teatime's face at the question. It involved embarrassment, amusement, irritation, and solemnity waging a battle for territory. Susan planned to take that memory out later and savor it after she'd analyzed it properly.

"Indeed he did." The answer was in his usual chirp, but it was stilted. He led them back to the mouth of the alley and nodded at a narrow one-storey brick building. "The cellar, naturally."

Susan stepped forward, wrapping herself in invisibility, only to be halted by Teatime's hiss.

"Wait. Are you armed?"

Sighing, she clicked her fingers; time went misty and gray around her. She reached out and laid her hand against Teatime's shoulder, and he immediately grabbed her wrist. The burning cold was unbearable for only a moment, but it eased as Teatime loosened his grip, withdrawing his fingers from her flesh. The sensation of being stabbed by ice faded to the sensation of merely wearing it.

"Excellent point," he conceded. "But this method would be a little too inefficient, don't you think? I suggest we get inside, see if it is my body, and then freeze time. After that, efficiency won't matter."

"That's dangerous, Teatime, and may I remind you that even though you have nothing more to lose, I could still get killed?"

"Then we could be ghosts together!"

She frowned and snapped, "Not a convincing argument." Susan glowered across the way at the building he had indicated. "What you're suggesting isn't just dangerous, it's sloppy. Too much could go wrong."

"What you're suggesting is slow and tedious." He grinned at her. "Stop worrying! If I could catch you sneaking up on me at the Tooth Fairy's castle, then I can catch an Igor sneaking up on us here."

"You didn't catch him earlier."

Teatime's face darkened briefly. Then a brittle smile appeared. "I was distracted. It isn't every day one is plunged back into an abusive childhood. Is it?"

Glowering, Susan reflected that Teatime was getting better at understanding people. He'd learned enough about her to find out how to best manipulate her. Given enough time, he might actually learn to understand about friendship, she thought. And he'd found a particularly useful heartstring to tug – the one attached to children and protection. One day, given enough time, I might actually win an argument with him. She just had to find whether he had heartstrings to tug.

Her silence was answer enough for him. Teatime opened his overcoat and undid the snap closure that attached a sheathed dagger to his belt. She refused to wonder how many knives he carried – he was an Assassin, so it didn't really matter. He held the blade and sheath out, clearly intending that Susan will them into being; she did, catching the heavy little parcel as it fell through his hands.

"Enough dawdling," she growled resentfully, snapping the loop onto the front of her belt and drawing her coat closer but not closed. "If we get caught, it's on your head, and by gods, you will pay with interest."

He laughed his weird, high, juddering laugh, as if delighted by the prospect. He blipped across the street and waited for her in the shadow that fell beside the chimneystack. Susan drew anonymity around her and followed him.

Chapter Text

It seemed to Teatime that Susan found it a little disorienting to move through the cellar door, which sat below knee-level, sloping down to the pavement at a 20-degree angle. Susan had probably only gone through walls and never knew she could move up and down through matter, as well.

She was too resistant to experimentation – that much was clear – which was a little disappointing, really, because Teatime thought she might enjoy it if she allowed herself to. He was sure that there were parts of this mission that Susan had enjoyed. She'd smiled occasionally, and she'd even laughed once or twice. One didn't smile or laugh because one was miserable. Surely, if she were having even a little bit of fun doing all these new things she hadn't done before, Susan could be persuaded to really explore the scope of her abilities. How could she possibly bear the curiosity? It was driving him to distraction, for certain.

Nothing for it, really. He'd have to convince her. Once he was corporeal again, he would be so much more persuasive; he wouldn't have to rely on irritating her into things. That, of course, was still an option, but it took so long.

Susan had insisted on leading the way and had told him to wait for her signal, reminding him that she was effectively invisible. "With the way our luck's going, Igor will not only believe in ghosts, but he'll be waiting on the other side of the door with some sort of ghost trap," she'd said.

He hadn't fought it. It made her feel in control of things, and a Susan who felt that way was a little easier to deal with. She'd stuck her head through the wall near the door, signaled the all-clear, and led the way into the cellar.

It was, surprisingly, the cellar of an Igor. That is to say, this wasn't the work-quarters given to an employee by a mad scientist – or… other people… who might employ an Igor. It was the neatly kept common room of a cluster of private chambers. There was a slab, but the high-backed chairs on either end of it signaled its use as a kitchen table. There was a smallish workstation covered in wires and knobs; it hummed, and the smell that preceded a good lightning storm surrounded it. However, it was in the location where one would usually find a stove, and the three copper pots hung on nails on the wall beside it gave it an odd, homey appearance. A pump and sink took up one end of a counter that dominated the far wall. Instead of trays of scalpels, there were drawers that probably held paring knives and soupspoons.

To be fair, though, the jars in the spice rack were looking across the room at Teatime in curiosity. He smiled at them. They all averted their gazes.

The humming, knob-covered panel clicked and shuddered. Susan didn't quite jump at the noise, but her hand went to the handle of his dagger. Good, he thought with a nod that she did not see. She should be faster, but she's alert. Teatime was faster and more alert; a warning at the right time would keep her ahead of danger.

The machine resumed its earlier humming, but in the relative quiet, they could hear other noises from the adjoining room. There was a voice, a man's voice, muttering. Something heavy slid across a surface – probably a slab – and got covered by a sheet (Having been a scholarship boy, Teatime had had to make a number of beds that weren't his; he knew every sound a sheet could make, up to and including the noise one made as it tightened around an enemy's neck.).

Well. No time like the present. That was a body. That had to have been the Igor Clarke had seen. The stone and Susan and he, Teatime, were all here. All he had to do was move quickly, look, come back, and have Susan freeze time. Easy.

So he moved and was in the next room before Susan could freeze time on him. He grinned, wondering if she'd have the presence of mind to do it anyway and come scold him afterward.

Perhaps not, he thought as he heard the hiss of an angry woman from the room he'd left. He remained mobile. Maybe her emotions were overriding her actions. Too bad, that. That's another thing she'll have to work on – recognizing opportunities. And taking them. He turned to give the room a quick once-over before going back.

The room he'd entered was not as large as the main room, but it possessed a slab, knobby machine, and counter with surgical instruments. It was a proper workroom. It even had something on the slab. And oh, dear, there was Igor, staring in his direction. Teatime frowned, a little chagrined that he'd been caught so quickly. Susan had been distracting him again.

"Oh, my!" Igor said. "I have to admit, I hadn't expected you."

Igor was smiling in a way that Teatime thought he should be worried about, had he not been, in fact, himself. Other details tried to latch onto his brain, but he couldn't pay attention to them, because on the slab was his body. It was attached to the wires-and-knobs machine by wires in its head. But it was breathing.

"Hello," Teatime said in a voice that had begun to shake just slightly. "I'd like that back, please."

"I wasn't talking to you, Mr. Teh-ah-tim-eh," Igor answered coolly. Igor turned his gaze slightly, and Teatime realized he had not been looking directly at Teatime. Perhaps it was that one, eerie, familiar pale eye that had tricked Teatime. All the hairs on the back of his neck went up.

Stiffly, he turned. Susan was coming through the door, and not on her own power. A tall, pretty, almost elfin man held her struggling form off the floor by means of a bear-hug grip. His hands were closed around hers, which he had crossed in front of her. Blood was dripping from one hand, and it bothered Teatime that he couldn't tell if it was Susan's or her captor's.

She was livid, though. And when she laid eyes on Teatime again, she glared. "Not to say, 'I told you so,' but I make the plans next time," she snapped.

He couldn't help but laugh.

Hix went white, too, once he'd arrived and seen the readings for himself. "Madness!" he gasped. "Blasphemy!"

"I hadn't taken you for a believer," Ridcully commented. "In whom?"

"Archchancellor, really!" Hix cried. "Now isn't the time! Whoever did this was using thousands of imps and I don't know how many ghosts! Dozens! None of them were allowed to die, sir. They were destroyed!" Hix swiped at the sweat pouring out of him. His robes stuck to him, and Ridcully had never seen the man this upset, not even after a bad run at the theatre. "I do wickedness, sir. This was actual evil."

"Nothing from … down there?"

Hix laughed once, sourly. "Oh, no. Someone here did this. You can tell from the outflow and the imp residue and the complete absence of an unspeakable horror with four-times-two heads on."

Ridcully glared briefly but allowed the sarcasm to pass. This whole thing was rather unsettling. It must have required a wizard, and he didn't know who it had been. He intended to find out, but it was more important to shut down the immediate problem.

"That much is a relief, Dr. Hix," he said. Then he raised his voice to command, "Gentlemen! Change the twelfth and fifteenth runes so they define spirits. And I hope one of you lot has either a chicken or valued childhood memento to sacrifice. We'll need the power boost."

After some hustling and squabbling, the new runes were penciled onto the paper Stibbons was using as the master copy of the spell, and a chicken was located and handed over by a panting Captain Angua. She must have run some distance to get it. She hurried over to stand by Sgt. Detritus, who gently patted her shoulder with a hand the size and weight of a small draught horse.

The chicken was bopped on the head hard enough to knock it senseless. The flapping would have interrupted the spell. With the chicken and the sketched runes on the ground, the wizards circled them and began muttering and wheezing again. The same ear-popping pressure built, but it increased past the point of discomfort. Just as it was beginning to truly hurt – Angua could be heard whimpering against Detritus' side – the wizards all lifted their staffs and shouted a word no one understood.

The chicken became a mushroom cloud of feathers.

The blue dome over the fire popped with a sound like a struck gong.

The fire disappeared without taking the usual intermediate steps of sinking, smoldering or fizzling. It just stopped being.

"Don't go in yet!" Ridcully bellowed when some of the watchmen started moving that way. "We've just got the fire out! The magic's still there! We need it for evidence!"

The e-word stopped the watchmen in their tracks.

Ridcully jostled the wizards, who were disposed to pant and lean on one another again. They needed to get in there and see what was what. Now. He could feel the urgency in his bones.

"It's not even the same Igor!" Susan pointed out. Her voice came out higher than she liked, but being held aloft by someone to whom she had not given permission to touch her was making normal discourse a little difficult.

"The stone led us here," Teatime replied. He sounded strained, but he was able to smile at her. "And that is my body."

He had a point. Susan huffed.

Teatime turned and asked the Igor, "May I have it back, now, please? I've missed it."

Igor answered, "I've taken quite a lot of trouble to keep it functioning, you know, as has the doctor. But I'm nearly done with it. The little bit of fuel maintaining it is nearly gone; if you can take it before it shuts down, you may have it. Be sure to document everything about the resurrection; I'll cite you in my paper about it." He laughed. "But something far more interesting than your corpse has caught my notice."

Susan turned her attention to Igor, who was the weirdest Igor she'd ever seen. He utterly failed to lisp (even the Igor at the Watch, known for his 'speech impediment', threw in the occasional th). He had next to no stitches or scars, and his gray skin was only barely gray. He could pass for merely pale. He could almost pass for human, if not for those eyes. One brown eye, and one familiarly pale pinhole eye focused on her, and it was so much worse than Teatime's gaze. Wishing he'd look at something else as if it were a fascinating specimen, Susan felt herself grow angry.

"You are interfering with one of Lord Vetinari's directives, Igor," she informed him archly. She went still in her captor's arms, if only because the calm coolness looked less ridiculous and weak. "I advise you to order your man to free me, and then release the body into my custody. It is not a Watch matter, if that's what you're concerned about, but it is a matter for the Patrician. I should do this with some speed, if I were you."

Igor smiled, and oh, gods, it was so much worse than Teatime at his creepiest. It wasn't ugly – the teeth were even, the bone structure was symmetrical, the smile lines creased in an appropriate manner – but the eyes and the hungry mania behind them stoked Susan's anger. And the smile wasn't so much a smile as a smirk. He was, in fact, smug.

"You have yet to offer a warrant or documentation marking you as Lord Vetinari's agents," he said. "Instead, you broke into my grandson's home." He paused, frowning; the frown became a sneer. "My home, rather."

He reached down and rubbed at his left hand as if it irritated him. That told Susan all she needed to know. Igors passed body parts around like human families passed around worn clothes; one item went from father to uncle to daughter, or in this case, from grandson to grandfather. And if this home, as well as the hand, had been the grandson's but were no longer, then that meant the grandson was dead. Probably at his grandfather's hand – or his own, rather. It got complicated when Igors feuded with each other.

"And you're dealing in theft and kidnapping," Susan retorted.

"I've been dealing in considerably more than that, as you see," he chuckled. "You're clever," he added, his smirk shifting from smug to sinister. He fluttered the fingers of his left hand at the pale, familiar eye that made his gaze so eerie and said, "When my family get in the way, I get them out of the way. It's a shame, really, since I orphaned Mr. Teatime here to get them into my way."

A monster who kills monsters, Susan thought bitterly. And all for what?

Igor continued musingly, "Such a messy way of pursuing science, but it was necessary. So, you see, the Assassins' Guild has at least three reasons to make me disappear. And I can't turn you in to the Thieves' Guild for breaking and entering. I'd prefer not to give myself over to either guild, thank you. No. I will deal with this in-house, if you don't mind." He waved a hand in Susan's direction, saying, "Hiddlesham, take Her Grace into the kitchen. I will go get restraints."

Part of the not-quite-literal heart-stopping chill that went through Susan actually was – surprisingly – fear that hadn't yet become rage. But most of it was Teatime going through her to attack her captor, who wailed in terror.

That delayed her reaction a bit, so this Hiddlesham character was able to tighten his grip on the hand that held the dagger. Most of the blade was buried in his own hand, but the bones of her palm were creaking against the handle. Her hair, so responsive to emotion, had finally comprehended that this was a life-and-death situation; it was worming its way backward around her captor's neck. The pain, the creepy hair, and the incoherent snarling of the ghost were causing Hiddlesham to make noises like a distressed dog.

Igor had a scalpel in his hand and was coming toward them with his creepy eyes and an intent expression.

Finally, Susan got her breath and her wits back and howled, LET GO!

The man holding her released her as if his fingers were spring-loaded. She shrieked as she fell, her hair not releasing its grip on the man's neck fast enough. With just a hint of regret, she hacked off the last six inches that refused to let go and stumbled forward into Igor and his blade. A line of fire opened up her left side. Instinct made her dive away from it. For a moment, she quite forgot she carried a weapon, too; she was too interested in escape.

Behind her, she heard Teatime shout her name, and that brought her forebrain back into play. She kicked out and downward viciously, aiming for Igor's knee. He bellowed. She'd only managed to stomp on his ankle, but all joints were vulnerable, so it was a worthy hit.

She lifted her free hand, fingers pinched in that last moment before snapping.

And just as she let it go – as the world went gray and faint – Igor's hand wrapped around her wrist and jerked her backward.

Susan could only assume that he was startled by seeing time freeze around them, because rather than pressing his advantage by using his knife on her again, Igor merely let her momentum carry her to the floor. He did, however, have the presence of mind to put his foot heavily down on her knife hand. When she cried out, he grinned down at her.

"This is why I've got to get you on the thlab, Your Grace," he said. What had been a somewhat weird look on his face became positively manic. Every sentence saw a more pronounced lisp mangle the sibilants. "I didn't know you could do things like that. It can't poththibly be genetic. Your father didn't do weird thingth."

Shows what he knew! Susan ground out, "Can't I just tell you my granddad's Death and it's all because of quantum?"

"Is he?" he answered, the mania glowing just a little brighter. "Oh, no, I would have to test it. Find out how it happened. Don't worry. It won't hurt much. I'll have you aneththetithed most of the time." He leaned forward, putting more pressure on her hand, grinning wider when she screamed. "And I'll put you back together again. Hardly any thcarring."

Again, she said, LET GO. NOW!

And again, fingers wrapped around her wrist popped open. Unfortunately, she hadn't said word one about his standing on her hand, and this Igor was smart as well as mad. He crouched beside her, leaning most of his weight on her hand. One heavy hand clamped down over her mouth, and Susan suddenly felt real fear.

"That won't do. Hold thtill. I can repair the voithe box later."

Igor used his grip on her face to tilt her head backward. He brought the scalpel to her throat, carefully aiming for the cartilaginous bump that bobbed as Susan swallowed convulsively. He pulled the blade away. His fingers dug into her jaw, and he lifted her head and thumped it lightly on the floor. Around the sparkling purple dots that sang through her vision, Susan heard Igor snap, "I thaid hold thtill."

A memory, one almost as vivid as a Memory of the Death Stuff variety, swam forward past the singing purple dots. It was Commander Vimes, or his voice, at least.

"If someone's trying to control your movements, you're already done for. They have a plan, and if you cooperate, all you'll do is make it easy for them. You have to fight your way free or die trying – or you'll just die because you didn't try. Those are your choices.

Susan hadn't liked the practical lessons that had followed. They were close-quarters tactics. She had a very short list of people whom she allowed closer than two feet; anyone fighting her was not on that list. But Vimes had taught her a number of simple, truly nasty tricks, ones that were not found in any formal martial arts systems. They involved soft, squishy bits.

Just as Igor was bringing the scalpel back to her throat, Susan's free arm came up in a swift arc and popped him across the ear. As he shouted and jerked away – more weight pressed onto her abused left hand, and she shrieked at the pain as one metacarpal bone gave way – Susan saw a line of blood begin to trickle from his abused ear.

There! He's off-balance! Throw him! The thoughts in her head still sounded like Vimes.

Susan drove a clawed hand up into Igor's unprotected armpit, throwing as much weight into it as she could from a prone position; she grabbed a handful of flesh and twisted it, fully intent on ripping it away from the body. Igor shouted, pained and half-tickled, continuing his tilt away from her assault. Another of her bones broke, dragging another cry from Susan, but she pressed her advantage. Instead of withdrawing, she reached up to the bleeding ear, grabbed it, and yanked.

Finally, finally, the weight came off her abused hand as Igor tumbled backward, bellowing. Another line of pain opened up, this time in a long, shallow cut up the side of Susan's neck and across her cheek.

In one movement, she rolled to the right and dropped her dagger into her good hand. Her coat jerked at her shoulders, caught under the enraged Igor, giving him just enough time to latch onto her left arm again. She landed on her back. His fist came up and down and thudded into her ribs, lighting her up with a new, sharp pain.

Something animal in her brain came alive. Rage was gone, fear was gone, even pain disappeared in the face of the tidal wave of sheer instinct. Everything seemed to lose all association with time – even the frozen grayness around her seemed to detach completely from reality.

Her body curled around the new pain in her chest, partly breaking away from Igor's grip. She kicked at him, partly shoving him off the tail of her coat. The momentum rolled Susan up onto one knee. The movements happened as if they had been drawn on bits of paper, and the bits of paper had been flipped, one after the other, the illusion of motion disjointed and slow. And, entering her field of vision at the speed of a glacier, Susan's right arm came up and around. In the fist was Teatime's dagger.

Igor saw the movement. Without thinking, he ducked.

And because Susan had been aiming at the soft, unprotected neck, when Igor ducked, he ducked into the descending blade.

The impact drove them both to the floor. Susan landed on Igor, which would have been distasteful in any case, but this Igor was flailing and twitching, every body function failing at once.

And then he was still. All six inches of the dagger's blade were buried in his skull just posterior to his eye socket, where the temporal bone was the most fragile. Susan shuddered and clambered off the corpse.

Time restarted.

"Susan!" Teatime shouted, suddenly at her side, his gaze fixed on her chest. She would have been offended, but she looked down, too, and saw the scalpel sticking out of the lower right-hand side of her chest. Blood was seeping out around it, soaking her clothes down to her hip. A matching streak of red darkened her black waistcoat and trousers; the first wound was deeper than she'd thought.

Seeing the blood somehow drained away the numbing effect of adrenaline. She couldn't stop the whimper that bubbled out of her when all her wounds reminded her where they were. Terror overtook her, finally, and she backed up as if to escape her own body. She backed up until she ran into something solid. And bony.

Both Teatime and Susan looked up – seven feet was a long way to look from their positions on the floor – and saw the hooded skull gazing back down at them.

"Granddad?" she gasped, going white.

"The wound isn't that deep!" Teatime snapped. He stood as though he were preparing to fight Death. "All we need is an Igor – a real one! She'll be fine!"

Utterly ignoring the ghost, Death said, IT IS NOT YOUR TIME YET, GRANDDAUGHTER. He tilted his scythe forward, at Igor. I AM HERE FOR HIM.

Carefully stepping away from Susan, he moved over to Igor and swept the scythe over the prone form.

A faint image of Igor floated free, protesting. "No! I'm not done yet! There'th too much left to learn! You don't know what you're doing! I am doing great thingth! You can't thtop me!" None of them answered; they watched him fade away.

Finally, Death turned to answer Teatime. YOU ARE WRONG. HE STRUCK THE LIVER. THAT IS A MORTAL WOUND. AND THERE IS NO IGOR. Susan gasped. It was as if the knowledge made her body hurt worse. It took an act of will not to pull the scalpel out; it was plugging the hole it had made and was the only thing keeping her from bleeding out any faster. Instead, she clutched at the long cut on her side with her good hand. Her left hand throbbed, useless.

Death turned to the last person left in the room, who was hunched over in wide-eyed panic, wringing his hands and whimpering. PERHAPS DR. TOLO WILL BE ABLE TO HELP.

At the name, the man called Hiddlesham jumped. Then he started to cry. "Is that … who I was?" he wailed. The question came out distorted, partly by tears, and partly by the way his mouth was not working correctly. "I can't r'member! He's dead, 'nd I can't r'member!"

Chapter Text

"Sideney," Ridcully hissed. If the poison in his voice were anything but metaphorical, he could've killed two trolls with it. If there were ever a student who should have been drowned at birth, it was the incompetently corrupt Mr. Sideney. At least Rincewind's character flaws benefited others occasionally. But Sideney had vanished from the University five years ago. A short while later, his body had turned up somewhere in the Backs of the University, covered in bruises and with his drawers yanked up in the worst wedgie ever seen. If his death hadn't already occurred, Ridcully would have made sure it did.

The little fool had drawn a summoning circle in some poor doctor's office; the runes specifically called for ghosts, as well as for a draining action. The outlet of the metaphysical drain emptied into what had once been an elaborate machine, one full of tubes, pumps and compressors. There had been a defining rune that had fed the power of imps into the same outlet.

Hix had been right about the ghosts and the imps, but he initially hadn't understood the scope and purpose of the spells and machine. A final sigil – its physical form had been burned away in the fire, but it hung in the air, visible to the wizards – directed that the blend of spirit and magic become something less than a soul but with similar animating power.

"Blasphemy, indeed," he murmured. Sideney – or whoever had paid him to do this thing, which was a much likelier probability – had been working to undo Death. Not just cheat it, which was Rincewind's thing, but actively give it the two-finger salute and walk off.

Igors performed the occasional resurrection, but it was always very soon after death, and the deceased's spirit had to be hanging around and willing to go back into its mortal remains – and be willing to occasionally stick to the lampposts in the city. In those cases, the spirit had already decided that its afterlife was still going to be on the Disc, just not physically touching it. But what Sideney and his employer had done was create something that kept dead tissue alive without any soul to maintain it or attract Death himself.

The wizards were working to obliterate the magical workings of the machine. There was, of course, the risk that someone would use it to do horrible things, but – and Ridcully thought this more important – the greater risk was that someone would do horrible things to use it. He rather suspected someone already had. That would explain the sudden eruption of thaumic energy and then the willful destruction of the physical machine.

"Captain," he called out to Angua. She looked over from the small knot of watchmen she had gathered. "Any idea where the fellow has gone?" His voice was oddly quiet; paired with his rising color and lowering brows, it indicated how close he was to losing it in a big way. The other wizards glanced up from the last of the spells they were using to clean away runes. To a man, they backed up.

"We're heading to Whilom Alley, Archchancellor. There are dozens of residences in that area; anyone could duck in somewhere to wait out the first hours of the manhunt," she answered, half-growling. "The trail is heading in that direction. I will follow it." She gave him a significant look at that. "Follow along if you can keep up. If not, Swires is keeping an eye on me; he'll signal when I've stopped."

Ridcully, who knew a lot more about the people outside the University than most people gave him credit for, nodded at her. After a quick glance to check on how few people were actually paying attention, Angua disappeared into an alley. After a minute or so, a sleek, pale, wolfish dog – or perhaps it was a doggish wolf – trotted from an alley a few houses down and began snuffling at the ground.

Ridcully snatched Hix's flying broom from where it lay, forgotten, on the ground.

The canine streaked away.

Ridcully followed.

"Someone help me up." Susan rocked from her bottom to her knees, grimacing at the pain. Breathing alone was excruciating. Moving anything higher up than her knees only made it worse. She held herself up with her good arm; she slid the fingers of her broken hand around the shaft of the scalpel, where it could keep the knife more or less stationary. She panted shallowly, for expanding her ribs much only made things worse.

IS THAT WISE?

"It is not!" Teatime snapped. He whirled on what was left of Dr. Hiddlesham Tolo, who had just managed to calm down. The man jumped and lifted his trembling hands defensively. "I suggest you remember how to be a doctor very quickly," he said in his most threatening rasp.

"I can't! I can't!" the man cried. His hands dropped from defense to pleading. "Can't r'member, can't even talk right, can't. I'm nothing!"

Teatime leaned in, glowering. It was like a bantam rooster trying to intimidate a crane – and it was working. Tolo backed away a few steps with Teatime keeping pace with him. "You will be much less than that if you don't help her now."

Nearly completely forgotten, Susan managed to get her feet under her. She'd stumbled a few steps toward the slab, muttering, "Oh, never mind," before anyone noticed her.

"Oh, are you that eager to die?" Teatime asked, suddenly back at her side. "We could have settled this at the Tooth Fairy's castle, if that's the case!" It was difficult to hear the sarcasm over the wailing pain of her wounds, but she did catch it, and she offered him a quick glare for his trouble.

"You tried, remember? Didn't take." Teatime's glower deepened, and he went just a little bit red. "The faster someone gets back into his body, the faster we can all leave," she pointed out. Over her shoulder, she asked, "Can I use Binky now, Granddad?"

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. He sounded strained. Suddenly, too, he was next to her. He looked at her in a way that conveyed worry, but he did not offer any assistance. YOU ARE HASTENING YOUR OWN END, SUSAN. I CANNOT STOP IT. WHEN THE TIME COMES, ALL I CAN OFFER IS WHAT I OFFERED YOUR PARENTS.

"An eternal moment."

AN ETERNAL MOMENT.

The burning of her wounds, which throbbed in time with her pulse, flared. The world went grayish, as if time had stopped. Death abruptly become more, somehow – he loomed, and darkness coalesced behind him in a shape that suggested wings. But then it was gone.

SUSAN.

"I know!" She was… well, she was pushing her luck. She turned to Teatime, who was confused and just a little bit angry.

"Well? Go on!"

He blipped over to the body and looked down at it. "It looks strange from this angle. Everything's on the wrong side when it's not in a mirror." He frowned, adding, "And the stone's not there. And they did something dreadful to my hair. And cut up my face!"

"You can examine an iconograph after you get in."

The ghost sat on the edge of the slab. Then he lay down, fitting his spectral form into the physical one. And then he sat up – leaving the corpse still prone on the slab.

Susan cursed.

From a block away, Ridcully could hear the pounding of Sgt. Detritus's feet, as well as the rattle of his siege-weapon-turned-sidearm. He assumed the rest of the watchmen followed along, but when a troll was in pursuit, it made the others somewhat redundant.

Angua was just a few steps ahead, muzzle to the ground. They were heading steadily widdershins, streaking across thoroughfares and through alleys alike, with Ridcully shouting I'm Too Busy To Stop apologies to startled citizens.

The urgent feeling that spurred him on seemed to think he was taking too long and gave him a hell of a kick. He was needed, and it looked like he might be just a moment too late.

"That's not good," Teatime said, frowning down at where his legs were still tangled with his legs.

"Granddad, can't you do anything?"

I CANNOT. IT'S AGAINST THE RULES.

She took the last few steps to the slab, gratefully turning and resting her backside against it. She argued, "It's clearly alive. It's breathing, Granddad. The spirit's just not inside right now."

Death repeated, I CANNOT.

The machine to which the body was attached shuddered and rattled again. Both Susan and Tolo jumped. Tolo whimpered, his bloodied hands going down to clutch at his trousers.

Ignoring them both, Death suggested, PERHAPS YOU SHOULD TRY.

"How? I don't know any of this! I've made a point of it, remember?" she said bitterly. The scalpel's handle slid easily between her fingers now, the blood seeping around it with each breath. "What if I get it wrong? We get a vengeful ghost and a pile of spare parts that we don't want going anywhere? And then what if we kill the body again? How would you deal with that and DAMMIT THIS HURTS."

TRY PUSHING. OR STITCHING. I USUALLY WORK THE OTHER DIRECTION. PERHAPS YOU COULD LICK THE EDGES AND PRESS THEM TOGETHER – IT WORKS FOR ALBERT.

About to retort that Teatime was not a roll-up, Susan gasped. The world flickered again in time with the pulse of agony, but the grayness lingered. The pain did not. The relief from the hurt was almost pain itself.

Teatime suddenly was off the slab and in front of her, trying to support her. His hands grabbed her shoulders – actually grabbed, surface-to-surface! – for a moment before plunging through again. The icy shock reminded her body how to hurt. All her wounds screamed back to life, and time took up its usual forward march.

YOU SHOULD PROBABLY HURRY, her grandfather said.

Susan turned her attention to Teatime, and a little piece of her mind marveled at the emotion on his face. Bless him, he was worried. But he was wasting time being worried, so she ordered him back onto the slab.

He lay back down, complaining, "This isn't working." It was mildly nauseating to see one pair of lips form the words in the same physical space as a pair of motionless lips.

Susan pulled the stone from her coat pocket, wincing at how the motion tugged on her stab wound. That didn't bear thinking about. Neither did the fact that the stone now wore a coat of her blood, since her hand was covered in it. She turned the body's right hand over, and the ghost yanked his own hand away; Susan laid the stone into the palm.

"Anything?" she asked.

The ghostly fair head shook back and forth, the nose sweeping a bizarre line through the body's face.

"Well, you touch it too! You've avoided it this whole time. Maybe that's the key!"

"What if it isn't?" he demanded. "I don't like what that thing does to me as a ghost!"

Susan sucked in a breath to retort that what he liked didn't matter, but she sagged against the slab and gasped at the spasm that went through her as all her wounds protested at once. The hurt faded, and Susan looked about. Death looked different now, much more solid and stranger than ever before. And Teatime, sitting up again, looked like he'd switched places with the body; the seated form looked more solid than the prone.

The machine rattled again, wheezing. It sounded like the last rattle and wheeze it would ever give.

"You had better go," Teatime said. "You don't look well."

That rendered her speechless.

Jonathan Teatime.

Giving up.

For her sake.

She must indeed be dying.

A wizard's instincts were highly specialized. They were nearly never wrong, and a fellow ignored them at his peril. Ridcully's instincts were jumping up and down on his brain with great big boots. They were getting close. And they were late.

A werewolf's instincts were even more specialized. Angua stopped, whirled in a quick circle, and then darted off into the slim little alley between two tall buildings, where laundry flapped, forgotten, in the cold morning wind. Without missing a stride, she leapt into the air, snagging a huge, discolored frock from the line. She disappeared into the shadows of the alley.

"Wait, Archchancellor!" her voice called from the alley. Her figure, now wearing the frock that was four sizes too big, followed the voice. "I've been following the scents of two men," she said, hurrying up to the broom. "One's an Igor; the other one dribbles a lot."

"Neither sounds like a wizard to me," he answered. Then he paused. "No. No, I'm sure. The last dribbler we had died in Genua last year."

Angua shook her head. "No wizard. But the Igor is dead. And I'm sure Susan Sto-Helit's inside, and she's hurt."

"Is he our man? And how badly is she hurt?" That upset him. He rather liked the girl. He didn't even think to ask if Angua was sure. The nose, as he knew, knows.

"Pretty bad," Angua said. "And the dribbler is one of our men. Both the scents were all around the doctor's office. The other might be the doctor. I want to arrest him, but he might be dangerous – half the dribblers are also as strong as Carrot – so when we go in, let's go in strong but not lethal, all right?"

Nodding, Ridcully dismounted from the broom. Flying brooms and the indoors didn't mix well.

Whatever instinct had been driving him, hounding him all morning, took hold of his hindbrain and squeezed. He stumbled, shouting out in surprise.

"Sir?" Angua steadied him, not at all affected by his weight.

"Inside! Now!"

As one, they pelted across the street and landed full-weight on the cellar doors they found there.

"Somebody at the door." That was Tolo. He turned to face the kitchen, where the sound of something heavy falling on wood was becoming the sound of splintering wood.

Susan ignored him. And because she couldn't decide on which of a dozen emotions that arose in her, Susan went with anger. It was familiar. It was effective. It made her creative.

She snarled, NONE OF US IS GOING TO LIKE THIS.

To the sounds of the cellar door smashing inward, Susan snatched the bloodied stone from the body's hand and swung it forward, as though to smash Teatime in the eye with it. And it was a measure of how troubled Teatime was that he didn't dodge. As the physical stone struck the spectral stone, Susan willed the one in the ghost's head to go solid. The little bits in her brain dedicated to Death Stuff went incandescent. Her wounds burned.

In the moment where ghost, blood, and both stones occupied the same point in space, Teatime – both iterations of him – started to scream. Susan pressed forward, and the ghost fell backward into the body, the shock of it silencing his scream.

In the next moment, the world went gray. The suggestion of dark wings that had kept appearing behind Death became less a suggestion and more a fact. They were holes in reality, showing nighttime skies. The united soul and body of the Assassin on the slab erupted with light that Susan was pretty sure only she could see.

And then – nothing.

Chapter Text

When Teatime sat up, he knew it had worked. He knew it the way one knows that there's enough oxygen to breathe – he was aware of being alive, and when he continued to be so, he chose to take it for granted.

By now used to obeying gravity only from habit and not from the actual exertion of physical laws, Teatime was uncomfortably aware of the substance of his form. He felt heavy and locked to the surface beneath him. Which was cold, by the way, on account of it being a slab of metal, and on account of his having no clothes on. He was hyperaware of his skin and everything that affected it. He'd spent so much time without nerve cells. As a ghost, there'd been a certain approximation of sensation, but until now, he hadn't realized how faint those actually were. He eagerly anticipated reacquainting himself with himself – in particular he looked forward the first kill, the next cup of tea, and that sparring he'd promised Susan.

But he'd think about this all later. There were other things to occupy his attention. A dying – friend, yes, friend was definitely the right word now – was chief amongst them.

In one motion, he clambered off the slab and slung the ratty, stained sheet around his middle. The one motion was sloppy, his atrophied muscles lacking the tone to move quickly or support much by way of weight. The wires, which he'd forgotten were there, yanked free from his head – that was pretty painful, but since he didn't fall down dead again, it probably didn't matter. In the end, he slowly crumpled to the floor beside Susan. The edge of the slab scraped up his back; his knees, barely padded by the draping linen, hit the ground with enough force to bruise.

She was still breathing, if shallowly. More of her blood had soaked through her clothes and was beginning to pool on the floor, staining the sheet as it settled around him. The wound on her neck and face was draining into her hair, which moved sluggishly.

Too, Teatime was aware of the presence of two new people. He didn't acknowledge them. He was too weak to do anything, anyway, and he was too busy seeing if Susan was going to survive.

One was Ridcully. Probably not a threat just yet. The wizard had enough sense to realize Teatime was not a threat in this condition. The other was Captain Angua of the Watch. She was sharp, ambitious, loyal, and she had fully two-thirds of the city afraid of her. Rumor had it that she was the Watch's famed werewolf; it only made sense to Teatime that she was, considering all the circumstances and evidence. He rather hoped that the smell of Susan's and Igor's blood wasn't going to trigger Angua's more carnivorous instincts. He'd hate to die again so soon. And if he went up against Angua in this state, die is what he would do. And he would go up against her if he had to.

Oh, they were talking. Good. That was better than attacking. He probably should pay a little bit of attention, he supposed.

"… Dolly Sisters watchhouse is closer. Swires can clacks for Igor. We can meet him there."

"The broom'll be faster, no matter what. It's possible she'll survive a little jostling better than waiting," Ridcully rumbled.

"Trust my nose, Archchancellor. If she's not kept still and some bandages put on soon, she'll bleed out. Being held upright on a broom going forty miles an hour will only squeeze out the last drops!" Angua's voice sounded a little strained and a little muffled. Teatime glanced up to see her pinching her nose and carefully not looking down.

Teatime looked back down at Susan. He interrupted whatever answer Ridcully had by saying, as politely as he could, "Do hurry and make a decision. She's still bleeding."

They were staring at him. He knew they were. He felt the weight of their eyes.

"Someone hand me a bandage, please."

There were times that Death did not like being what he was. Those times typically left things in a bit of disarray; sometimes the responsibility, the endless memories, the helplessness got to him, and he had to go do something else. Sometimes opportunities to be someone else fell into his lap (he remembered with a certain fondness the Hogswatchnight that was so thoroughly entangled with the current predicament), and Susan was there to take up the slack, leaving the Discworld's deceased with a way to move on.

But this situation was threatening to simultaneously give him a reason to try to forget everything with the aid of a bottle and to make him lose his backup, his heir, his granddaughter. And all he could do was wait to see if her shade would float up for the scythe or remain where it was trapped under the hands of the Assassin.

The next time Death made it up to Dunmanifestin, both Fate and The Lady were going to feel the arch of his instep and no mistake.

"Can't you do something?"

Why did people ask him that? First Susan, now this… complication made flesh. Death wish they'd at least come up with a new question for him to answer in a fatalistic way.

The boyish face looked, oddly, even more childlike with a big bloody handprint smeared across the left side of it. He was pressing a wad of linen against Susan's left side and looking concerned.

OF COURSE I CAN DO SOMETHING. JUST NOT WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO. NOT WHAT I WANT TO DO. Death sighed when Teatime frowned up at him, another question ready to go. THERE ARE RULES. I CANNOT BREAK THEM.

"That makes no sense."

THAT'S WHAT SUSAN SAYS. The Assassin looked back down at that reminder. AND I KEEP REMINDING HER THAT THAT IS A VERY HUMAN SENTIMENT. THAT TENDS TO PLEASE HER. HUMANS ARE SUPPOSED TO STRIVE AND CHALLENGE AND CHANGE; I AM NOT, NO MATTER HOW MUCH I AM TEMPTED.

Death noticed that Ridcully was gone. Angua also had left the room, hauling a barely-functioning Dr. Tolo out by his arm. Two other watchmen, a dwarf named Hrolf Thighbiter and Sgt. Detritus, had been left in their places. Detritus trolled the door, knuckles resting on the floor; Constable Thighbiter was the one who had provided Teatime with bandages. Death wasn't certain that Teatime had made the same observations. The young man had looked away from Susan only long enough to say three sentences; he hadn't moved much since folding up beside her.

The hopeful thoughts Death had sent after Ridcully and his magic broom took on new, urgent shape. It had been a long time since he had had a reason to disapprove of a young man. He would look forward to it if he could be sure Susan would survive.

Having overcome the fiercest responses to the smell of quarts of fresh blood, Angua had called Detritus to her and handed off custody of what was left of Dr. Tolo. Leaving him with instructions to send in Archchancellor Ridcully or Constable Igor (or both of them at once, if they came together – sometimes you had to be specific with Detritus), Angua returned to the cellar.

Constable Thighbiter gave her a quick salute and went back to using an iconograph to document everything that could be seen as evidence; a clacks had gone out to request Sgt. Littlebottom's forensics expertise, but Thighbiter was an able assistant in her absence.

The Assassin, a wasted, pale figure with a tragic haircut, didn't acknowledge her entrance. He was sitting in a pool of blood that had finally stopped expanding. It was, in fact, clotting up; the aroma wouldn't leave Angua's nasal passages for several days, but at least the thickening process kept the smell from rising afresh. His hands, bathed to the wrists in ichor, were holding up a veritable wall of bandages against the side of the young Duchess of Sto-Helit. The woman herself was still breathing, if barely; her lips hadn't gone bluish, so there was hope for her yet.

Ridcully's broom's fast, Angua reminded herself, thinking of how he'd gotten Commander Vimes to and from Dr. Lawn's place when Young Sam was born. And Buggy's coordinating the rendezvous with Constable Igor. They'll be here soon. The last sentence had the ring of Or Else, even in the privacy of her own mind.

Angua was still coming down from the wolf, her senses still over-performing and giving her more information at once than she could fully process. The color part of her sight was sliding back into place, but the black-and-white sharpness of canine eyes kept the whole room in high relief. Her ears were able to detect the thrum of life in Miss Susan Sto-Helit.

But, as always, her nose bombarded her with the most information. Her nose recognized this young man's scent and pulled forth the distant memory of him. It had been all over a number of bloody murder scenes, but since the Guild could prove that he'd had a contract on one of the bodies in each of those piles, all Angua had been able to do was advise them to make the boy try not to be so excessive. Even then, she'd wished she could have done more; there were too many dead for even the most knife-happy Assassin. He called to mind Carcer Dun, and she'd wondered how Teatime had managed to get into the Guild in the first place; they usually weeded out the crazies. The smell of him had painted in hot-red graffiti across her sinuses, I'm an utter whack-job! Woo hoo, lookit me go!

The smell of him – of the human male by the name of Jonathan Teatime, tainted slightly by the magic stone lodged in his skull – was there, rising into her nostrils, all freshly shaven and newly bathed in the blood of a not-quite human woman. But it was different. The smell that lingered on dogs that had been kicked a few too many times was still there, but that was all; the undertones that Angua associated with rabies were gone.

Finally, as though just registering the weight of her stare, the newly reborn Assassin looked up to meet Angua's eyes. Hers was not a composure to be rattled by mismatched eyes and a joy in death – her brother had been Wolfgang von Uberwald, after all – so she met his look with complete neutrality. She did not fear him, not now, though at another time, she would probably have been wary. But she was shocked to recognize a sense of fellowship rising in her as their gazes met, because the message in those mismatched eyes was clear: Mine.

She nodded, just barely.

She called Constable Thighbiter away from the iconography he was immersed in and asked him to fetch some trousers, a shirt, and some shoes from one of the houses nearby and reminded him to give a receipt to the citizens who aided the Watch by clothing the naked Assassin. When the dwarf was gone, she turned back to Teatime and said, "I don't know what the hell has been going on, but you're going to be required to answer a load of questions about this. But since you look like you'd put up a fight if we tried to separate the two of you –" She had to raise her voice to speak over the beginnings of a protest "– then I'm not going to waste the time on it. You're going where she goes, and you're staying there, understand? So I advise you say thank you for whatever clothes you get." Assassins were picky about fashion, after all.

He nodded.

"And resign yourself to the idea of being carried like a sack of flour by a troll, because Ridcully's broom won't carry him, Igor, her, and you, too."

Fair brows tried to meet over a pert nose, and Angua held up a hand to forestall another protest. "Your other option is to wait for her to die on the floor here, if you insist on being an idiot about it." She remembered the possessive look, as well as the wide-eyed, intent expression of worry that had preceded it. In a gentler, if gruff, voice, she added, "You have my word that you're both going to the Lady Sybil; they have to take a look at you, too."

Unhappily, he nodded.

Keen ears picked up the sound of wind whooshing through straw bristles and the booming explanations of a wizard in a hurry. She turned to usher in the new comers, tossing over her shoulder, "And prepare yourself for a long night of waiting."

If Igor didn't already know the framework of the story – thanks to an Archchancellor in rare, commanding form – he'd have been able to piece it together fairly quickly. And he would have utterly lost it.

To think! One of the Clan trying to overstep the pretty expansive bounds set by tradition and even of common sense! And this was coming from an Igor whose father had all but sold him to Ankh-Morpork for thinking outside the crypt! But while Igors shortchanged Death by trading limbs before molecular death set in, they didn't defy it. The few resurrections that happened only happened under specific circumstances – Death had been and gone, and the Clan were able to do their jobs with clean consciences.

And he had trained a human in the ways of the Clan! If this Igor hadn't already been killed, then the Clan would have made it happen in creative and lingering ways. The very thought made even the extremely liberal Constable Igor quiver with rage.

What was worse was that Igor knew this Igor. They all did, of course, being Clan, but this was different. He knew this Igor's family and their troubles, because he'd been called out to mediate one of their domestic disturbances. Commander Vimes had been very uncomfortable about trying to calm the situation while being creeped out by those involved.

This Igor had caused so many arguments with his grandson and granddaughter-in-law that the neighbors in this downmarket side of Dolly Sisters, naturally the sort to mind their own business, had chosen to call in the Watch. This one, the one lying on the floor, had tried to bluster his way through the mediation, claiming that he was just trying to open his progeny's eyes to the possibilities an entrepreneurial man could enjoy in Ankh-Morpork. The younger Igor had been stubbornly close-mouthed, merely insisting that he was happy where he was with Dr. Tolo. Grandfather Igor had rejoined that Dr. Tolo was madder than a spoon and trying far too hard to learn how to be an Igor, and didn't Igor have more self-respect than to indulge a mad human's aspirations to cross the divide that separated the Clan from everyone else – and for wages that barely kept them in this cellar? The remembered conversation, when added with the evidence of the present, turned the grandfather into the biggest hypocrite Constable Igor had ever seen.

At this point, Igorina had shushed them both and offered the watchman some classic home cooking. "They do get loud, but they're only rehashing old quarrelth about nothing much," she'd said. "Do thtay to tea, Conthtable. It'll have jutht the right amount of bite!"

He'd declined politely and departed, leaving behind the advice to agree to disagree.

Constable Igor, in retrospect, damned himself for not following up at Dr. Tolo's clinic. He'd have seen the machine and connected two and two without delay. He would've been able to save the lives of Igor, Igorina, and Miss Susan Sto-Helit. In turn, he'd have been able to prevent Mr. Teatime's worry, but that would have been on account of Miss Susan Sto-Helit's never being in a position to be stabbed.

Which, by the way, was a nasty bit of a software problem. The long slashes, of course, would be a cinch. He could make them scar decoratively or do away with them altogether – humans could be so particular, after all. But this puncture wound… That was in the liver, and the scalpel had just pierced the hepatic portal vein. Either a god was interested in her, or Her Grace was intelligent and possessed of incredible self-control. By all rights, she should have bled out very quickly.

He could stabilize her. But without all the facilities of the Lady Sybil at hand, that was all he could promise. He rather hoped Ridcully's broom could carry three at once.

In the Lady Sybil Free Hospital, there was a closed door. Outside it were a number of shadows, as the day was sinking into a quick winter evening. In those shadows stood a darker shadow, and it waited with the awful patience cherished by its employer. In the brief moment it allowed itself to feel, it felt concern. The rest of the time, it waited for a sign that it was all over, for good or for ill.

Nurses passed it by, seeing nothing but the dark that came with the sunset. The door opened and shut, discharging an Igor who was drying his hands on a towel.

The shadow had seen the expression on Igor's face. It had its answer.

And as soon as an opportunity presented itself, it was gone.

The morning sun came up, illuminating the corridor through four-foot-high curtainless windows; the corners of doorframes that housed shadows at night were edged in a burnt orange glow.

There was a door. It had let an Igor out the night before. A man's quiet voice speaking in brusque, instructive tones issued from behind it. The voice spoke of stitches.

Another voice said clearly, "IF I AM WELL ENOUGH TO SPEAK LIKE THIS, THEN I AM WELL ENOUGH TO GO HOME."

Susan, sporting a sling and a cast and bound to the neck in bandages, was already halfway out of the bed, and Dr. John "Mossy" Lawn was already resignedly putting his hands up into the air in the universal sign for giving up.

Or maybe it was because of the short, shiny blade that was being held a couple of inches from his left eye by a young blond man who had not been there a moment before.

"I think, sir, that it's a good idea that you let her up, sir. Just a suggestion, sir."

Dr. Lawn sounded indifferent when he answered, "Put that down, will you? Since you were in such a bloody rush to get her patched up, the least you could do is let the one who did the patching exercise a little caution. She'll tear the stitches if she puts too much weight on the arm that she took out of the sling and is using to push up with like I instructed her not to do."

"Teatime, would you put the knife away for one bloody minute?"

"You said it wrong."

The look on Teatime's face flashed from aggrieved past menacing mania and on into actual delight. He turned back to Dr. Lawn, the knife suddenly gone, and gleefully informed him, "If she's well enough to mangle my name, then she's well enough to leave. Take my word for it, sir."

Dr. Lawn sighed and said, "If I don't take your word, I suppose I'll take a blade to the kidney, hm?" He scrubbed at the muttonchops that framed his careworn face. "I would say you should still be in bed, too, what with the lingering atrophy, but considering that you made it across the room in half a second, I suppose I couldn't convince you to simply sit the hell down.

"Miss Susan –" He'd had a brief, fierce lesson about 'Your Grace', and he yielded on that but not on limiting physical contact. Matter-of-factly, he tucked her left arm back into the sling around her neck and tightened the bindings to make it harder to get out of next time. He gleefully ignored her pained grunt and Teatime's glower.

"You are to leave this arm immobile except for when you're cleaning your wounds for the next two days. Do not put weight on it, lifting or pushing, and if you have the urge to shove up from a bed like you're trying to do now, then make use of him." Here, the good doctor jerked a thumb at Teatime, who looked at it rather like he was choosing to refrain from removing it.

"And you," Dr. Lawn continued, turning to address Teatime directly, not even flinching when he met the mismatched gaze, "Are. Not. To. Excite. Her." He almost absently took Susan by the good arm and the waist and helped her to her feet. To Teatime, he continued, "You're an intelligent young man, so I want you to consider the joint concepts of agitation, torn stitches, blood, and the expression you were wearing when Miss Susan was first admitted to this hospital."

This caught Susan's attention, but when she glanced over, Teatime merely seemed to be attending Dr. Lawn's admonitions. Of course, this meant nothing, considering Teatime's mental state and usual lack of embarrassment. Susan had been unconscious from the moment she'd put the two scrying stones together until she'd seen Dr. Lawn and an unfamiliar Igor hovering over her. She made a mental note to ask for the story later.

She thanked Dr. Lawn and gave him the address for the bill. She made an additional mental note to make a large donation to a cause espoused by the Igor who had helped to save her life.

And then, because she was irritated with Dr. Lawn for just doing his job, irritated with herself for being irritated, and irritated with Teatime because was there to witness her weakness, Susan lifted her right hand and snapped her fingers, freezing time.

She reached out and grabbed Teatime's shoulder. "Come on."

And when time restarted, Dr. Lawn frowned in bafflement at the empty room.

Hiddlesham stared very uncomfortably at the thin man in black. The man was much smaller and much older than Hiddlesham, and he wasn't being in any way threatening. There was no glare or glower, no sneer or raised hand. The man was just sitting with his long hands folded neatly on the desk before him; his expression was one of consideration. But the man's regard made Hiddlesham shiver.

The man had asked him his name. Hiddlesham could only answer, "Hiddlesham," because that was who he was now, no matter who had once been. He couldn't remember Dr. Tolo. He couldn't remember a boyhood, though he must have had one.

The man had asked if Hiddlesham had known who he, the man in black, was. No, he couldn't even remember that much. The man then introduced himself as Lord Vetinari; he was in charge; did Hiddlesham understand? Hiddlesham nodded and hoped that this master was less frightening than the last one.

What did Hiddlesham remember about the machine? How was it made? What did it do?

After recovering from a bout of trembling and crying – there was, luckily, no Trouser Accident – Hiddlesham could truthfully say he only knew that it had rattled and was Bad. But he had destroyed the Bad Thing. It couldn't be Bad anymore.

The man in charge looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but he instead turned to his secretary, a slim man in his middle years and spectacles, and said, "Ask the Igor with the Watch to attend to poor Hiddlesham at the Lady Sybil. He is to perform a basic diagnostic assessment, to see if the mind can be repaired."

The secretary opened a folder and slid a fresh sheet of paper into it, scribbling notes.

Again staring contemplatively at Hiddlesham, Lord Vetinari said, "I'm giving you a job, Mr. Hiddlesham. Would you like that?"

Hiddlesham nodded. What else would he do? If he couldn't remember anything of import, he couldn't do anything of use. Being ordered to do something simple would be a relief, especially if there was a low likelihood of being hit.

Lord Vetinari murmured to the secretary, who then left the office. "You're going to go to a hospital, Mr. Hiddlesham. Mr. Clarke will take you there in a carriage. You're going to stay there from now on." He paused here, as though waiting for a response. Hiddlesham nodded. A carriage would be a treat, and knowing where he slept would be even better.

Then, Lord Vetinari continued, "A lady named Nurse Dell will then show you what you have to do. It's going to involve bedpans and sponge baths. Can you do that?"

This time, Hiddlesham nodded happily. He could do that. He had gotten good at it. This master was much better than the last one. Maybe this lady – Nursdel, what an odd name – would let him shave people sometimes; he'd gotten good at that, too. He smiled at the man in charge. He would be good.

The secretary came in again, followed by a tall, broad shouldered dark man, who lifted his hat at Lord Vetinari and smiled at Hiddlesham. Lord Vetinari introduced them to each other and dismissed them.

As they were leaving, Hiddlesham heard the man in charge say, "Now I believe it is time to speak to Mr. Teatime and Miss Susan."

Chapter Text

It was a pleasure to walk home in the swelling light of a winter morning. Boots crunched through the dirty remnants of the last snow. A fresh wind blowing from the Hub promised another freeze, and perhaps more snow. It was pleasant.

That is what Susan told herself. She told herself this over the wailing of her abused body. She told herself this over the sounds of Teatime's complaints. She told herself this the way a young mother tells herself that this squalling, puking, can't-sleep-more-than-thirty-minutes-at-a-go demonspawn is in fact a Discbound angel whom she was fortunate enough to birth.

"If you can freeze time, surely you can just make a door into your flat," Teatime pointed out rather reasonably. Susan had permitted him to convince her to lean on his left arm; he was supporting a quarter of her weight. She allowed this to continue because he was conscientiously avoiding the puncture wound between her ribs.

"Actually, that was a bit tiring." And it had been. After being physically traumatized and using the talents inherited from her grandfather for far longer than she ever had before, Susan was somewhat surprised she'd been able to freeze time at all.

"Then I could just carry you. It would take a fraction of the time!"

Susan did him the justice of considering the offer. "Have you carried anyone before when you blip around?"

"No."

Her mind's eye showed a scene of blurred backgrounds, jolted wounds, and loads of vomit. "Then no. Thank you, but that experiment is going to have to wait."

"Ridcully and his broom?"

"I'll walk."

"Then why not a carriage? What can be objectionable about a carriage? A troll chair? Your grandfather's horse with the silly name?" Without jostling her arm, he turned, presumably to search the street for a carriage to hire.

In his exasperation, Teatime was finally hitting on normal suggestions. Susan was tempted to laugh, but walking and breathing hurt badly enough; there was no need to cripple herself with ill-timed jollity.

Besides, it was hard enough not to laugh when she merely looked at him, now. The sight of this brilliant, mad, scarred young man in a borrowed set of clothes that were not black and were two sizes too big for him made her smile each time she saw it. The big shaved spot in the middle of his curls would've been hysterically funny too, if it weren't for the four holes Igor had stitched up – there had been metal connections for the wires that had kept the body alive for so long. Instead, the sight was merely amusing.

"You need a haircut," was her answer. Partly, Susan didn't think she could go on looking at the absurdity – it was funny now, but a joke could go on for too long. But mostly, she wanted to distract him away from their friendly dispute about her mobility. Teatime actually meant well in this instance, but Susan was determined to walk home, and if she could get him onto a tangent, they could argue about something else while that walk got accomplished.

"You look like an Omnian monk gone horribly wrong," she added when he didn't immediately answer.

"Interesting." He sounded anything but interested. Then, Teatime turned back toward her, chirping, "Here's a carriage. How lucky! Clarke must still be following us."

"I want to walk," she insisted.

He got that look on his face that always made her worry just a little, the one that looked like he'd found a puzzle he couldn't quite fit together. "Why?"

"To prove I can."

The carriage pulled to a halt near them, and with the sun slanting at them from the length of the street, they could see the light catch on the slight rise in paint that indicated the edge of a sable shield on the black carriage.

Susan muttered, "Oh, hell," as a clerk hopped down from the footman's post at the back of the carriage.

It was Clarke. He lowered the step and opened the door. Looking at Teatime, he tapped the brim of his hat; he turned to Susan and lifted the bowler completely, still keeping his gaze on his fellow assassin. Susan saw the man smirk and turned to see Teatime glowering. Refusing to think about the possibility of his defending territory that had not in any way been claimed, Susan rolled her eyes and gave Teatime a light kick to the ankle.

That drew his astonished gaze back to her, but before he could say anything, a voice from inside the carriage said, "In your own time. Though I must say you should find it more comfortable if you climb in before all the warmth has escaped."

Tightly, Susan began, "I thank you, your lordship, but I intend to –"

"Susan," Teatime interrupted, it being his turn to roll his eyes, which was an interesting if mildly nauseating sight, considering the eyes. "Climb in. Or I shall toss you in."

She glared. And thought about it. And realized that if she put up a fight, all she would do was lose and look foolish doing it. So she glared harder. "Just you wait until I've healed up," she hissed at her escort, loosening her grip on his arm and reaching for the hand Clarke lifted to help her in.

Teatime chirped, "I look forward to it!" Deftly, he moved behind her and took her by the waist; avoiding the puncture wound with his right hand, he supported her weight against his own body, lifting her quite off her feet. With one foot on the fold-down step and one hand on the doorframe, he propelled her into the carriage with little fuss or effort. Another quick shift had him lowering her into the carriage seat by her good arm and taking the seat beside her. He grinned at Clarke, who, in his turn, rolled his eyes and shut the door.

"I trust your recovery is expected to proceed apace, Miss Susan?" Vetinari said from the other seat of the carriage, which he shared with a squash-faced little dog.

The dog, which seemed to have something of a breathing problem, wriggled itself off the horsehair seat, across the floor, and into Teatime's lap. Teatime smiled and scratched around the little folded-up ears presented for that purpose; when the dog reared up to wash his face with its tongue, all he did was push it gently down and admonish, "No kisses."

Susan yet again found herself staring dumbfounded at the Assassin.

The dog saw her staring, and taking it for an invitation, wriggled toward her. This time, she fixed it with a schoolmarm's glare, and it sat down fast enough in Teatime's lap to make the man yelp.

With a satisfied nod, Susan turned to Vetinari and answered, " The superficial wounds should be completely gone by the weekend, your lordship. The puncture won't fully heal for another three weeks."

"Igors and their craft are truly marvelous," the Patrician said.

Susan chose not to make a sarcastic comment about the one she'd just had to kill. She let her expression do it for her.

Vetinari's skills being what they were, he read her expression and answered her with one that said, 'Yes. Rather.'

Aloud, he said, "Incidentally, in achieving the task that I asked you to undertake, you and Mr. Teatime took care of another pressing issue. That Igor was responsible for no fewer than seven murders – all unlicensed," he pointed out, with a nod to the Assassin, "– as well as several hundred dollars in thefts. Very costly. Very dangerous."

Coming from anyone else, those words would have seemed pompous; passing through Vetinari's lips, they were matter-of-fact and stripped of the emotional impact they should have had. And that alone said something different to Susan.

"Very convenient, then, that Igor is dead and all evidence of his work destroyed," she said, striving for a similarly emotionless tone.

"The city remembers aid given in moments of need," was the reply. Susan would have sworn that was almost a smile on his face, for a fraction of a second. He continued in a slightly more animated manner, "In fact, it has already been taken into account in Mr. Teatime's trial."

"Already been?" Susan repeated. From the corner of her eye, she saw Teatime go still; the little dog looked up, unhappy that the petting had stopped.

Vetinari nodded; he laced his fingers together on the head of his cane. "The licensed Assassin Mr. Jonathan Weldon Boyer Teatime was tried in absentia two days ago. The court found it could not wait until Spring Prime."

Susan blinked, both at the surprising combination of ambitiously bourgeois names and at the announcement itself.

"He was found not guilty on the charge of murder of the Hogfather, as the action was the result of a paid, if fraudulent, contract with the Assassins' Guild; ditto the deaths of twenty-six staff members of Tooth Fairy, Inc., which were attributed to men who were unlicensed thieves. He was initially found guilty of the deaths of a Mr. Thomas Quaid, staff member of Tooth Fairy, Inc., and of a Mr. Howard Brown, locksmith. However, taking into account Mr. Teatime's assistance in resolving the problem of Igor and that Igor's actions at Dr. Hiddlesham Tolo's place of business, the city has accepted a plea agreement in which Mr. Teatime pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of the two men mentioned. The court directs him to study elegance and self-discipline in future."

All this issued from Vetinari's mouth in the most off-hand of tones, as if he were reading the verdicts from a sheet of paper.

"Of the non-contract attempted murder of Death he was found guilty," Vetinari continued, pausing when both Teatime and Susan went rigid. The little dog, sensitive to the tension in the carriage, leapt out of Teatime's stiff hands and scrambled back to his seat beside the Patrician.

"The sentence is death," he finished. He lifted an eyebrow at Susan, adding, "Applied by the victim's granddaughter, in anticipation of the sentence."

Susan felt the tension slide right off her, and she glanced over at Teatime, who was watching the Patrician with narrowed eyes. Flashing past her mind's eye like a nightmare were images of death – in one, Teatime grinned as he withdrew a blade from Vetinari's chest; in another, Teatime slumped to the floor of the carriage with foam pouring from his lips, poisoned by contact with the dog, somehow. Her heart racing, Susan grabbed at Teatime's arm with her good hand. He caught her wrist just as her fingertips made contact with the rust-orange coat he wore.

"Whatever you're thinking about," Susan warned, "Don't."

He smiled; it wavered between surprised and condescending for a couple of seconds. "What I'm thinking," he said, "Is how neatly everything has come together. And then, I wonder, where is the catch?"

They both turned to look at Vetinari. He was patiently waiting for their drama to pause, looking like someone's patient if frighteningly reserved stepfather.

"I did mention a plea agreement," he replied. With something that looked like it could have become a smile in another life, Vetinari asked, "Mr. Teatime, how would you like a job?"

"All right, Teatime, you'll have to prepare tea at 4:30," Susan began, ignoring the annoyed look Teatime gave her. "Then make or buy supper, and stay until 7:30. Be back in the morning by eight, for breakfast." Susan walked past the small couch, the chair, and small table on the way to the walnut secretary on the far side of her living room. She flipped open the fold-down desktop, rummaged a little, and then turned around with a smug look on her face and a bit of brass in her hand. "I get the couch and the bell."

Teatime curiously tilted his head (freshly trimmed down to an almost-uniform inch of length. It looked surprisingly well on him, but the lack of incongruous curls just wasn't Teatime). "I thought you were joking about my being a nurse," he said.

He also was back in his preferred Assassin's black. Vetinari had called for a stop at the Guild, where a legal document – or a legal-looking document, at least – and a quick conference with Lord Downey had gotten all of Teatime's savings from the vaults of the Guild. On his death, Teatime hadn't any surviving family to inherit his property, and the Guild had, after the inevitable taxes, been named the beneficiary. Downey was not pleased initially, for Teatime had not been a big spender, preferring the joy of inhumation to the joy of its rewards. However, in effect, for the sum of nearly three hundred thousand dollars, the Assassins' Guild paid Lord Vetinari to take Teatime off their hands. Though Lord Downey was too well trained to be visibly relieved, Susan had noted that he had relaxed a little after the gold had changed hands. Teatime had been disappointed to have his Guild membership more or less revoked, but since he was to become one of Vetinari's Dark Clerks (low though it be whispered!), he took the change with equanimity.

Gold in hand, they had ridden to the Royal Bank, where another legal-looking document and a quick conference with Moist von Lipwig had opened up a new account in Teatime's name. The carriage had carried them thence to an expensive off-the-rack clothier's and a startled barber. It was there Vetinari left them, much to Susan's relief – the tyrant of the city had more important and less annoying things to do than play taxi to a resurrected madman and his friend the schoolteacher. Much to Susan's chagrin, the Patrician had then also arranged for a second, somewhat less sumptuous carriage to drive them back to Susan's flat in Sator Square.

Susan stalked back across the room, her gait jerkier than she really liked it to be. The waistband of the skirt that had been loaned to her at the hospital (loaned, because the scalpel that had slit a half-inch-deep laceration from hip to armpit had ruined her waistcoat, shirt, and trousers) abraded the wound that wended up her left side, and she limped to minimize the fabric's movement. She tucked the bell into her sling and carefully lowered herself onto the couch. Every wound protested, leaving her panting and pale.

And though it had not been her intention – good grief, she despised people who played up their weaknesses for attention! – Teatime was already there, placing a pillow on the armrest of the couch and lifting Susan's feet to help her recline.

She went red, but blustered past the embarrassment by snapping, "You're the one who was so worried I shouldn't be walking. And you decided I couldn't get into a carriage on my own! Twice!" With each point, she jabbed her finger at him, and with this last point, the force of the jabbed finger lifted her painfully into a seated position. "And we got caught, Teatime," – she relished the mispronunciation – "And I said you'd pay with interest."

A flurry of emotions chased each other across Teatime's face and finally settled on thoughtful amusement. "You also said that when I got my body back, I was to 'stop bothering' you," he reminded her.

Susan answered primly, "I can hardly make you pay if you leave. Someone's got to hold you responsible."

He laughed. But he didn't leave.

Later, after they had bickered about how this nurse-maiding was to go (Susan would not object to assistance getting up and down from the couch, but she required exactly no assistance with the bathroom) and had tea (which, in itself, was quite good, but the sandwiches were put together as if by a six-year-old – all meat and mustard, no vegetables at all), the topic switched to Teatime's ennui.

"For heavens' sake!" Susan sighed, "I'm the invalid, here!"

"And you're happy to just sit and read!" Teatime retorted from his position near her bookcase, which he'd been restlessly prowling around for half an hour. "And then there's no one to talk to. That's so dull!"

When she pointed out that he, too, could sit and read, he drew himself up and answered with dignity if not politeness, "Your library is rather limited. The Dark Library holds books that I find more interesting." Then he pouted a bit. "Now that I'm not part of the Guild proper, I doubt I'll be allowed to check any of those books out anymore."

"Surely they can't keep you out," Susan replied skeptically.

"Well, no. But that's not the point, you see."

Sighing as though feeling quite put upon, Susan said, "Very well, go. It's not as though you don't have affairs to put in order. Occupy yourself for a couple of hours."

"Thank you! And what would you prefer for supper?"

She told him, and he left, his departure leaving a swirl of chilly air in its wake. He had adapted back to using doors without any delay. In contrast, Susan had had to force herself to remember to unlock the door to her flat. Sometimes, life just wasn't fair.

The day before yesterday, a point in time that seemed so long ago that it could have been last year, Lobsang had given her three good reasons to embrace her powers and accept her Otherness. All three had somehow involved Teatime, so she figured she might as well begin integrating him into her routines now. And that included not putting him on a tight leash; life was going to be difficult enough without her trying to trap the untrappable.

She might feel conflicted about all this, but she saw no point in agonizing over a decision once it had been made.

She nodded and went back to her book.

Chapter Text

At seven o'clock Monday morning, Teatime was in the antechamber with the irritating clock, neatly trimmed and freshly shaved, every thread of his black ensemble in its place.

At 7:05, a stiletto darkened with lamp soot protruded at a right angle from the clock's face, the glass cover of which had been courteously removed and placed on a small table against the wall. The blade itself pierced the clock's face halfway between the center and the 3. The minute hand butted up against it.

At 7:06, Rufus Drumknott, the secretary of the tyrant of the city, emerged from the Oblong Office with another clock in hand. Frowning only slightly, he lifted the dead clock from its nail and put the new clock in its place. Its ticking-tocking pattern was different from that of its predecessor – if anything, it was more erratic and thus far more irritating.

Drumknott turned to Teatime and said, "His Lordship will see you in five minutes. He also directs me to instruct you to prepare plans for the hypothetical inhumations of Lord Downey and the heads of all 16 houses of the Assassins' School."

Then he disappeared into the Oblong Office again; Teatime could hear a woman speaking during the brief time the door was open. The voice was low and angry, calling to mind Susan, but there the similarities ended. The voice on the other side of that door would not sink into tones that bypassed the eardrum and merely entered the mind, for instance. In times of stress, it would likely go shrill and break. Susan's just went… big.

At 7:08, Teatime had not one but two inhumation plans for each subject plotted out – three for Lord Downey, because if an Assassin could rise to the position of Master of the Guild and stay alive for several years afterward, then one had to have plenty of backup options.

At 7:09, the replacement clock was on the table with the glass from the first one. It was there in six easy-to-reassemble parts; a seventh piece was somewhere outside, having been chucked out the antechamber's window.

At what Teatime could only presume was 7:11, the door opened again to reveal the owner of the Grand Trunk Clacks Company, Adora Belle Dearheart. She'd barely crossed the threshold, letting the door close behind her, before somehow pulling a cigarette, a holder, and a box of matches from her form-fitting, high-necked dark red dress. Through the entire process of fitting cigarette and holder together and setting fire to the appropriate end, Miss Dearheart examined Teatime with a fierce, judgmental stare.

Teatime knew of her because ages ago, some fellow Lord Downey had described as "a toady to an arrogant upstart" had opened a commission on her father; he'd suddenly withdrawn the commission and its miniscule fee, and that had been the end of it. While a ghost, Teatime had spent much of his evening hours passively gathering information on the five years he'd missed out on while dead. Miss Dearheart, he'd learned, was now the fiancée of Moist von Lipwig; had an addiction to smoking that made other addictions hang their heads in shame; and had an unusual interest in all things restrictive, constrictive, potentially dangerous, and pointy.

Upon seeing her, he reflected that she bore some thematic similarity to Susan, if it were Susan in one of her icier, angry, poker-throwing moods. Miss Dearheart's dark hair was pulled into a severe bun, and the dress covered everything but hands, face, and the toes of a pair of expensive-looking shoes. Her expression was not by any consideration friendly.

She took a long drag on the cigarette, and on the exhale, she said, "Moist said you were a ghost." Her tone was fairly neutral, giving the lie to the sharpness of her frown. She cupped her left elbow with her right hand and puffed again; on the left hand was a small, elegantly plain diamond ring.

"I was," Teatime answered, a little miffed that they hadn't gone through the usual ritual of introducing themselves. Even though they each knew who the other was, it was only polite. "I'm not anymore," he added.

"I've gathered that, yes," she answered. After another pause to take in smoke, she declared, "I think I'd like to make the acquaintance of your Miss Susan."

There, now! They were back to the more polite forms of interactions between strangers. Teatime knew how to deal with that; that was what the Guild spent the first three years hammering into students' heads.

"Oh, I'm sure I can arrange a meeting," he answered, smiling. He didn't waste time noticing that Miss Dearheart drew her head back at his expression; it was the usual response to his smiles. "But, with respect, I'm afraid you are mistaken. Susan is my friend."

Miss Dearheart snorted, smoke shooting from her nostrils. She scoffed, "If that's all she is, it's because you haven't done anything about it. No one spends a month bringing someone back to life just because she'd miss his help in games of Cripple Mister Onion."

"You don't know Susan. And it was three weeks."

"I'm trying to, if you'll introduce us," she answered with some asperity. She ignored the correction. From some pocket that was hidden in the severe dress – where, Teatime did not know, unless it was a pocket sewn halfway down the skirt, which was the only loose part of the garment – Miss Dearheart produced a card. "I'll post a letter, as well," she said, "But would you give her this and ask if she'd be at home to visitors just after Hogswatch?" The words were polite, but the tone was impatient.

Teatime decided to take the words at face value and assented, tucking the card into one of the pockets on his waistcoat. Susan would probably like this woman; even if she didn't, they would likely get along. And if that failed, they'd hate each other on sight, and he would have front-row seats to the show. He and Miss Dearheart exchanged polite parting words; she left; he tapped on the office door, which Drumknott opened for him.

The first thing the Patrician did when Teatime entered was to invite Teatime to attack him.

"I'd like to get the inhumation attempts out of the way at once," he explained, rising from his chair with the aid of his cane. "If I survive, that is to be the end of it; there is too much to do to permit distractions." He came around to the front of the desk. "If you prevail, then at least I shall be able to get my head down for a few minutes."

Teatime considered Lord Vetinari – his tall, slim figure making that age-related slide to frail; the way he leaned not-quite-enough on the cane; the sharp, ice-blue eyes that were watching Teatime without judgment but also without faltering. A certain amount of caution was necessary.

Teatime's head listed to the side the way it tended to when he was dissecting a problem. "The Guild has removed you from the roster of allowable commissions, sir," he pointed out, stalling.

Considering that Teatime had had no opportunity to plan this, he discarded the options of poison or convenient architectural accident – those were too impersonal for his taste, anyway – so, he'd have to rely on his speed, then. However, this was Lord Vetinari, who'd survived this long and had been struck from the register; he was a man who also managed, somehow, to know nearly everything. He would be prepared for Teatime's agility. There was the remote chance he'd know of a weakness in Teatime, which would be amazing, because Teatime took great pains to be as much without weaknesses as possible.

Lord Vetinari was watching Teatime think. He replied, "You are not a Guild member any longer."

"As Susan said the other day, I am always going to be an Assassin." He suspected that hadn't quite been her meaning – those certainly hadn't quite been her words – but it was true nonetheless. Surely Lord Vetinari could understand why he would feel himself still of the Guild.

"Your window of opportunity is closing, Mr. Teatime," Lord Vetinari reminded him, speaking the proper syllables as if no other pronunciation could be possible. "You will be allowed this chance only once. Any later attempt will end in your death, and I will ensure that a second resurrection will be beyond even Miss Susan Sto-Helit's abilities."

Those words caused one of those curls of anger to start in his belly and wend upward into his brain, sending out signals to his hands, which, in normal circumstances, would have filled with daggers. It was nothing like the irritation he could ignore or assuage with a bit of intimidation. This was the kind that led to piles of corpses (which, in many cases, he thought was a good thing) or scarlet-faced rages (which were not as good; he was a little embarrassed to remember that Susan had both caused and witnessed the last one). This was something out of place, foreign. It was nearly impossible for him to enter into this stage of anger.

Fine. The Patrician wanted to goad him into action? Fine. He acted.

But even as he moved, he realized he'd abandoned logic, and that his anger sprang from the mention of Susan. If there'd been a threat against her in that mention, it had been extremely oblique (though, again, considering that this was Lord Vetinari, the threat probably had been there); the response had more to do with the subject of the threat than with the threat itself. Between one fraction of a second and another, he folded the revelation into his view of life and moved on to the next thought.

Teatime tried so hard not to have weaknesses. They were distracting and made things difficult. In fact, his first death had been directly traceable to one. Damn. And he'd been right that Lord Vetinari would know and exploit any such weakness.

So, when Teatime landed, cat-footed, behind the Patrician, he was empty-handed and frowning up at the Patrician, who had turned in anticipation. Both men were armed, for there was no chance that that was untrue, but neither went for his weapon.

Teatime rarely evaluated threats, for he was typically the greater threat, and it had been years since someone had laid a hand on him (barring Susan, of course). He usually acted to eliminate both target and tangential consequences without delay or doubt. But now, he evaluated. The threat was still before him, but it was latent. The trick now was to keep it latent. Because, for the first time in a long time, Teatime wasn't confident that he was the greater threat.

After several quiet moments of thought, Teatime asked, "Am I tethered, sir?"

One thin eyebrow went up. "You have the choice to leave, if you like."

"Alive?"

"Anything is possible."

"And Susan? I did notice you made a point of mentioning her, sir."

The Patrician patiently answered, "Your employment and her safety are unrelated as far as I am concerned. If you are to serve, it is to be willingly and with all your abilities and ingenuity brought to bear."

"If I resign later?"

An eyebrow went up. "Mr. Teatime," Lord Vetinari said, his tone weighted with pity or perhaps sympathy, "After the Hogfather contract, after being resurrected – and all that entailed – and being no longer part of the Guild, what else do you propose to do?"

With no other comment or gesture, he turned his back fully on Teatime – not dismissing, somehow, but moving on – and walked back to his chair, inviting, "Have a seat, Mr. Teatime, and let me describe to you the requirements of your position."

This shouldn't be too hard. It should be… nice. Cozy. That's what it was. Getting to read as much as she wanted to, a snack and cup of tea close at hand, having the couch pulled close enough to the fire to keep both herself and a large kettle warm… It was the perfect set-up for an invalid recovering from wounds that should have killed her.

Susan had been happy for about seven minutes. And she hadn't quite been able to make herself stay still. For the first three hours since Teatime had stopped by to fix breakfast, Susan had been up and down seven times. She was beginning to regret it.

There were good points. For instance, when she lay down, the long cut up her left side couldn't brush against moving cloth, and the deep puncture on the right side wasn't riding through all the muscle contractions of a moving torso. And once she was on her feet, the unbound nightgown and dressing gown didn't irritate the cut. It was the getting up and down that irritated every concerned nerve cell; she would wind up panting and sweating for a good two minutes each time she changed positions. And each time she was up and walking, the faster she got tired. Igor would probably scold if he knew. Teatime certainly would later in the evening.

And they'd scold even more if they knew what she was about to do.

Teatime took the tall-backed wooden chair in front of the desk, fully seating himself before Lord Vetinari was able to do the same. It was a favored trick of his, though in this instance, it was done more out of habit than out of a desire to discomfit his interlocutor. Either way, Lord Vetinari took no notice and pulled a folder toward himself.

"With those of reasonable intelligence, I habitually neither explain nor direct," he said. Pausing to frown a moment, he corrected himself, "No. I lie. I rarely explain matters nor direct anyone, but with a select group, I take an even more hands-off approach." Long fingers opened the folder, removed the papers within, and tapped them together into a neat sheaf.

As if it were a signal – It probably was, reflected Teatime – the office door opened again to readmit Drumknott. He carried what looked like a hatbox. Teatime frowned. That had better not be a bowler; he looked awful in bowlers. Well, it mightn't look so bad right now, because it was his normally abundant mop of curls that made hats ridiculous. But he wasn't going to keep this inch-long crop for long, so there was no point in even briefly considering the hat. Dark Clerk or no, it was not going on his head.

"However," Lord Vetinari continued, recapturing Teatime's attention, "With you, I will make an exception. Your creativity is such that I must limit your palette, as it were."

Limit was not a word that had ever figured largely in Jonathan Teatime's life. But this was, for all intents and purposes, another life. This time, he now admitted, he had something to lose – and considering that both Lord Vetinari and Miss Dearheart had mentioned Susan in the last five minutes, then others knew what he had to lose, as well.

Lord Vetinari pinned him with a flat look. "In brief, you are only to inhume whom- or whatever you are directed – by my order – to inhume. No downstairs full of cowering servants dead for what they might see. No pets nailed to ceilings, Mr. Teatime, is that clear?"

"It is, sir."

"Nor will you indulge in any interpretation of the preceding two injunctions. Scores of techniques and tools were included in the curriculum at the Assassins' School in order to assure efficiency and elegance; I expect you to utilize them."

Teatime pouted a bit. All those techniques and tools he'd acquired took so much time away from the main event, and there was such pleasure to be had in experiencing and enjoying the different ways a life could end.

As though reading his mind, Lord Vetinari finished, "What I seek from your work, Mr. Teatime, is not quantity but quality. You will receive commissions enough." He finally accepted the hatbox from the patiently waiting Drumknott. "To use a different and, perhaps, more apt metaphor, you should consider yourself on a diet. Your appetites tend to lead you to excess, from which nothing can be learned and only one pleasure derived. Learn, instead, to execute and savor a few things of true quality."

The hatbox, a dust-gray thing bound closed with twine, slid forward across the desk, propelled by the tips of Lord Vetinari's fingers. Looking at this thing, made fascinating by anticipation and inaccessibility, Teatime listened to the more mundane expectations of reporting morning, evening, and as necessitated by events the Patrician would wish to know. It was to be assumed that he would learn what the Patrician found interesting over time.

"Your first assignment, however, is to aid the Watch in their investigation of several unusual murders." Lord Vetinari looked up at Teatime with a slight frown. "The victims are all Igors, and while your recent experience may have… wearied you on the subject of Igors, the city requires their talents."

Teatime didn't answer; he didn't really think he was expected to. If most Igors could repair the kind of physical damage Susan had sustained in the fight against one of the anomalous ones – and have her walking halfway across the city the next day! – then he had no problem with them. They couldn't all be mad. Well, not in the way that concerned him. And if the ruler of the city said the city needed them, then, well, he'd know, wouldn't he?

"Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson is in charge of the investigation, I understand," Lord Vetinari continued. "Follow and observe. Point out to him – with quiet discretion, if you please – any useful details that stand out to you. I have full faith in the Captain, but as you see things differently from other people, together, you and he may see the entire picture clearly and quickly."

At last, he removed his hand from the hatbox. "As you will be going to Pseudopolis Yard, perhaps you will be good enough to drop this parcel off with Commander Vimes when you report."

Relief brightened Teatime's mood and expression, and he didn't care if it showed. It wasn't a bowler! Perhaps he would stay on, after all!

"I intended to post Hogswatch gifts to the officers, but, alas, business made that difficult this year," the Patrician lamented. With brisk movements, he flipped over the first two pages of the sheaf of paper before him. As he began to examine the third sheet, he said, "Don't let me detain you."

Because he was amused by the novelty of this new part of his life – Helping the Watch? Plenty of commissions from the city for inhumations? A job in city government? Did that make him a civil servant? – and because it did not seem to involve ridiculous-looking hats, Teatime took the box and the dismissal and was out the door in a flash.

The weekend had passed between Susan's return from the hospital and today; Teatime had been around to distract her from the irritation and boredom that came with being bedridden. They'd talked, and while they'd continued the habit they'd fallen into of bickering with one another, very little of the weekend had actually been spent in arguments. It certainly hadn't been boring.

It was during one of the calmer moments that Teatime had said, "If you didn't let me out from that place I went after dying, who did? I got to Misbegot Bridge by way of a door, and it looked like the ones you make. Blue light and all."

Susan had denied it again, though less angrily than she had once done. She had not released him; up until two days ago, she had had no reason to. The only other person she knew who could make any similar portal was her grandfather, and he would never have reason to loose a sociopathic ghost on the world.

Then, of course, it had dawned on her. She hadn't had a reason to release Teatime. She did now. Three of them.

It took no more than five minutes to construct the appropriate portals – one between her flat and Misbegot Bridge in the here-and-now, one between the now and then, one between the bridge and the Country Between, and then one back to the where and when she was supposed to be in – but when she returned, she was drained and wobbling. After suffering through the action of taking her place on the couch again, Susan realized she wouldn't be getting up again for the rest of the day. She reached for the tea on the table beside her, and a bit of red caught her eye. She looked down at her nightgown. She was bleeding.

"Damn," she muttered, plucking at the fabric.

It wasn't much blood – just a line tracing the cut that went from armpit to hip – but she felt a little foolish for opening the wound again. And she didn't feel up to the scolding Teatime would feel it was his place to give her. He could be officious when he wanted to be, and he'd been attentive to the point of irritation since Susan had woken up at the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. She'd the idea that if he stuck around long enough, he'd become clingy like the Lipwigzer puppy he always reminded her of; the only problem with that was that she didn't think he'd deal with separation anxiety by merely chewing up shoes.

She sank into sleep, her muddled mind considering how to housetrain one's pet Assassin.

What brought Susan back to consciousness was the strangeness of four sounds in quick succession.

Someone unlocked and opened her door.

Footsteps approached.

There was a sharp intake of breath

And her door slammed shut.

It was the last noise that flung her from the foggy fields of semi-somnolence inhabited by past ghosts and furry creatures in chain mail and back into her front room.

Bleary eyes took in the angle of foggy winter sunlight slanting through the window. It was about four in the afternoon. Susan hadn't meant to sleep that long. Sure, it passed the time, but she doubted she'd be able to sleep through the night. On reflection, she thought that might not be a bad thing; the last three nights she'd jolted awake with the beginnings of a scream trying to fight past her clenched teeth. Besides, what she had done had needed doing; a nap was justified.

With a grunt, she reached out her left hand, swiping around until she struck the kettle on the hearth, cursing quietly when it jolted her healing bones. She sighed when she felt how cold it was. The fire had all but died. She'd have to put some more wood on it and jab at it with the poker, but the mere thought of sitting up triggered a flare of pain in her midsection.

"Come on, Susan, shift your bones. It's not going to get any warmer with the sun setting," she told herself.

And she'd just elbowed herself up against the arm of the couch and laid her right arm against the back when her door burst open, letting in a swirl of cold air, as well as Teatime and the Watch Igor riding in a fireman's carry across his shoulders.

Igor was clutching a not-quite-closed toolkit and protesting, "If you'd just tell me what the problem ith, I wouldn't need the general kit – oh." Igor blinked around, realizing they'd arrived; when his gaze landed on Susan, he jabbed a finger at her and snapped, "Lie back down! Now!"

Unaccustomed to being on the receiving end of such a tone, Susan glowered and used her grip on the back of the couch to pull herself fully upright. "I've been lying down all day –"

"You've done nothing of the kind!" he interrupted her, struggling off Teatime's shoulders with nearly no help from the Assassin. "Lie! Down!"

Having made enough of a point for now, she flopped backward, grunting softly at the pain. Igor scuttled over, opening his kit as he moved. "What you've been doing ith disobeying doctor's orderth!" His lisp faded in and out in response to his agitation. With efficient movements, he cleared the table by the couch and started piling gauze on it. He sniffed the spout of the kettle and then dumped the contents onto a towel. To the grimly hovering Teatime he handed the kettle and said, "Boil some water. Uthe the stove in the kitchen. Stay there and don't come back until it'th boiling. You can thcold her later."

The Assassin disappeared, and Igor turned to frown at Susan. Briskly, professionally, Igor covered her lower half with her blanket and pulled her nightgown up to her ribs. He grabbed her right wrist and placed her hand on her left breast; in this way, he was able to expose the entire cut. Quick movements and the appropriate application of a pair of blunt-nosed scissors had cut free the soiled bandages. The soaked towel he lay down the length of the cut; it was cold, but Susan could feel the dried blood loosen almost immediately.

The whole time, he muttered at her. He asked, "How do you exthpect to heal if you keep injuring yourthelf?" He plucked a brown bottle of liquid from his kit and worried the cork from its neck with his teeth; Susan caught a whiff of the sharp, medicinal scent of its contents before Igor poured some into a square of flannel. "The best patientth are the comatothe," he groused.

Susan kept herself from answering something in the line of The best doctors are the ones with their mouths shut, partly because it was unproductively rude, and partly because Igor started to pull the soiled bandage from the wound.

In response to her first hiss of pain, Teatime poked his head through the kitchen door with, if not murder in his eyes, then at least mayhem. He blinked owlishly at the sight that greeted him, but before he could muster his wits for any sort of reaction, Susan reared up, pointed with her broken hand, and shouted, "Kitchen! Now!" He duly disappeared; she called after him, "And stay there! Or – ow – I'll stop time and douse you with something horrible!"

"Horrible how?" his disembodied voice asked.

Thinking fast, for she hadn't quite thought the threat through before issuing it, Susan snapped, "Snowmelt from the street!" That was pretty good, because it was only 26 percent snow; gods only knew what the other 74 percent comprised. "Something that stings the eyes – ow. I know a fellow who will get sick at the mere mention of alcohol – ow! Just stay in the bloody kitchen!"

When Teatime let the silence answer her, Susan nodded and returned her attention to Igor, who was watching her over his folded hands with irritated patience. She glowered back and took the time to examine his expression for signs of shock, scandal, or the utterly intolerable knowingly lifted eyebrow. Seeing none of the above, she finally relaxed back against the arm of the couch. She grimaced at the pain that had grown into a much harder to ignore throbbing overlaid with the sting of recently applied disinfectant.

Igor drawled, "If you're done?" Going only slightly red, Susan, with Igor's help, sat up to get fresh bandages wound around her torso. She appreciated his gentleness, considering how aggravated she knew him to be with her behavior. He even waited until she was settled and properly covered again to give her the earful she'd earned.

The only defense she offered was, "It was important." She didn't say what was important. Just that it was.

"It is important that I never see fresh thtitcheth in this condition again," Igor retorted. "Do not overestimate my thkillth. You're healing well – were healing well – but if you get an infection or bleed out there's little I can do for you!"

At any other time, Susan would have done that trick she had of making people forget she was there, but using her abilities as much as she had today had quite drained her. She wasn't sure if she could muster a decent Voice command. The only comfort she could derive from that was that if she were actually close to death, then she would be close to Death, as it were. If she couldn't call on those abilities, then she'd be fine; she was just exhausted. But since she was exhausted, she could barely scare up enough energy to argue, and she'd have to save that up for Teatime. So all she could do was sit sullenly under the rebuke and nod at the appropriate I Am Your Doctor Or Something Like It, So Do As I Say, Right? moments.

The moment Igor closed the front door behind him, Teatime was standing by the couch, frowning down at her; his knees were near hers, which position perfectly backlit him while leaving Susan fully illuminated by the fire. The light glanced off his more normal eye in the normal way; the scrying stone captured the firelight and let it bounce back and forth on its inner surface, producing a cloudy red, catlike glow. Susan's heart gave one great thump – she chose to label it surprise – but she concentrated on frowning right back at him.

She found, somewhat to her surprise, that she had to walk a fine line between the irritation at his disobedience (which she had to get accustomed to, as commands were not things typically given in healthy friendships, no matter the constituent members) and irritation at his belief that he had the right to reprimand her (which was a privilege Susan allowed perhaps three people).

She would ignore the first. The second, she determined, she would correct. So before he could commence lecturing, Susan shot over her crossed arms, "I was letting you out of the Gray Country, you know."

The frown on Teatime's face gave way briefly to surprise; eventually he settled on his oddly humanizing conflicted expression. He understood the words and was able to piece them together with his knowledge of Susan's abilities; she wasn't worried that he wouldn't understand how she'd ended up in her current condition. He would, however, be baffled about the why. And for now, she was content to let him remain so.

Finally, his frown made a brief return when he said, "Good. But since you manipulate time, maybe you should wait until you've healed completely to do anything else. Seen logically, it could have waited."

Susan slumped down against the arm of the couch and dropped her good hand over her face. Damn him twice. She couldn't believe she'd let Lobsang sway her, to use his way of knowing too much to convince her to make the decisions she had. She was tempted to laugh – at herself, at Teatime, at the situation Fate had decided to build around her. Instead she sighed.

"Will you stop being right and just fix the tea?"

Stubbornly, he stayed where he was and asked, "You won't do it again? Will you? At least not yet."

His serious tone, not quite concerned but again not quite not, drew Susan's gaze to him. His head had slid into the tilt that had become familiar, and his lips were slightly pursed, as if prepared to fall into a full pout should she disappoint him. Susan's urge to laugh grew; she couldn't keep her lips from quirking up barely at the edges.

"Am I going to have to?" she asked.

"No!"

"Then, no, I won't."

"Good."

He was suddenly gone. In the kitchen, the teakettle screamed for a fraction of a second. On the couch, Susan let herself drift back into sleep to the sounds of cabinets opening and closing and cups chiming against one another.

Chapter Text

Right in line with the Watch's Igor's prediction, Susan was able to move more freely by Saturday. The scars left on her side and neck were faint, pinkish lines; Igor hadn't been able to ask Susan her preference at the time, as she'd been unconscious and near death, but he'd offered to tweak the scars later if she wanted something more prominent. She wasn't vain enough to go back under the needle to completely eliminate the line that ran over her jaw and down her neck, but she certainly wasn't going to cosmetically emphasize it.

She was now able to take and leave seats with little more than a twinge, which indicated how quickly her nearly-mortal wound was healing. The only thing that kept giving her a spot of trouble was her left hand and its three broken palm bones. Though she hourly tapped her thumb against each digit as directed by Dr. Lawn, an exercise as uncomfortable as it was necessary, Susan still couldn't form a fist with that hand. The last three fingers remained only loosely curled, and it looked like she was giving her living room the laziest OK sign ever given.

It didn't help that she unthinkingly used it to lift books or swat at Teatime when he was being annoying. The first action kept straining the healing bones and made her drop the book; the second never went anywhere, as Teatime always caught her by the wrist before she ever made contact. His grip, though loose, was as solid as steel, and it jolted the bones.

Nonetheless, after a full week had passed, the charade of Teatime-as-nurse passed as well. They'd soon settled into an odd companionship that saw him in her flat between three and nine hours every day. He stayed in a mid-range flat just Turnwise of Dolly Sisters, but if he did anything there but sleep and change from one set of black clothes to another, Susan would be surprised. He was always at her door by eight each morning. High-society matrons who did their visiting in the mornings began to sniff whenever they saw the door open to admit or issue forth that odd young man with the strange eyes. Some people were no better than they ought to be – or theyshould be no better than they ought to be, considering that one of them was a duchess. They whispered about seductions and sin, but they made sure to do the whispering when they were nowhere near either party who were the subject of the conversation.

Susan found it unsurprising and mildly amusing. One morning, as she was seeing Teatime out, she told him, "Oh, dear. Mrs. Devilliers has her opera glasses out again."

Teatime unerringly turned to look across the street, two doors down, and up to the third floor. A curtain fell back into place, panicked movements retreating behind its dubious safety.

He mused, "She isn't an Assassin, and I doubt she's joined the Thieves' Guild."

"Sorry?"

"Why else would she be casing your flat?"

It was all Susan could do not to laugh. Where she found the granddames' nosiness predictably silly, Teatime couldn't comprehend it at all.

"Who knows?" She shrugged. "Have a good day at work."

Lord Vetinari had Teatime looking into a number of murders of which all the victims were Igors. Rather, Teatime explained, the Patrician had him shadowing the Watch officers in charge of the investigations. While he explained over supper one evening, it became clear to Susan that 'shadowing' meant Teatime walked up to Captain Carrot and said he'd be tagging along, if that wouldn't be too much trouble for Captain Carrot. When Susan pointed out that perhaps Vetinari had intended something subtler, Teatime shrugged and answered, "I wish to be effective, not stylish. If he wanted someone invisible, he should have sent Clarke – or you."

Susan scoffed at the idea. She was a schoolteacher and a duchess – she preferred to think of them in that order – and the last thing she intended to do right now was investigate a bunch of murders that even Teatime described as weird. She told him she'd be satisfied just to hear his stories in the evenings. Besides, she'd already sent letters to her students' parents, announcing the opening of the spring semester in a month's time.

Meantime, she occupied herself by doing some light shopping as her health improved. She got supplies for the upcoming classes and refilled her pantry. It was with a childish sense of pride that she found herself walking a little farther each day without having to sit. The trip to Biers had been something of a triumph. One day, she had to hire a porter to deliver groceries; the next, she was able to sling a satchel over her neck and carry several pounds of apples home. Her greatest accomplishment so far had been when she returned the copy of Dr. K. Follett's Varyouse Applycations of Poisons to the Assassin's Guild. It was rather heavy. She'd also brought along her heavy, nearly unused book of cheques because she'd promised Lord Downey that he'd be compensated for his help. Susan strove to make good on all her promises. When the Master of the Guild saw the sum on the cheque, he offered further lessons, and Susan said she'd consider them.

Then she'd walked home without stopping. Then, she'd prepared supper, it being her turn to do so. The food turned out well. Teatime came home with a good story of the day and was less insufferable than he could be. It was a good day.

Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom, the city's most well-known known female dwarf, hid her nervousness well, Teatime thought, but that might be more a function of his not having known enough dwarves to read their features with ease. Unless one has experience, it is very difficult to read the fifteen square inches of face left open by the necessary gap between hair and beard. However, Sgt. Littlebottom had had her brows groomed and was wearing eyeliner, which emphasized expression as much as it emphasized femininity, and Teatime got the impression that she was wary of him. Smart, if unnecessary at present.

Promising to send a report of any additional findings in the Igors case, she hurried him and Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson from her lab as quickly and as politely as was dwarfishly possible. Both men thanked her just before the door shut on their heels.

Captain Carrot shrugged down at Teatime. "Forensics. Everything you could possibly want to know about dead bodies."

"The Guild school taught me everything I needed to know about bodies," Teatime said indifferently. "Perhaps one of the guild experts could compare notes with Sgt. Littlebottom. I recommend Lady T'Malia."

The captain brightened. The effect was the human equivalent of someone turning up the wick in an oil lamp. Teatime listened politely to Captain Carrot's effusions about inter-agency cooperation. The elegant, aged lady in question was a mistress of poisons and was once a mistress of many other things of which an aged lady cannot as easily be mistress. She would probably flirt with the captain with equal shamelessness and ineffectiveness, which interested Teatime not at all; seeing her intellectually square off with a dwarf who had survived being in and being kicked out of the Alchemists' Guild would prove more entertaining.

Finally, as they left the main courtyard of Pseudopolis Yard, Captain Carrot drifted back to the main topic. "Fortunately, there have been no more murders in the last week, but we have exhausted the main avenues of inquiry on the cases we already have. Cheery's got all the evidence we could find at the crime scenes, and all the relatives and possible witnesses have given their statements."

"Captain Angua?"

With a look that was not so much sharp as assessing, Captain Carrot merely answered, "Scent bombs."

"Unfortunate, indeed," Teatime replied, mind already racing ahead. "With luck, when the next one occurs, I will be at hand." His scrying stone could sometimes focus itself on handy details that he might otherwise overlook.

"Hopefully, the next one won't happen at all," Captain Carrot said firmly. He even nodded for emphasis.

Oh, dear. He was serious. How dull.

They'd made it to two crime scenes, and Teatime had examined them both in good faith. They managed these two stops in four hours mainly because Captain Carrot insisted on 'proceeding', Watchman-style, around the city – politely, and earnestly citing Commander Vimes' teachings on the subject. It tried Teatime's patience sorely.

Finally, as they were approaching Attic Bee Street, Teatime stopped on the pavement and asked, "Where are we going next, please?"

Captain Carrot told him.

In turn, Teatime thanked him and said, "Excuse me." Then he grabbed the captain by the back of the neck with one hand and behind the left knee with the other; Teatime slung the man across his shoulders and moved. What would have been a walk of twenty minutes became a journey of not quite five. He set the captain on his feet again and was about to, as Susan put it, blip away, but he found that he was anchored to the spot by a redhead who had suddenly gone quite green.

He stared in wonder, partly because nearly no one was quick enough to lay a hand on him without his knowing about it beforehand and either permitting it or avoiding it, and partly because he hadn't expected Captain Carrot to get ill. Teatime certainly never got ill. Why would he? He was just moving from one place to another. Birds didn't get airsick, did they, nor fish seasick?

As it didn't appear that Captain Carrot was going to get sick on Teatime or retaliate in any way, Teatime stood and waited.

The captain finally requested, "Please don't do that again, Mr. Teatime."

Teatime, gratified by both the politeness of the request and the proper pronunciation of his surname, nodded his assent. He thought back four days, when Susan declined his offer to carry her across the city. He said musingly, "Perhaps I should give Susan more credit for forethought if everyone reacts this way." When Captain Carrot expressed curiosity, Teatime explained the situation. "It's ever so strange to think of Susan as sick, though," he said. "Injured perhaps, especially considering recent events. But ill? I'd as soon expect it of the sun."

"Then you're fortunate," Captain Carrot told him, solemnly shaking his head. "There's nothing worse than knowing your loved one is sick and there's nothing you can do about it."

This was untrue, Teatime knew deep in his heart. For one, knowing that your loved one is getting branded with a misused fire iron was probably worse. Feeling that oneself, he knew, was patently awful. Watching your loved one dissolve slowly from the inside as a result of a few very specific poisons was probably worse. Being unable to stop or revenge any of the above was probably worst of all.

But Teatime didn't vocalize any of these thoughts. Because his heart had begun to pound and his focus had gotten murderously narrow while he thought of the death of a loved one.

Because Captain Carrot had called him fortunate.

Because he had said, "loved ones".

Because he'd said "love".

Oh.

Though his companion had not been the most talkative Carrot had had while traveling across the city – that honor had gone to Nobby very early on when he'd gotten into both the petty cash jar and a pub within minutes of each other – Teatime had gone from the polite back-and-forth of a well-bred stranger straight into ground-examining introspection. Carrot hoped Teatime wasn't offended. He knew the Assassin was an orphan, so he probably shouldn't have brought up loved ones' illnesses. It was hard enough, he knew, to be separated from one's family, but the idea of losing them forever caused his eyes to prickle.

When he apologized for making things uncomfortable, Teatime had blinked at him in deep confusion. "Oh, I'm not uncomfortable," he answered, waving one hand as though to brush away the suggestion. "I'm just thinking."

They were both quiet for the next several hours, exchanging courtesies only when narrow passageways or the holding of doors necessitated it. They examined crime scenes – rather, Teatime did, using the weird feline trick of staring at nothing with a predatory intensity – in companionable silence. Carrot admitted to himself that he was surprised. He privately disapproved of the Assassins' Guild since they took lives and had frequently tried to take the lives of people he cared about, and he had expected to have to merely tolerate this Assassin's presence. He hadn't expected to get along with him fairly well. He acknowledged that the young man was terribly strange, what with the eyes and the odd chirpy way he had of speaking, but he was also courteous and actively listened when one spoke.

In fact, the silence had gotten so companionable that when Teatime broke it, Carrot jumped.

"I'm afraid I will be useless today, Captain," Teatime said, rising from a crouch and brushing the tips of his fingers together. "I have seen what is to be seen, but so much time has passed since the murder that I cannot possibly offer any of my observations as proof. Only suspicions, which I'm sure you have already thought of." He smiled; the lower lid slid up over the bottom half of his dark gray glass eye, and Carrot found the expression eerier than a neutral one. Even so, he thought that smile was a little wistful. "Besides, my mind has not been entirely focused on this task. I apologize."

Carrot sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, feeling quite the heel. "I shouldn't have spoken of loved ones being sick. It's a very depressing topic. I'm sorry."

Again Teatime looked at him in bafflement. "You're sorry for the strangest things, Captain. I admit, I think there are worse things to feel than that, but it's just an opinion." His expression cleared a bit, and he went on, "And I'm not depressed. I'm thinking."

"Of?" That was impolite, Carrot knew. He shouldn't have asked, and he was about to apologize again when Teatime answered.

"Hogswatch gifts. You see, I don't get many. I give fewer. None, actually. It comes from not having very many friends," Teatime explained, frowning sadly. "But this year, I have someone to exchange gifts with. But I haven't gotten one for her. I'm trying to think of one."

Carrot felt his confused frown disappear. Oh. A her. Carrot could deal with that. "Can't go wrong with chocolates," he suggested.

Teatime tilted his head. "Perhaps. But I want this to be… personal." Absently, he put his hand to his belt, resting his hand on the hilt of one of his daggers. Carrot found himself tensing when Teatime's face lit up at the contact. Carrot knew about Teatime and his blades. Teatime grinned and chirped, "Do excuse me, Captain. I will have a written report of my observations for you tomorrow morning. Forgive me, but if I want a bespoke knife from Thorg Helmsnephew by Hogswatch, I'll need to speak with him now."

"That's less than two weeks away!"

"It will be quite an expensive knife. I think Susan will like it. Good day to you!"

Carrot was left staring at an empty flat and wondering why the Duchess of Sto-Helit would like a Helmsnephew blade.

Chapter Text

Oh, my, now isn't this interesting! He'd never been in love before. Part of him (the part he was accustomed to ignoring) doubted that love was what he was in – again, he'd never been in it before, so how would he know? And considering the putative sources of love and role models he'd had in his life – his parents and the Assassins' Guild – he, logically, had to question his inborn ability to recognize love.

The part that was not in doubt was wondering why his heart was going faster and why he felt like laughing.

He ducked around a supply wagon that boasted a huge, yellow, metal contraption on its rear wheel. The owner had just stepped from the pie shop he'd been delivering to and was bellowing at the elderly Watch sergeant, a barrel-shaped old fellow who was doing an admirable job of propping up the wall of the same pie shop. Teatime kept moving, uninterested by the various ways Sergeant Fred Colon could pompously uphold the law and invite a bribe all in one breath. He'd heard it before; the repetitions did not improve the performance.

Captain Carrot had described seeing a loved one ill as the worst feeling on the Disc. After further analyzing that statement, because the literal meaning of it was untrue and required some reflection, Teatime had come to the conclusion that illness implied mortality and thus the permanent loss of the loved one.

A traffic jam was forming in Kickleberry Street, so he took the edificeer's route on his way to the Street of Cunning Artificers. It hadn't been his favorite sport in school, but his agility and balance made him a natural. He paused mid-step on a Watch gargoyle's head, chirping a greeting at it before moving on. Such was the ease with which he navigated the leads and shingles that Teatime kept pondering this fiddly new complication in his life with little concern for where he placed his hands and feet.

In his previous life, Teatime would have shrugged at the idea of losing anyone who could be called 'close'. He'd lost his parents quite early and quite permanently, and it mattered not a bit to him; in fact, he rather resented the pity he got when people learned of his growing up an orphan. He was quite sure his parents would have suffered just the same amount of grief he'd done if he had been the one inhumed.

But now, after coming back… He'd gotten foolishly angry that the Patrician had obliquely threatened Susan in the Oblong Office – that the man had used it only to goad Teatime was immaterial – and he got curiously agitated at the thought of her being out of his reach forever. Anger was there, as well as fear, both emotions with which he had only a nodding acquaintance, but there also was a kind of… disappointment? Hurt? Perhaps it was sorrow. That was one he was completely unfamiliar with, so maybe it was that. But his usual state of mind – inquisitive, busy, optimistic – slipped away into these uncomfortable emotions if he ever considered Susan's absence.

Besides that – for Teatime didn't like to linger on things that made him uncomfortable, especially if he couldn't eliminate them – he enjoyed Susan's company. He thought he could even go so far as to say that he liked her.

He dangled by his fingertips from the eaves of a two-storey building. Had he stopped at the alley on the other side of this building, he would have tapped back and forth between the closely set buildings and been done; as it was, he merely controlled the way in which he dropped. In one second, he'd touched down and was moving again.

Yes. He did like her, he decided. He'd already chosen to consider her a friend, and he was fairly certain she wouldn't object to that label. As Miss Dearheart had pointed out, one did not go through nearly a month of bringing someone back from the dead just for the exercise.

In fact, Teatime thought he could probably even stretch his regard enough to say that he respected her… as much as he respected anyone. Susan was quite the smartest woman he'd been able to find in the city, and though there were ways in which she was still inferior to him – but wasn't everyone? – Susan had those little surprises that fascinated him, like stopping time and talking in ways that nearly overrode his consciousness. He couldn't get bored with her, not really. If she tried to get tedious, all he had to do was annoy her, and the fun started again!

Besides, she'd gone back to being more interesting as she'd healed, being more willing to talk with him, indulging his curiosity, and even agreeing to allow Teatime to train her in the art of blade work. That was going to be fun, and not just because she was pretty and lithe and looked remarkably well in trousers. His knives were among the few constants in his life, and he trusted them to the degree that he felt naked without one; teaching a friend how to use a tool that was so much a part of himself would be a joy. Teaching someone he thought he loved would be the best gift he could think of.

Well, now that that's sorted, I've got business to conduct, Teatime reminded himself. He pushed open a door that opened onto a low-ceilinged room with a jingle; the dwarf there glanced up and greeted him with a merchant's smile. Teatime politely made his request; the dwarf's initial dismay was overcome by the wallet, fat with this new paper money, which Teatime opened.

Introspection was not something Teatime did often, and he was relieved that this bout was over.

Teatime was in love. He was going to give gifts that not only, in his eyes, demonstrated that love, but which would be a pleasure to give.

He was going to convince her to love him too. It shouldn't take long.

His memory tugged at his forebrain, replaying several moments when Susan had gone pink in his presence, revealing those odd pale marks on one cheek.

Perhaps he wouldn't have to do much convincing in the end.

That week, the Vimeses and the Gaiters took pains to call on her. Her grandfather had not yet done the same, but he'd sent a note by the Death of Rats to assure her of his intentions to visit on Hogswatchnight.

The first visit had been uneventful but for Young Sam's asking the usual tactless children's questions about Susan's broken hand and scarred neck. After Lady Sybil had given him the appropriate scolding, Susan had given a heavily edited explanation. If the Vimeses had had any doubts about saddling Susan with their son's education, those doubts were dispelled when she'd handed the boy a copy of A Brief Historie of the Clann of Igores by T. Price. He'd opened it up and began struggling through the first page then and there. She let him keep it.

The second visit had gone rather less smoothly. Mrs. Gaiter and her children had come by at three on a Thursday, and Susan had invited them to stay for tea; she'd had little choice, because it was clear they planned to make it a long visit, and she couldn't very well eat and drink without offering any to her guests.

Then Teatime had shown up for teatime (an event that she teased him about for the rest of her life, much to his patiently borne irritation), as he usually did. The children had stopped to look at him for a moment, and then they'd turned to Susan and began peppering her with questions.

"Where'd he come from?"

"I fort he was dead!"

"Did he do all that to you?"

"Hit 'im wif a poker again!"

"Oi! Isn't that my shooter?"

"If you two are quite finished?" Susan's best schoolteacher tone yanked on their hindbrains the way that The Voice yanked on everyone else's. The kids went suddenly quiet and attentive.

She took a second to collect herself. Then she asked, "The poker only kills monsters, yes?"

They nodded.

"Mr. Teh-ah-time-eh is alive, isn't he?" she asked, looking up at him with a warningly raised eyebrow. He sighed, but he stayed still and allowed himself to be poked in the side with a demonstrative index finger.

Again, the children nodded.

Leadingly, she said, "And what does that tell you?"

"He came back from the dead!"

"He's not a monster anymore!"

"He tricked you!"

"He's a zombie!"

"The poker's a lie!"

At this point, the children turned to each other, throwing out ever more absurd suggestions, trying to outdo one another in pure foolishness. Susan sighed. Teatime looked pained.

Mrs. Gaiter offered, "Children are so imaginative, aren't they?"

When Lobsang had tried to convince Susan to embrace her Otherness, the first reason he'd given was, "There will be family. It could take a dozen different forms; that's up to you. But you will have family."

A second week passed quickly. Hogswatch was upon them by the end of the next week, and Susan was determined to treat it as normally as possible. She was beginning to get comfortable with their routine; she feared to disrupt it by making a big deal of how they had spent it six years ago, now.

Then, of course, Teatime was Teatime.

"That isn't exactly in good taste, is it?" he insisted.

Annoyed, Susan retorted, "It isn't celebrating your death. It's the marking of the new year. The rebirth of the sun. A pig becoming a man becoming a sort of god. It's been going on for millennia. Your death was incidental and wouldn't have happened at all if you hadn't gone off-script!"

He pouted. "It still occurred. I happen to find it significant."

"Would it make you feel better if we celebrate your resurrection next year?" The question was mostly sarcastic.

"Oh, yes! I would like that."

"You would."

Her grandfather arrived five days later for Hogswatchnight dinner. He brought Susan a card, which bore a technically brilliant drawing of the Hogfather but which did not open to display a message. He spent the whole time somehow contriving to glower at Teatime, who filled the potential silence with not-very-tactful questions and banter with Susan.

As he left, Death took Susan aside, pressing her good hand between his own; it was like a cage had decided to shake hands with her. I AM GLAD THINGS TURNED OUT WELL, he said. I WAS WORRIED FOR YOU. I DO NOT THINK YOU WOULD HAVE WANTED AN ETERNAL MOMENT. A pause. I WOULD HAVE MISSED YOU.

She rewarded him with a hug, which delighted him no end.

The next day, Teatime arrived at Susan's flat bearing a small flat package. It turned out to be a short knife that fit into her fist like it was bespoke. He gave it to her on the condition that she let him teach her how to properly fight with it.

He was astonished to find that, not only had Susan bought and wrapped a gift for him (a rare copy of Higg's Encyclopaedia of Blayded Weappones of Darkest Howondaland – the bookseller had given her quite the odd look when she'd come to pick it up), but the Hogfather had been and left him a present, too (a wickedly sharp throwing knife).

Susan explained, "I never write him letters, but he keeps leaving me things – out of gratitude, I suppose." In the past five years, she'd received, in order: a pork pie, a bottle of ruby port, a fine-knit dark gray shawl, a silver broach with an omega etched on it, and an updated edition of the biography of General Tacticus. This year, she had gotten a replacement copy of A Brief Historie of the Clann of Igores by T. Price. The Hogfather's aim was improving, it seemed.

"But why leave something for me?" Teatime asked.

"Either he has a sick sense of humor, or he's grateful for your belief in him." Teatime had said once that he had the heart of a little child, and while there was a certain truth to that due to the atrocities his parents had visited upon him, Susan thought that perhaps his focus was what the Hogfather was rewarding. If Jonathan Teatime believed in something, he likely did it with a focus and force unmatched by any ten children.

He laughed. Susan couldn't help but smile.

The second reason Lobsang had given her was, "You'll never know what it is to be bored again – and don't you give me that skeptical look."

Then she and Teatime went to a late Hogswatchday supper at the Ramkin Residence in Scoone Avenue. She'd gotten the invitation, along with a long letter expressing pleasure at Susan's recovery, from Lady Sybil on Monday. Teatime had dropped in at what Susan privately called "his time", and Susan had asked him if he wanted to go, too. "But you absolutely must not kill anyone," she'd warned before he'd had a chance to answer.

"Except in self-defense."

"As long as you're not provoking someone in order to claim self-defense."

"That is acceptable."

At nine o'clock, they arrived in a barouche Susan had hired. Walking home in triumph with terrible injuries was one thing; walking to an evening gathering in Scoone Avenue was something One Just Didn't Do. Teatime had found an almost-velvet, light-devouring black ensemble that was even more stylish than usual, though typically understated. Susan had conjured an off-the-shoulder gown with elegantly trailing cuffs that hid most of the plaster encasing her left hand.

Commander Vimes had stared and then put his face into the palm of one hand; Lady Sybil had merely greeted them as if nothing could be more commonplace than a resurrected Assassin showing up with the woman who had killed him and subsequently brought him back.

What had astonished Susan the most was how at ease Teatime had been. She knew Assassins were trained to be at home in any situation amongst any company, but Teatime wasn't particularly known for his social savvy. But he got on swimmingly with the Vimeses, the Patrician, the Postmaster and his fiancée, the Selachiis who'd deigned to show up, the Wiggses and a number of Lady Sybil's old spinster friends.

In contrast, after making the rounds, Susan had found herself propping up a mantelpiece with Commander Vimes.

He lifted his eyebrows at her, casting a quick glance in Teatime's direction. He contrived to look like a skeptical older brother, all embarrassment and concern and protectiveness.

Susan shrugged at him.

Being, himself, the beneficiary of Fate's odd sense of humor, Vimes shrugged back at her and lifted his glass of pineapple juice in salute.

Susan danced four times that night. A set dance with Moist von Lipwig allowed her to warn him that she and Miss Dearheart were planning field trips for her classes. Commander Vimes gruffly guided her through a surprisingly street-ready jig, which was evidently Lady Sybil's attempt to put her husband at ease.

And Teatime tossed her very professionally through a reel and led her in a sedate and elegant waltz, both of which left her short of breath and feeling clumsy and a little lost.

It was nearly three a.m. when the barouche stopped at the Sator Square flat. They ascended the stairs arm-in-arm, continuing the argument begun in the barouche. With a lazy wave, Teatime dismissed the driver, and the barouche rattled away.

"The melee tricks worked, though," Susan protested. "Hiddlesham, or whoever he is, had already surprised me by that point. I had to draw the dagger with my left hand, and then after that, they were both busy breaking the bones." She waved the plastered-up hand in demonstration.

"I'm going to teach you not to be surprised again. And ambidextrous fighting," he replied firmly.

"Fine. But my classes are starting soon, and Vetinari's got you on those murders," she answered. "We'll have to make time for it." They paused at the top of the stairs for Susan to dig around in her reticule for her key.

"You control time," Teatime reminded her with a grin.

Finally locating the key, she looked up to answer just as his lips met hers in a kiss. It was gentle, and not so much unsure as restrained.

The final reason Lobsang had given Susan to accept herself – her entire self – was this: "I said I'd lose you. I lose you to him."

Susan's forebrain shut down with the shock, and the little bit of frontal-lobe function that remained noted that Teatime's eyes were hooded, watching. She had just enough time to wrap her fingers around the lapels of his coat before he suddenly broke away. The force of his retreat dragged her with him down two steps; he caught her about the waist, steadying her.

"You were about to run off!" she accused, taking the opportunity to strengthen her grip.

"Well, you weren't responding," he protested. "I thought it best to get out of slapping range."

"You surprised me! I had no warning!"

His expression said that he wasn't sure he was following her but that he was making the effort. "I see."

She lifted her chin. "Now that I have an idea of what to expect, perhaps you should try again."

"Oh?"

"I insist on it."

So he did.

And it wasn't unsure; it wasn't hesitant; it was decided and probing and turned her frontal lobe off completely. There weren't fireworks, but her entire limbic system went up in flames, so the effect was rather the same. And this was just his lips moving on hers; his hands were still politely around her waist. She shivered to think of how she'd react when the politeness disappeared; he felt the shiver, and his hands tightened.

Hands still fisted in his coat, Susan backed up the last two stairs and dragged the Assassin with her straight through the door.

Chapter Text

They made it through the door with all appendages still attached, which was, upon reflection, quite a feat. Considering that they were engaging in a kiss that had narrowed Susan's focus to only a few square inches of skin. Considering that 'through the door' meant 'not opening it, but rather taking flesh through solid wood'.

So. They made it through the door intact.

She deserved a reward in the form of a dessert. Preferably chocolate.

But later. Because of the kissing. Which Teatime was shockingly good at, Susan observed.

Those politely placed hands that had kept her from tumbling down the stairs outside slid up her sides, sweeping past her breasts to cup her face. Long fingers dug into her hair, pressing behind her ears, tilting her face just enough. Her hair slid from its updo and started coiling lightly around Teatime's hands; that he didn't react to that at all made any of Susan's lingering doubts sit down in the corner and sulk. The noises of shifting cloth and heavy breathing were punctuated by the surprisingly loud sounds of lips meeting and parting and meeting again. Oh, and the thump and clatter of her reticule and keys falling to the floor. Those too.

Susan was only faintly aware that they hadn't made it very far into her flat. She had stopped backing up once she'd estimated that they were clear of the door, and that was that. Cracking her eyelids, intending to find out how far it was to the couch, she saw, dimly, that Teatime's back was all of six inches from the door. Internally repeating an adage comparing misses and miles, Susan considered her surroundings. The front room was quite dark, illuminated only by the moonlight that made it around the edges of the drawn curtains. That would likely prove no trouble to Teatime, but her admittedly good eyesight needed a little more light to be of much use. Besides, the coals in the fireplace were banked, and Susan was chilly even through gown, cloak, and hormones.

This thought in mind, she broke the kiss and took a step back toward the fire. She moved slowly because her hair was still winding itself around Teatime's hands. She didn't make it further than that one step, though, due to Teatime transferring his lips to a soft bit of skin under the point of her jaw. The shock of it yanked a gasp out of her. His left hand shifted to cradle the back of her head; the right pressed into the small of her back, partly in support and partly to draw her closer. She felt him open his mouth and press his tongue against her neck as if to hold his place. Then he closed his lips against her skin and sucked.

This time, Susan's knees actually wobbled. She was grateful that she still had fistfuls of his lapels and yet irritated that her body was giving up control so soon. Once more, she pulled away, this time explaining, "The fire –" She went red at how thick her voice was.

Teatime blinked at her in surprise. In the faint light, she saw that his pinhole pupil had dilated far enough to look normal. He said, "I didn't think you were the sort who liked metaphors."

With some asperity, Susan answered, "The fire. It's cold. I can't see well." Metaphors – honestly! She hardly had any use for similes, and that only was because she taught children.

"You're cold?" He frowned. "I'm not that bad at this," he said with a pout.

"Not like that! That's fine."

Gods, more than fine. Inside her skin, she was beyond merely warm; she was damn near feverish. Outside her layers of clothing, though, was a room full of winter's chill, and she would be happy to eliminate distractions before they became distractions. That's what she told herself. She made a point of ignoring the annoying trembling her hands had taken up.

"I still can't see," she pointed out. "Some of us don't have scrying stones in our heads."

"Very well," he said, taking her face in his hands and kissing her again, fiercely. His lips plucked at hers, and his tongue darted in to caress hers; it was so powerful a sensation that, a moment later, when he'd dashed away and left her looking like an excited goldfish, she didn't feel too foolish. Difficult to feel foolish when you wanted to be made to feel that way again.

It was as though he'd wanted to stir up her hormones so much that her ardor couldn't cool while he stoked the fire, as it were. If so, he nearly managed it. It took her a moment or two to be aware enough to hear the hiss of cloth through air and the faint rhythm of feet plying the floorboards. The sounds stopped, and there he was at the fireplace in the front room, expertly building a scaffold of kindling and firewood in the grate and stirring up the coals. The moment that flames caught the kindling, he was off and doing it all over again in the fireplace in the bedroom.

But hers was not a mind to be distracted from practical considerations for very long, especially not when the distraction was a good fourteen feet away and doing something as quotidian as building a fire. All the little synapses that had fallen quiet while watching the light show that was Susan's hindbrain began to chatter to one another again. Flickers of Oh, my! chased after That was best kiss I've ever gotten. Ever, which was followed closely in turn by a chant that in anyone else would have been characterized as panicked: Teatime. Teatime. TeatimeTeatimeTeatimeTeatime. A lonely little neuron in a distant sulcus took note that not one of the iterations of the name was pronounced correctly.

It struck Susan with some force that she was intending to end her Hogswatch day by taking on her first lover, and that that lover would be Jonathan Teatime. She found herself strangely reconciled to it. She'd perceived from the first moment that he was attractive, if completely mad. They were friends now; even she was willing to admit that. And they'd worked reasonably well together during that month despite the bickering and power struggles. They each clearly gave a damn about what happened to the other – no denying that, now. They would not be the first couple whose relationship had started with insults and hair-pulling.

It struck her with rather more force that she was considering something quite long-term with him. Couple. Relationship. Follow that line of thought, and it terminated in visions of toddlers with infuriatingly curly hair and the vocabularies of university professors. And knowing Teatime the way she now did, Susan was confident that he'd already gone through this particular thought process, had found it acceptable, and had decided to proceed. First lover? Perhaps only. This was another thing she was surprisingly comfortable with – the kids part could wait a while, though.

Finally, it struck her with enough force to draw from her a dismayed, "Oh," that of all the sundry things she had in her flat – a too-well seasoned iron skillet from Albert, rather too many fireplace pokers of varying qualities and weights, as well as all the accoutrements necessary for a cat that Susan refused to adopt from her grandfather – not one of those items was a sonky.

Teatime was at Susan's side in less than one second, assessing her even as he moved. She'd slumped backward against the plain-papered wall in her living room, and her face was too pale for just a moment, rendering her as otherworldly as he'd ever seen her. At his questioning glance, though, Susan went a shade of red that looked painful and far more human. The white lines of the odd birthmark showed up on the skin of her cheek, and this time, Teatime submitted to his curiosity and reached up to stroke them with his fingertips. He found that they were merely a difference in coloration; there was no raised scar tissue, and the flesh under the marks was just as hot as the flushed skin surrounding them. Liking the feel of soft skin yielding under gentle pressure, he slid his fingers over her cheek again.

"What?" he asked her, hiding his surprise at his own voice. He hadn't meant to sound quite so hoarse – though he had a feeling his dignity was going to suffer plenty tonight, so what did hoarseness matter? – but when Susan went all the redder at the sound, he resolved to speak in whatever manner made her do that again.

She explained her problem in about four words, and Teatime felt that unfamiliar sensation (Was that concern? Apprehension? He didn't like it.) dissipate. His mind touched on sonkies and their purpose – delaying the arrival of the next generation – and then it moved on to the next thought.

"We won't be needing them," he said, shrugging.

Susan's brows nearly met above her nose. "We certainly will."

Teatime considered his revised plans and the body parts involved. Blinked. Retraced the plans to make sure he had everything straight.

"No, we won't."

Susan went rigid, pulling herself upright and away from his hand. "This," she said in what Teatime was beginning to recognize as the schoolteacher's voice, "Will not happen without sonkies. Do you understand?" He watched her go from pliant and overwhelmed to battle-ready in moments; her shoulders squared up, and her chin went from firm to outright pugnacious.

And even as his lips stretched into a smile, Teatime knew that Susan wouldn't take his amusement well. He couldn't help it, though. She jumped to the wrong conclusion so often! Like this, for instance. Did she really think he would turn this into a weapon? Killing was killing. Sex was sex. As far as someone with his mind and his skills was concerned, the two were unrelated. Surely he could appreciate each one individually and not adulterate the purity of either by mixing them.

"Do you?" he asked her, placing his hands against the wall at waist height. He was caging her loosely with his body, careful to let his forearm touch her torso just in case she tried to stop time; she could escape, though, if she really wished to. He'd allow it. He needed her to choose him; he didn't quite know why, and he was reluctant to find out, but it was important that she choose him.

Susan tensed, but she didn't try to run. She didn't understand, but she was willing to listen. Teatime found himself smiling again. She could be sensible!

"Assassins are taught to be at home in every situation, you know," he said. "Including this one. And there are dozens of things a man and a woman can do together…" Unaccustomed to purposefully being unthreatening, Teatime had to make do with not advancing any further and not kissing her again. The last part was really difficult. It would have been quite nice to kiss the suspicion out of her expression, but he thought it would backfire on him pretty spectacularly. This was Susan, after all.

"And not one of them ends with a child," he finished with what was probably an infuriating smirk. He never could tell when they became infuriating, because the muscle movements were the same as the non-infuriating type. He just had to see what reactions he got. He repeated, "We won't be needing them."

She frowned again, clearly thinking fast, and commanded, "Swear it. Gods help you, if…" Her hair, as telling of emotions as a cat's tail, twisted on itself, as if unsure whether to take the tight style that betrayed fear or to loosen in relief.

"I swear it," he answered plainly. He could control this, control her, himself. The benefits of doing so far outweighed the costs of losing that control. She would leave. Or try. Neither was acceptable. So he must make her stay and make her think it was her idea.

Teatime reached up, unable to resist capturing a pinch of hair and letting it slip through his fingers. It was much finer than his own; it slid across skin like satin and clung to his fingertips, as if reluctant to leave. It was little details like this that were able to distract him so.

Sucking in a deep breath, Susan shut her eyes and let her head fall back against the wheat-colored wallpaper behind her. They both already knew what her answer would be, else she wouldn't have demanded an oath, but Teatime waited for her to say it. She had to say it. That was important, too.

Finally, she opened her eyes – great, dark, dilated, expressive things full of a fear that she'd never admit to – and said a little hesitantly, "Show me, then?"

Wouldn't he just.

Adjusting his plans minutely to account for Susan's uncharacteristic case of nerves, Teatime pulled her away from the wall and into another kiss. She seemed to react to that much better than to talking. Her hands came up to the lapels of his overcoat again but slid downward to tug the buttons from their holes. Susan was able to get them free after only a moment of fumbling; the broken hand in its plaster did limit her dexterity a bit. Following her example, Teatime had the clasp at her neck unfastened in a flash and let her cloak slither to the floor. She shivered, but it couldn't have been from cold; the fires were going quite merrily now, and Teatime knew that he really wasn't that bad at this. So he let his fingers trace her collarbones, feeling a little proud of the gooseflesh he'd raised there.

It was with the calculated use of teasing kisses and some blind backward footwork that Teatime was able to get them into Susan's bedroom. To distract her – the new venue would stir up her nerves again, and she might have him neatening the room and drawing a hot bath just to slow things down – Teatime shifted his attention once more to the pulse point on her neck. She'd made a fantastic noise before – and lo! she was doing it again! The shocked sound of Susan releasing a lungful of air right beside his ear etched the moment into his brain and sent all the right signals to his groin. He nibbled down her neck to the collarbone, flattened his tongue, and licked the same path back to her jaw, relishing the choked gasps it pulled from her.

What he hadn't expected to find arousing was the tension of the fabric across his back, pulled tight by Susan's fingers fisting in the front of his jacket; the pull of her fingers dragged at the weird fiddly bits of his brain that he'd never really understood but suddenly started obeying. It had, after all, been rather a long time since he'd done anything like this.

And then Susan started nipping beneath his jaw, and fairly important bits of his brain put up an Out to Lunch sign and shifted it.

Susan was no gambler; she was a strategist. The only risks she took that weren't guaranteed wins for her were rare. In fact, they all seemed to be linked to her grandfather and somehow protecting the world. She was able to admit that those three instances were good times to run unwise risks, but they were good examples only because they'd turned out well for her. She preferred not to think of the alternatives; if she'd played them safe, then the least awful thing that could have happened would have been the death of one Llamedosian bard.

(It was to be noted that this Llamedosian bard was the person who had first taught her to enjoy the act of kissing and that it was preferable to come up for air once in a while. Imp had nearly blacked out by being so caught up in their first kiss that he'd forgotten to breathe through his nose while his mouth was occupied with Susan's.)

The more awful thing, of course, would have been the end of existence, and that hardly bore thinking about.

(It was Time's heir who taught her that, while "lip lock" was an interesting metaphor, one's lips actually could be put to much more interesting use elsewhere. As could the hands. They hadn't learned much more past that, though; Lobsang's visits had become increasingly erratic, and their interactions had gone back to being mostly friendly.)

The third instance was busy putting his own mark on territory previously explored by the History Monk. To imagine that he'd stop at over-the-clothes petting seemed childish.

So Susan was fighting considerable anger at the moment. She was taking rather a large risk, she thought, and any other maiden facing down a night with a mad Assassin would be quite frightened, no matter how much she'd grown to like him.

The fight was actually going in her favor, though, since anger couldn't keep her attention long after Teatime got her across the threshold of her room. He was moving ahead with the over-the-clothes petting, exploring the shape of her, mapping not just the usual landmarks but ridges and shallows that Susan had never considered erogenous. For instance, she'd never been so aware of her scapulae before. And from here out, she'd shiver whenever she had to roll up the cuffs of her blouse; forearms, it seemed, were terrifically sensitive.

Teatime returned to the known territory of her face and neck, tracing her brows, her cheeks and jaws with his fingertips. A little unevenly, he lightly kissed the same paths his fingers had taken; he favored her birthmarked cheek, but he spent more time tugging at her right earlobe. Twice, he paused to draw a deep breath – once behind her left ear, and once where her neck met her shoulder – and she couldn't tell if it were to take in her scent or to fight for self-control. Susan didn't dare ask. Besides, those pauses were brief, because she used them to focus on a little exploration of her own.

The body, the shell that Susan had forced Teatime's spirit back into had been atrophied, wasted, all bones and the softness of unused muscle. The difference between that and his past self was astonishing. What he had been on the Hogswatch of his death – indeed, the form his spirit had remembered and had taken this last month and more – had been a compact ideal of broad shoulders and narrow hips, though Susan had had no reason to examine further at the time. The last couple of weeks had allowed him to regain both weight and tone, but he was still just shy of ten stone, leaving the shape beneath Susan's questing hands a bit sharp at the edges.

Here were his shoulders, solid if less broad than she recalled, and difficult to spend time on when his arms were getting in the way of hers. She stepped forward then, making quick one-handed work of the buttons of his lighter, indoor jacket and smoothing her fingers over the fine silk of his waistcoat. Here, then, were his hipbones, just where his waist tucked in at its narrowest, and on the far side was the furrow of his spine. Susan curled the fingers of her right hand under the edge of the waistcoat and pressed into the deep part of the spine's S-curve. At once, Teatime's hips jerked forward, closing the last distance between them; Susan became unquestioningly aware of his interest in the evening's events. He froze where he was, fingers of one hand tangled in her hair, the rest splayed against her side. Susan felt herself go painfully red. She couldn't tell if it were embarrassment or pride or, just possibly, a huge uptick in arousal. Whatever it was, she couldn't quite bear to meet his gaze. So, instead, she kept her right hand where it was and brought the left up to drag Teatime's cravat out of its complex knot. The silk – Assassins and their bloody expensive fashion sense! – slid free with little encouragement and let the collar of his shirt fall open. Susan wasted no time licking at the exposed skin; it was salty with sweat and had that sweet and musky flavor that only living skin could have. She could feel the half-moan she startled out of him almost before she heard it.

He murmured her name, the word half-protest, half-prayer. His voice was thick and complex enough to qualify as a dessert all by itself, and it worked over Susan's name twice more, making her shiver and nip sharply at his skin just to make him do something else.

Taking her so suddenly by the upper arms that she gasped, Teatime held her not quite at arm's length and said, "It has been too long since I've done this. If you continue…" He swallowed. "That… then I won't be of any use to you."

"I'm new at this, not stupid," she answered with a slight frown. "I'm not so naïve that I don't expect you to…" She was not going to say that word in that way. "…Be." She was twenty-three, damn it, not fifteen! "…First," she finished lamely.

Teatime's fingers tightened on her biceps, and his expression settled into what Susan was beginning to recognize as his stubborn face. Oh, dear. As if there weren't enough expectations and nerves to contend with tonight.

"You have a mirror," he chirped brightly. Susan could almost see a lamp flicker to life over his head; she, however, failed to see what it illuminated.

Not following the non sequitur at all, a literalism she was discovering that she did not like at all, Susan answered slowly, "Yes." It was a full-length one that hung from the wall by a picture-frame wire, which made it tilt ever so slightly downward, which distortion made her lower half look a trifle thinner than it was in reality. She suspected that as she aged, she would find that effect flattering. It certainly made it easy to see her entire ensemble before she left for the day; she would see and deal with a scuffed boot with efficiency and alacrity.

Without replying, Teatime swung her merrily about in an arc with himself as the pivot point. She grunted with surprise; he laughed. He then danced round her in a similar arc, and then pulled her into another semicircular path that terminated at the foot of her bed and right in front of that mirror. In one fluid movement, he turned her to face the mirror and slid behind her. Their faces and hands almost seemed to float in the firelit darkness of her room, their clothing fading into the background. It was faintly eerie. Perhaps that was just because of the anticipation that lit up Teatime's mismatched eyes, which got creepier when seen in reverse in the mirror.

"The big picture," he announced, his voice in that thoughtful territory between chirpy mania and focused threat. His hands came to rest on her hips. He leaned into her; she couldn't stop the soft sigh that escaped her when the whole back side of her, from neck to knee, came into contact with his warmth. His pressing the beginnings of his erection against her bottom made her squirm just a bit, and he grinned at her in the mirror.

He said quietly, just over her shoulder, "I think…" One quick step had him on her left side. A shudder rocked her. In very quick succession, she went white and then red, and her pulse went from thrumming to hammering.

Teatime's left hand stayed on her waist, and his right hand came up to brush her hair away from her face and neck. That is to say that he was emphatically not pinning her wrist behind her back and not pulling her hair and exposing her neck (something, in fact, that she was doing all by herself without conscious thought). But it was suddenly, somehow, the Tooth Fairy's castle all over again. This time, though, there was no Banjo. And there were very different reasons for her insides to quiver.

Well. Perhaps not quite such different reasons. She resolved to question her sanity later.

"I think," Teatime repeated from right beside her, his lips two inches from her ear, "That I want to watch you watch this."

One inch. "You will, won't you?" A whisper, now. She could feel his lips brushing her neck as he spoke.

"It will be … instructive."