Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Summons * Imaginary Friend * More Bullshit Than Magic

Deacon looked down at the pile of assorted odds and ends that the Ankh-Morpork Scouting and Urban Survival Federation youth program kids he was working with had gathered. Let’s see… a set of brass knuckles, some broken glass, cigarette butts, the wrapper from one of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s sausages inna bun, a dead rat, a beer bottle, and… ah, yes, a severed human ear. This fucking city, he thought to himself, and boy, wasn’t it cathartic to be able to think that again? What he said out loud was, “Gotta be honest with you guys, I don’t think this’ll stick to the paper for your collage.”

“Not a problem, that’s why I brought these.” One of the boys grinned, tossing a wooden board, a hammer, and a few rusted out nails into the pile. The boy had previously gone by Rockland Irons, but had apparently decided that that didn’t sound tough enough, so now he insisted on being called Shatter Bawls, or just Shatter. Deacon was delighted with the new name, although the first time he’d said it, it had been hard to keep a straight face.

Deacon felt himself tense, and his fight-or-flight instincts struggled for control in a way that could only mean one thing. He turned around and looked up at Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, putting a smile on his face that he was reasonably sure looked genuine. In return, Carrot gave him one of those smiles of his that was all warmth and radiance and showed absolutely nothing of what was behind it.

“Mister Deacon, thank you so much for helping today, but I’m afraid I just received a message for you.” Carrot handed him a folded letter with the Patrician’s black shield on it, and behind Carrot, Deacon spied what was no doubt the courier high tailing it away from the children of Carrot’s youth program. A private courier and not the post, he noticed.

There was a low whistle and a couple of “oooooohs” from the children as they spotted the markings on the letter. Shatter elbowed Deacon in the thigh. “Hey, mister, if you get executed, I’m calling dibs on the glasses, okay?”

Deacon smirked. “Sure thing, Shatter.”

Carrot beamed down at Shatter. “Now Rocklan-“

“Shatter,” Shatter corrected.

“Right, of course. Shatter. Now Shatter, I’m quite certain that the Patrician has a perfectly sensible reason for wishing to speak with Mister Deacon that has absolutely nothing to do with executions.”

“Of course, nothing at all!” Deacon agreed brightly. Granted, he didn’t think he was getting executed, at least not right away, if only because sending the summons in a way that Carrot was aware of it meant that Whispers would have a place to start investigations once Deacon stopped showing up to their card games. This wasn’t the same as having ‘absolutely nothing to with executions’, however, and Deacon had not missed how displeased Vetinari had seemed at the wedding with the, well, existence of the Commonwealthers.

Deacon folded up the letter and slipped it into his inventory, pretending to pocket it as he did. “I suppose I should probably look into… whatever this is.”

Carrot nodded. “I think that would be for the best, Mister Deacon. I’m sure we can handle the rest of the project without you, just this once. Right, boys?”

The boys responded with variations of ‘yeah’, ‘okay’, ‘whatever’.

“All right then,” Deacon muttered, taking a deep breath. Then he told Carrot, “Hey, do me a favor and let Mister Vimes know I’ll be by later to bum some dragon feed off him, will you?” There, that’d make sure Vimes was clued in if things went wrong. He waved to the boys. “See you around, kids.”

One snorted in doubt, while another answered with a sarcastic, “Sure.” Shatter… did Shatter look worried?

Well, wasn’t that cute.

The waiting room in the palace had a clock that, Deacon felt, ought to have been banned as psychological warfare, if only the states of the Sto Plains went in on that sort of treaty. They still would have used such a clock, if it had been banned, but then Deacon could have at least pointed out the hypocrisy.

How long had he been waiting, past the time his appointment was meant to be due? Seven minutes? Ei-

The door opened, and the secretary, Drumknott, called for Deacon, ushering him through a doorway where the wall to the right side had been punched many times by a man shorter than Deacon. Drumknott took a place at the Patrician’s side as the door closed behind Deacon.

The Patrician appeared to be contemplating the view of the Tump Tower, studded with clacks semaphores as it was. There was a long moment before he addressed Deacon with, “You told the ambassadors from Ephebe that you are a member of the Ankh-Morpork Diplomatic Corps. Now they’ve asked that you be dispatched to Ephebe for an official diplomatic visit. You, who are His Grace, Sir Samuel Vimes’s imaginary friend. Why have you done this to me?”

“Nothing personal,” Deacon said breezily, “I ticked off Hancock, too. I do it to every politician I meet.” There was the abrupt sense of danger, but it didn’t keep the words from Deacon’s lips.

“You misunderstand. I am not ‘ticked off’ with you, Mr. Deacon,” said the Patrician, in a way that suggested that Deacon would not like to see what ‘ticked off’ was and, in fact, might rendered unable to see if that eventuality arose, “Ankh-Morpork has not been on full diplomatic terms with Ephebe for over a hundred years, and now, they ask for you. Why have you done this for me?”

What a difference a preposition made, but what was the proposition going to be? Deacon gestured, “The thing about Whispers… er, Sam - and don’t him I told you this - is that he was born without the ability to have fun. Strange but true, I know, and as his friend, I take it upon myself to compensate for that burden of his to liven up his life. Why, he probably wouldn’t have even looked at those urns until after the honeymoon if not for me, and, well, he didn’t have a honeymoon. Again, born without a sense of fun.”

Vetinari drummed those long, thin fingers on his desk. “You found interacting with the Ephebian ambassadors ‘fun’?”

“Sure, for slave-owners who don’t think women are people, they were pretty great guys. I could throw some beers back with them, maybe see what they think of the NCR, though Caesar’s Legion might be more their speed, ‘democracy’ or not,” said Deacon blithely.

“Capital,” said Vetinari. “You will be doing just that, although the beverage of choice will most likely be loosely defined as wine. You leave for Ephebe in two days. Arrange your affairs in order.”

“I’m not actually a member of the Ankh-Morpork Diplomatic Corps, y’know, I’ve actually been trying out as a member of the Association of Knockers-Up¹ -” Deacon started to say.

“Is that so? Because I do seem to have all of your diplomatic paperwork in order here,” said Vetinari, and he gestured at a folder that Drumknott was holding. “It would be a shame if you were merely impersonating a diplomat. The penalties for that are quite severe.”

Drumknott gave Deacon the folder, and he flipped through it, seeing immaculately engraved documents - if forged, they’d cost a pretty penny, Deacon knew well - that stated that A. Lias was a member in good standing of the Ankh-Morpork Diplomatic Corps.

A. Lias. He’d come up with it on the spot at Valentine and Vimes’s wedding. Sometimes, he wanted to see how far he could push things before someone called him on it. Deacon imagined Valentine or Vimes would have cottoned on to it, if they hadn’t been distracted by Vimes being kidnapped. Deacon hadn’t expected the Patrician to be the one calling him on it.

Was it laundry day? He thought he could go for a clean pair of pants.

“What do I have to do?” Deacon asked, still flipping through the packet, trying to play it casual.

“Oh, establish diplomatic relations with Ephebe, serve Ankh-Morpork’s interests, install an embassy… nothing terribly difficult,” said the Patrician.

“And if I don’t?” Deacon asked. He didn’t trust authority.

“You are a free man, Mr. Deacon, and you possess the freedom to discover what happens in that eventuality,” said the Patrician.

Deacon frowned slightly. “So why hasn’t Ankh-Morpork had diplomatic relations with Ephebe for over a century? I know we trade…” Ephebian grapes were pretty good.

“It’s on page forty-two,” Drumknott supplied helpfully.

“Mr. Deacon has already observed the answer himself,” said the Patrician.

Deacon flipped to page forty-two and looked up. “They’re slave-owners, and your Ankh-Morpork won’t have anything to do with slavery.”

“Abominable practise,” said the Patrician, and that felt just a little too pat, the way he said it.

Deacon thought to himself, Yeah. Cute story. One you know I’d eat right up, if you think you know me. You haven’t been Patrician for a century, and slavery was legal before you took over. What’s the real reason? What he said was, “Cool. Vacation on the government’s tab.”

The Patrician said, with an utterly straight face, “Fair winds and following seas, Mr. A. Lias.”

¹ A group of men who came about in the tender hours of the day and often saw some very fine knockers², indeed.

² Big brass ones. Knockers-up were paid to act as wake-up alarms, for those too rich to settle for clockwork.

Adora wasn’t around the Golem Trust much these days, according to the duty receptionist Klug, but Deacon didn’t know her well enough to know the difference. Klug said that over these last years since she’d assumed control of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, she’s been busy with her duties there as Chairperson, but that had suited the golems fine. They could run the Trust themselves.

If she really wasn’t around as much as previously, and again, Deacon didn’t have a basis for comparison, he thought there might have been a second cause. The style of her characteristic severe grey dresses had changed ever so slightly. In about eight months, Whispers would be getting a new neighbour screaming in the middle of the night down there on Scoone Avenue.

“Don’t think you’re going on a vacation, Mr. Deacon,” Adora scolded, “The Golem Trust has interests in Ephebe, and you are to keep your eyes open.”

Behind his shades, Deacon’s eyes could have been anything. “Oh yeah, I was planning on hitting the beaches. I’ll check and see if there’s any golem lifeguards.”

Beaches that were actually swimmable was a new concept to Deacon. Most of the water in the Commonwealth had been cold and radioactive and full of monsters, and the water of the Ankh made the Commonwealth look tame by comparison.

Adora gave Deacon a narrow glare. “Actually, there’s a sort of fibre-infused clay that can float, but that isn’t a characteristic Ephebian style of golem construction. Here.” She forced a book into his hands. The Transformation of Ephebe: Painted Golems and the Creation of Classical Ephebe by Robin Graves.

Deacon flipped through it. Ephebe had strong, active gods and a distinguished sculptural tradition. Of course they’d made golems. “So… do what I was going to do anyway, check.”

“What were you going to do, anyway, Mr. Deacon?” Adora asked suspiciously.

Deacon answered opaquely, “Assess the extraction viability of packages as they present themselves.”

Piper was having a small going-away party for Deacon in a greasy Ephebian diner called Didactylos’s Cave.

Nick was there with Shaun and young Sam. He excused, “Sam wanted to be here. Sam especially wanted to be here when he heard fried cheese was on the menu, but Sybil’s taken him to a gala down on Park Street, so I have the boys.”

Nick had the boys sit down at the table, young Sam claiming a seat next to his uncle, DiMA. Piper sometimes invited Nick’s weird brother to their little get-togethers, as if to say, ‘Ha ha, look how unbiased about synths I am being.’ Maybe she wasn’t really being that performative. Maybe Deacon was just being cynical again.

He didn’t think he was.

“Can we get the flaming cheese and the little tentacle crispies again?” asked Shaun hopefully.

“Sure thing,” said Nick.

“Tentacle?” asked Nat, raising an eyebrow.

“He probably means the calamari,” said Deacon, who enjoyed cooking, and then he flipped through his Morporkian-to-Ephebian dictionary, “or I guess I should say, ‘kalamári’.”

“Deacon, that was just you saying ‘calamari’ in a bad Ephebian accent,” Piper teased.

“You try teaching yourself a foreign language from a book,” Deacon grumbled. He wished he could nail the accent a bit better. If he had to go to ground while he was in Ephebe, he’d need it.

“Won’t the Patrician spring for a translator for you?” Piper asked.

“Probably,” Deacon admitted reluctantly. Can I trust a translator to interpret my words honestly if my words aren't honest in the first place?

“Couldn’t you use a translation spell?” young Sam asked.

Deacon cringed. “Look, my underwear turned into oranges last week because of a wild magic surge. I don’t know if that would be a great idea.”

He’d gone commando for a week, and boy, did it chafe.

“Translation spells are doable, although telepathy has historically been more popular,” DiMA remarked softly. He laced his fingers together. “Likely because the translations tend to lose nuance.”

“Oh, oh, so uncle Deacon could just project his thoughts right to other people?” enthused young Sam.

As a friend of Vimes who wasn’t a Watchman, Deacon had slotted into the ‘uncle’ category for young Sam. Deacon had heard rumours that young Sam called Vetinari ‘uncle Havelock’. The kid was getting quite a collection.

“I used to be a telepath. Then I called a Raider a ‘loser’. With my mind. And he shot me right in the third eye,” Deacon sighed. “And that’s why I had to get a new face.” There was no way he was letting someone cast a telepathy spell on him. He already had a bad habit of running off his mouth. He needed whatever little filter there was between his brain and mouth.

DiMA took Nick’s napkin and started sketching on it, murmuring, “Natural language translation has always been a challenge, but if one started with a data set from a native speaker…”

“Wouldn’t magic translation give you magic words, anyway?” asked Piper.

Nat snorted, “Pshaw. Everyone was afraid the words on the press were gonna get magic, back in the day. That’s what Gunilla tells me. Big scare, turned out to be nothing.”

The waitress came by and took their orders, passing by DiMA, who still had his head craned over the napkin, which had been unfolded, refolded into a lotus blossom, and unfolded again.

“- and the flaming cheese. Don’t forget the flaming cheese!” Shaun was saying.

“And what do we say?” ahemed Nick.

“Please,” Shaun added promptly, looking bashful that he’d forgotten in the first place.

As the waitress left, DiMA looked up and explained, “If you started with a data set from a native speaker, such as my classmate Zinon Elias, and you transferred his linguistic engrams to a turnip, and then you copied that turnip into Deacon, you may be able to provide faithful natural language understanding.”

Nick stared at his brother. “DiMA. No. Do you want another Jule? That’s how you get Jule.”

DiMA looked sorrowful. Deacon, as much as he was with Nick on the ‘hell no’, was rather intensely curious what the deal with this ‘Jule’ person, but Piper asked, “Wouldn’t that kind of thing only work if Deacon is a synth?”

“He might be,” DiMA murmured, “and no, human brains are similar enough for my purposes.”

“Deacon’s a synth?” Piper blurted, blinking.

Deacon sighed. He’d probably been lying about that, but he himself couldn’t be sure, because he was a man of No Defined Backstory.

Now Shaun was looking at Deacon with interest. Shaun was a synth, a lonely synth boy in the wrong place and time. He asked quietly, “Deacon's not really a synth, is he?”

“Uh, probably not,” mumbled Deacon, who would lie to lords and ladies, but who wasn’t about to stab a kid in the heart. “But let’s talk about the more important thing here, which is: DiMA. Wow. What the hell?”

DiMA looked wounded. “I was only offering to be helpful.” He seemed to be sincere.

“Can I learn ancient Latatian that way?” asked young Sam, eyes shining.

“Sam, sweetie, we are not letting uncle DiMA do anything with your brain and a turnip,” Nick grumped.

“Aw,” said young Sam.

Piper seemed to be biting her tongue, but Nat said what Piper was probably thinking, which was, “Ew. That’s creepy! You can’t be serious, Sam.”

“Why not? It’d make homework easier,” said young Sam, unashamed. Then he looked to Deacon and said, with the faith of a child, “Uncle DIMA wouldn’t hurt you. You should try it! And then maybe I won’t have to learn Latatian.”

‘Enabling a child who wants to quasi-cheat at homework’ was not a good justification for doing anything, and yet there Deacon was, sitting down in a chair next to Zinon. Deacon knew magic was capricious, even if what was about to happen was, technically speaking, not actually magic. He also knew that Science!, with the exclamation mark, could be even more bullshit than magic.

Nick had tried to talk Deacon out of it, but Shaun had said, in support of his younger brother’s insistence that Deacon try this nonsense, “He can handle it. Deacon's cool... and tough. He's just like you, Dad!”

“Sweet of you to say kid, but I don’t exactly handle people screwing around with my head well, either,” Valentine had grumbled, but unable to talk Deacon out of it, he’d taken the boys back home for bed.

Nat had tried to talk Deacon out of it on account of it being ‘gross’ and ‘probably an Institute plot’, which had dropped the temperature about 30 degrees in whatever wonky kind of temperature units that Ankh-Morpork used. She’d insisted, “I’m just saying, DiMA talks posh. That’s Institute, it is.”

DiMA had replied gently, “Your sentiment of suspicion towards the Institute is not unjustified, but… the Institute isn’t real.”

“Sounds like something that someone from the Institute would say,” Nat had said smugly, and then Piper had taken Nat off for bed, too.

What it came down to was that Deacon didn’t trust a translator, and he could tell that a few days on a boat wasn’t going to be enough time to learn Ephebian, and sure, he could have just gone for a traditional translation spell or a telepathy spell or whatever, instead of these Brassica-related shenanigans, but Deacon had to reluctantly admit that he couldn’t really assess if one type of magic (or Science!) was any more dangerous than another.

And what it really came down to, since the above was a Lie-To-Deacon, was that he wanted to be able to overhear and understand what people were saying when they thought he was a dumb Ankh-Morpokian who didn’t speak Ephebian.

Joke was on them. He was a dumb Commonwealther, hah.

Aside from Zinon, who’d been swayed to help when DiMA brought Zinon some takeout dolmades from Didactylos’s Cave, there was also an Igor, who had apparently enrolled at UU, because with DiMA around, their standards had gone way down.

Or was that up?

“Look, I’m jusht sayin, Misther DiMA, that you don’t want to use the Scarlet Queen³ turnips. They cause some… odd tendencies,” the Igor said. “The White Knight’s⁴ out, too.”

Igors never contradicted. It was a part of their Code. But apparently, this one did, because in the priority stacking of templates, a wizard's natural tendency to argue trumped everything else.

“What about the Gilfeather?” DiMA inquired.

“An egg-shaped heirloom with creamy white flesh and nearly smooth leaves? Oh yesh, those do quite nicely,” said Igor.

“So, Zinon, this is basically a normal day for you?” Deacon said, trying to make light of it all.

“Pretty much - oh, you brought me baklava, too?” said Zinon, sorting through his takeaway box.

“Huh. I was kind of hoping it wasn’t a typical day,” Deacon muttered.

“Yes, of course,” said DiMA, as if it was just obvious that he was the kind of person who brought his mates back takeaway baklava.

“They’re not like how yaya made them,” Zinon sighed, “but then, she made her baklava with herring.” He popped one of the crispy golden triangles in his mouth, apparently entirely unconcerned about the impending abomination of science that his friend had dragged him into.

“Relax, Deacon,” DiMA suggested, as he and Igor sorted through a collection of glassware that must have been created by a glassblower suffering from violent allergies.

Deacon inwardly cursed that his anxiety was opaque enough to be seen. He was trying to play it cool. “Oh, c’mon, what could go wrong? Aside from all the brain damage...”

“Railroad mind wipes weren’t actually a real procedure, but if they were, I would estimate this procedure to have a much lower risk profile, and you recommended mind wipes to your escaped synths, didn’t you?” DiMA murmured, just a hint of an… edge to his words.

“Hey, look! It was the best disguise we could give them,” Deacon protested, instinctively rising from his chair.

“I wasn’t there, not that there was actually a ‘there’ to be. I am in no position to judge,” said DiMA, who was apparently finally satisfied with his selection of turnips and glassware. He gently pushed Deacon back into his seat. “Let’s proceed.”

³ Off with their heads didn’t work as well with humans as it did with turnip tops.

⁴ They kept getting in where they didn’t belong, and it wasn’t a good look on them.

Getting on a boat while he felt utterly floor-bangered was exactly what Deacon wanted to be doing. Zinon had been perfectly fine afterwards! He’d gone straight back to his dolmades and baklava!

Deacon travelled light, which was his only consolation. He had a suitcase with a false bottom⁵. As much as he wanted to spend some time getting to know the other passengers on the Thesmos, he spent the first day of the trip in his cabin with a headache. The rocking of the ship felt like mockery just piling itself on.

The next day wasn’t any better for his seasickness, but the headache lifted, and he explored the ship. She was a carrack, square-rigged on the foremast and mainmast and lateen-rigged on the mizzenmast, which meant absolutely nothing to Deacon. The words came to mind:

I sailed the ocean for a few months. Made it to Greenland. Crazy story, I'll tell you about it later.

Deacon sighed. He’d definitely been lying about that bit.

The Thesmos kept in sight of land, making it from Ankh-Morpork to the El Kinte Peninsula in about a day and a half. He wondered aloud why they didn’t go out on the open sea, and one of the sailors gave Deacon a funny look, as if Deacon had just suggested setting their pants on fire. “And how d’ya propose we navigate, then? The stars up and change themselves as the centuries go by, and that if there isn’t cloud cover.”

“I dunno, maybe an invisible field that makes iron pins point in one direction?” Deacon suggested.

“Hah!” barked the sailor. “Invisible fields. Like we could afford a wizard on this ship.”

Did compasses even work on Discworld, Deacon suddenly wondered? Probably not, he thought.

“No, we’ll pass by Gebra - not too close, that’s a wrecking coast, it is, Al Khali, Tsort, and New Djeli, and we’ll give them all a wave and a kiss,” said the sailor.

The Thesmos didn’t have many passengers. She was mainly cargo, and her main cargo was arms and ‘biothaumic equipment’. The second night, Deacon snuck down into the cargo holds and broke into some crates, curious what that meant.

It meant shavers that ran on imps.

The other passengers were mostly merchants and a few posh teenage sorts who were going to Ephebe on their Grand Sneers, which was apparently a coming of age deal where the aristocratic youth would go to other countries to look down upon them.

They were fun to talk to.

“The Ephebians are barbarians, you know,” said one.

“And drunkards. So lazy! Having their slaves do everything for them - get me my binoculars, I think I see mermaids,” said another to his valet.

“Hey, in this day and age, we say merwomen,” said Deacon, “You don’t know that they’re maids. You don’t want to offend them.”

The toff looked through his binoculars and then sniffed, “They’re only seals.”

As the second day was fading into the rocking of the waves and Al Khali was behind them, the city lights still faintly visible in the distance, the sailors brought an old nag of a horse out of the hold and promptly pushed the horse into the water⁶, which disturbed Deacon rather deeply. Horses were extinct where he came from, and here they were, wasting one by just tossing her into the water! He couldn’t help mumbling, “The hell?”

“A sacrifice to the Queen of the Sea,” said one of the sailors grimly. “Don’t leave home without one.”

One the third day, Deacon got bored of talking circles around teenagers and cozied up to the merchants. One bemoaned, “I don’t know how I’m going to shift all these shavers.”

“Yeah, I hear Ephebians don’t have any facial hair,” Deacon lied cheerily.

“That’s not it at all! Anyone who’s anyone in Ephebe has a beard, and they won’t shave!” the merchant said.

Hmm, Deacon though, feeling three days worth of stubble on his face. “How about this: head shavers, for that bald look?”

“Now that might work,” said the merchant.

On the fourth day, a city of white marble, built into a cliffside, came into view. There were ships in the harbor. Deacon didn’t know ships. He’d later wish that he’d looked at them more carefully. There was also a tall tower that glinted. The sailors made evil gestures at it.

“So what’s with that, anyway?” asked Deacon.

“Bloody pair-o’-bollox re-fleck-tor,” one sailor snarled. “Shoots sunbeams at folks what are just minding their own business.”

“‘S why you don’t get any pirates this close to Ephebe,” said another, making the sign of an ankh over himself.

Deacon said it a few times to himself and came up with, “Parabolic reflector? Guys, you don’t expect me to believe that!”

⁵ He kept his false bottom in the false bottom.

⁶ The horse swam at a plodding pace back to Al Khali, where she had a night at the Rhoxie.

Chapter Text

Labyrinth * Galatea * Price * Tyranny

Deacon disembarked, although the swaying feeling went on long after he’d stepped onto the pier. An Ephebian guard with a bronze mask and a helmet crested with a tall horsehair plume checked Deacon’s passport and travel papers and found them to be satisfactory.

Down the steep and winding street ahead of him were two older, bearded men in togas, arguing.

As Deacon prepared to slink onto the road, the guard put up a hand and directed, “Halt. Philosophers have the right of way.”

Deacon overheard one arguing, “I say that this ‘clacks’ ought to operate on invisible light. The visible light clutters up my view of the night sky and my observations of the stars.”

The second pointed out smugly, “Invisible light? How can you even say that invisible light exists? You can’t see it!”

The first touched his nose. “How do ghosts see, then? Invisible people must use invisible light.”

Deacon felt a chill.

As A. Lias, the formally accredited member of the Ankh-Morpork Diplomatic Corps, Deacon was going to be staying in the Palace at the centre of Ephebe City, which was the capital of the country of Ephebe. The guard who was leading him there took him by many statues in various stages of undress, which would have made good ol’ Whispers blush. The guard spoke Morporkian, although he seemed annoyed that he had to, and he pointed out the destroyed site where, a hundred years ago, the greatest library on the Disc had burned. Now, philosophers lived there in barrels. Deacon could still hear them arguing, even blocks away.

Then it hit him. The philosophers were arguing in Ephebian. The two he’d seen on the road, dickering about invisible light? Dickering in Ephebian. Holy atom cats, but DiMA’s kooky idea had worked! His coat hanger headache had not been in vain.

The air was fresh, if slightly salted. Deacon didn’t know what to make of it. The only time he’d ever breathed fresh air on land had lasted no more than a few minutes, and he’d been thinking about whether or not he could say ‘fuck’. While at sea, he’d been too preoccupied with his own seasickness on the Thesmos to pay much attention to the air. Ankh-Morpork was… Ankh-Morpork, and parts of the Commonwealth arguably smelled even worse. As he climbed steps meant for pedestrians and donkeys, Deacon could even smell sweet pine on the wind. It was disturbing. He decided that he didn’t like it.

The guard led him to the Labyrinth, which enclosed the massive palace complex. The Labyrinth, from the outside, had sheer marble walls about three stories high, Deacon observed. He touched one, feeling its mirror-shine smoothness. The guard said, “A guide will show you to the next guide.”

The gateway arch was open, and Deacon asked, “So I can come and go as I please?”

“At least once,” the guard said, philosophically.

The guide, though, clarified, also in Morporkian, “We have a proud tradition of traps here. I’m delighted to inform you that the farthest anyone has made it without a guide is nineteen paces. All of our hidden springs, razor-sharp knives, and falling rocks are of extreme historical interest, and if you’d like to be better acquainted with any of them, just wander a little farther away from me. Here is your complimentary and mandatory blindfold.”

Deacon ulped and clung behind the guide like a shadow. He was then passed off to another guide in a changeover station. He fancied he could hear guards giggling in the ceiling. Climbing the outer walls would be a trick, but clearly, the guards got up in the ceiling somehow.

He was told that there were six labyrinth guides in all, and each one only knew his part of the path. In fact, each one redesigned his part of the path on a yearly basis, vying for a coveted prize.

“So what happens when one of you just suddenly dies?” Deacon asked, one hand dragging his luggage, the other in his pocket.

“What a morbid thing to say! Surely, you’re not threatening me? I understand that you’re an uncultured barbarian, but that’s really uncalled for,” the sixth guide scolded.

“No, I mean… what if you piss off Patina, and she chucks thunder at you?” Deacon prodded.

“Hah! Patina doesn’t do thunder,” said the guide smugly, “She’d just clobber me with a penguin.”

“Well, okay, but my question is what happens if you’ve suddenly got a stretch of maze that no one knows?” Deacon tried again.

“Oh. Hmm. Well, volunteers just take it in stretches of nineteen paces. If they’re lucky. It’ll get mapped again. Eventually,” said the guide.

Deacon had tried to pay attention to the twists and turns, he really had, but right now, he was thinking that if he had to get out, the roof was the way to go, as much as he didn’t like heights. When the blindfold came off, the white marble would have blinded him if not for the sunglasses that he’d been wearing under the blindfold. An airy courtyard, large enough to boast its own small pine forest, was before him. There were fountains.

He’d seen fountains on the way up, too. Deacon made a mental note of that.

He also made a note of the crossbowmen in guards’ livery, who were stationed at regular intervals up on the third floor around the courtyard. Deacon had never seen crossbows like those. They seemed to have some sort of a chain drive, like a bicycle? He felt very, very exposed, and he flattened himself against a white marble wall.

As soon as possible, Deacon wanted to get his hands on a guard’s uniform. Also one of those chain drive crossbows.

A short, bald man in a toga, who seemed to be expecting him, greeted, “Mr. Lias of Ankh-Morpork! I am Kourtaki, and I will show you to your quarters. You must be so tired after your long journey.”

Deacon pulled his papers out of his bag. “Says here I’m supposed to go to the Symposium.”

“That isn’t until Tuesday,” said Kourtaki.

“So I can go take in the town?” asked Deacon, following behind, through gardens, past fountains, under the shade of pine trees…

Gaggles of people chatting lounged about. Some of them laughed over the foreigner, and he could hear someone saying pityingly in Ephebian, “That strange man must be impoverished. He cannot even afford a slave to carry his bag.”

Deacon’s eyes narrowed behind his shades.

“If the labyrinth guides are still on duty. They only work nine to four, you know, and they do take a lunch break. We aren’t savages. If they’re off duty, I don’t fancy that diplomatic immunity extends to traps,” said Kourtaki.

So he had a curfew. Lovely.

“But be not concerned. We have arranged entertainment for you for the night. We are aware of your… predilections,” said Kourtaki, slyly.

“Cilantro?” said Deacon.

Kourtaki entered a keycode, and the door to Deacon’s quarters slid open with a pneumatic hiss. Lounging on a chaise recliner was a white marble golem with universal articulated joints, in what The Transformation of Ephebe: Painted Golems and the Creation of Classical Ephebe told Deacon was one of the main Ephebian fashions. She was naked. Very, very naked. Most golems were naked, ol’ Sammie putting his golems in a nonuniform uniform aside, but she was naked in a certain anatomically correct sense.

Exquisitely so, just like the statues of goddesses that Deacon had seen along the streets, but her glowing coal-fire eyes told Deacon that she was no statue. Gods, but there were goddesses who’d kill for a body like that. She rose with soundless, well-oiled joints, and in an elegant sweep, proffered Deacon a tray of peeled grapes.

Deacon stared, his mind going as blank as white marble.

Kourtaki said, “Galatea will attend to your every desire. Enjoy your night, Mr. Lias,” and he departed, the door closing behind Deacon with another pneumatic hiss.

Mr. Lias. He was Mr. Lias, and Mr. Lias was a member of the Ankh-Morpork Diplomatic Corps who’d chatted up the Ephebian ambassadors at Valentine and Vimes’s wedding, mainly to annoy the two grooms. Deacon was an agent of the Golem Trust, employed by the golems for certain jobs that society rendered golems unable to do. Why did Kourtaki think that Mr. Lias had an… interest in golems? Was his cover blown? Did he have to burn this identity and go to ground so soon?

Or did the Ephebian ambassadors just see that Mr. Lias was also chatting with Dorfl at the ducal wedding?

“Whoa. Hey. Uhm. There’s been a bit of a misunderstanding, here...” Deacon said weakly, as Galatea advanced on him.

She stopped immediately and froze where she’d been standing, the tray of grapes outstretched.

“Can you speak?” Deacon asked. She had an articulated mouth - a very articulated mouth, the stonework was intricate and clever - but many golems couldn’t speak.

Galatea did not move.

Deacon tried again in Ephebian, “Can you speak?”

She stood motionless. Deacon rummaged through his luggage, pulled out a blank notebook and a pencil, and he took the tray of grapes from her hand and offered her the notebook and pencil, asking in Ephebian, “Can you write?”

Her fingers deftly closed around the pencil, holding it with great delicacy, and she started to write, a simple word, in what Deacon assumed was Ephebian for, ‘Yes.’ It was a script that wasn’t Morporkian, and he was reading it, so it had to be Ephebian, right?

Damn, he’d read road signs on the way up, too, and he hadn’t even thought about it. It was actually kind of impressive that Zinon could read and write his native language, given that the guy had grown up a poor fisherman’s son.

Snacking on a grape, which was pretty good, Deacon asked, “So… what do you do, Galatea?”

She wrote: My Work Is Whatever You Wish Of Me.

Deacon winced. That was what he’d been afraid of. Discworld had all kinds of gods. There was even a goddess of negotiable affection, and Deacon had seen a statue or two of Petulia on the way up, indicating that the presence of the patron goddess of Seamstresses’ was very much felt in Ephebe. Golems were animated by the holy words of gods and religions. What happened when a golem was animated by Petulia? Deacon didn’t want to think about it.

It was already unethical enough to create a sapient being to work without recompense.

Adora had ranted to Deacon once that perhaps the reason that no more golems were made wasn’t that the gods had judged them abominations. Perhaps the gods had decided that humanity didn’t deserve the golems it already had and, thus, there would be no more.

It was a cute thought, but the gods of the Disc were rat bastards, as far as Deacon could tell. Maybe Whispers was rubbing off on him.

Deacon tended to think that it was just the priests saying that the gods had said no more golems, on account that the priests were annoyed that golems were being used to benefit people who weren’t priests.

He asked, “And what work do people usually wish of you?”

Galatea drew Deacon some pictures.

Deacon looked about his quarters and said, “...yeah, I’m going to have a shower.”

Galatea moved to follow him.

Deacon added hastily, “You stay right here. I’ll be back. We’ll talk.”

As he showered and started to feel human again, Deacon started to think about the shower itself. It had hot and cold knobs, and there was a white marble basin under, so it could also be used as a bath. There was a drain that went down into the floor. The washroom also had a sink with hot and cold knobs, and there was a bidet.

Where was it all draining to? He’d seen an awful lot of fountains.

He pulled on his red pyjamas from his luggage, and then he peeked his head out from the washroom. Galatea was precisely where he’d left her. He sidled over to her and asked, “D’ya like your work?”

She wrote: Golem must work.

He sighed. That was about typical. “Ever wanted to do any other kind of work?”

Sometimes golems did, particularly after they’d been Freed. Plenty of them went into creative fields, like landscaping or hairdressing, as if being denied the ability to procreate led to golems channeling the creative urges that all things had down alternative pathways. Did not Tak write that all things strive?

Or maybe it was ‘wroten’. Deacon was studying up on dwarfs, because he figured he’d have to impersonate one someday, but it was a lot to take in. He hadn’t seen any dwarfs in Ephebe.

Galatea wrote: I Will Do What Is Asked Of Me.

Deacon sighed again. “Okay, so,” he pointed to the pictures she’d drawn, “I’m not going to need any of that. Just call me Mr. Ethically Squeamish.”

She wrote: I Was Informed That You Are Mr. A. Lias.

“Him too,” Deacon said absently, “Might even say that I contain multitudes. But sue me. I just don’t think there’s any ethical labour under capitalism.” He rubbed his chin. “Is this actually capitalism? Whatever.” He waved his hand dismissively.

Ephebe Is A Proud Democracy.

“Can you vote?” Deacon asked. He’d reviewed the notes in the folder Drumknott had given him. He knew the answer.

No. I Am Not A Citizen. I Am Property. I Can Pretend To Vote, If It Would Please You. I Am Experienced With Most ‘Role-Play’ Requests.

Deacon winced, though he hoped Galatea didn’t see. “Right. Democracy. Sure. Look, I’m going to sleep. Now, if you could get me a guard’s uniform…”

He said it flippantly. He didn’t think anything of it. He was asleep as soon as he hit that goose-down-soft ambassadorial bed.

There was a guard’s uniform in just his current size laid out neatly on the table near his bed when Deacon woke to the smell of coffee, bread, fruit, and cold cuts. His breakfast was laid out tidily on a tray that Galatea was holding. He grabbed the cup of coffee, which was thick and black with grounds at the bottom, and as his brain turned on, he realised the mistake that he’d made in making an off-hand sarcastic comment about wanting a guard’s uniform.

Golems were very literal, and Galatea was probably very experienced in removing people’s clothing.

The words spilled out, “I’m sorry,” as he realized his error. “I didn’t mean to ask you to…” Deacon coughed.

Galatea appeared unperturbed.

He went about his morning routine, and he examined his room more carefully. He should have done that sooner, but Deacon had desperately needed to shut off his brain the night before. The room had no windows, but it was well-lit with oil lamps. Olive oil was one of the major products of Ephebe; they had little need for outside fat. There was no obvious way to be able to get into the ceiling or floor. The plumbing remained of particular interest. The walls were sturdy marble and in no part hollow.

But hey, if they wanted to monitor him, they’d put a woman who didn’t sleep in his room.

Deacon asked, “Galatea, can you lie?”

Most golems couldn’t, but this was a different country.

Galatea wrote primly: I Do So Frequently.

She’d mentioned role-play. Bingo.

When Kourtaki came to collect Deacon, he asked pleasantly, “I trust that you found your companionship amenable?”

“How much is she?” Deacon asked.

“She has been arranged for your use as a diplomatic courtesy, but I am, ahem, told that the going rate is three cercs,” said Kourtaki. The Ephebian derechmi matched the Ankh-Morpork dollar one for one, an indication that Ephebe had a strong economy. The derechmi was divided into fifty cercs. Zinon had mentioned, absently, that his family had never actually seen a derechmi, and they were lucky to have the few cercs that they did.

“I mean to buy her outright,” said Deacon, who was perfectly aware that he was giving Kourtaki very strange ideas about Mr. Lias’s proclivities. So Mr. Lias was a depraved foreigner. It was the role.

“Galatea is a priceless piece of Ephebian cultural history!” said Kourtaki, the picture of offended indignation, but Deacon knew that tune.

“How much?”

Kourtaki looked left and right, covered the side of his face with one hand, and whispered, “A thousand derechmi.”

As an agent of the Golem Trust, Deacon was paid about $20 AM a month, his job being considered, hilariously, equivalent to a secretary⁷, but Sly Spune of the Thieves’ Guild and Caspian Charmant of the Gamblers’ Guild had their own incomes… and a thousand derechmi was still a lot of money. Whispers could afford to blow that kind of cash, but Whispers wasn’t most people. No matter. Deacon could improvise. Mr. Lias would be the sort of man who had that sort of cash.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” said Deacon.

⁷ But then, the Patrician had started the trend of referring to one’s spy-assassins as ‘Clerks’.

Kourtaki informed Deacon as they passed through the many gardens that he was taking him to the Tyrant.

“Thought I was going to the Symposium later today?” said Deacon.

Kourtaki favoured him with a pitying smile.

The Tyrant, his information packet told him, was a freeborn Ephebian male, elected for a five year term by the 3% of the population who were allowed to vote. Ephebe as a country had a population of about 10.5 million⁸, of which 80% were slaves⁹. Of the free 20%, women were barred from voting, which chucked another 10% out the window. Then with age limits, the requirement of being Ephebian born, wealth conditions, and certain restrictions relating to physical and mental status, that number dwindled to 3%.

Deacon was definitely going to go poke into this whole slavery business. It was a hot button issue of his. Ephebe was apparently the last known country on the Disc that still practised human slavery, although apparently they didn’t need to practise, because they’d already gotten very good at it over a thousand years ago.

Where Vetinari was a tall, gaunt man who gave the impression of a predatory flamingo - didn’t post-apocalyptic America have some of those, down in the mutated wastelands of Florida? If it didn’t, Deacon was going to claim it did - the Tyrant was short and fat, and he put Deacon in the mind of Humpty-Dumpty. His chair was in the centre of an elegant white marble room and had been made for a man taller than him. He appeared to be drowning under piles of scrolls of parchment.

A century ago, a not-so-different Tyrant had in his audience a very different Deacon, though neither the present Tyrant nor Deacon were aware of this fact.

Kourtaki swept over to his Tyrant and whispered, in Ephebian, “Ankh-Morpork’s delegate is here, sir. He is a foreigner of base but easily satisfied tastes. You will have no trouble with him.”

Deacon thought that was an unfair thing to say about cilantro.

The Tyrant nodded absently to himself as Kourtaki spoke, and then he looked up and said, in Morporkian, “Ah, Mr. A. Lias. The diplomat from Ankh-Morpork. Phyllo and Charybdis spoke most favourably of you.”

Phyllo and Charybdis were the Ephebian ambassadors who’d shown up at the ducal wedding. They had excellent taste in pottery, though Phyllo was kind of a flake, and, if you weren’t careful, Charybdis could really suck a guy in with his blather.

“Have a seat, Mr. Lias, and if I may ask, what does the A. stand for?”

Deacon couldn’t even say where he got it, but the name, “Adrastos,” came to his lips, “sir.”

The Tyrant narrowed his eyes. “And why do you wear sunglasses indoors? You have no lantern; you are not blind.”

That seemed like an odd thing to say, and Deacon resisted the urge to reply with, Why do you build everything out of blinding white marble? Instead, he said, “I’m 1/8th gorgon, and anyone I gaze at comes down with dry, itchy skin, sir.”

The Tyrant nodded gravely. He gestured, “Do be seated. Now, Ankh-Morpork has refused to speak with my beloved country for a century -”

Deacon’s ears would have perked up, if he had been a woodland ungulate with scutellaris and auricle muscle groups capable of rotating his ears. Hadn’t Vetinari said that it was Ephebe that wasn’t talking to Ankh-Morpork?

“- but this is the Century of the Anchovy, and you have travelled far.” He sorted through his scroll pile and pulled one out and examined it. “I’ve finished the treaties that you’ll be agreeing to.”

Deacon blinked. “Wait a minute, I thought we’d be discussing terms at the Symposium! Uh. Sir.”

“Yes, you will go to the Symposium and discuss terms. All they do is discuss,” the Tyrant said dryly. He tapped the scroll. “These are the terms you will agree to. But not now. We’ll take it slowly. Go out. Explore. Discuss. You will only find that which you have brought with you.”

⁸ Ephebe, on the large map included with The Discworld Atlas, appears to be about 150 by 275 miles, or 41,250 square miles. Actual Greece is about 50,949 square miles. During the Archaic Period, the population of Greece hit 10 to 13 million. Starting with the higher end of that estimate because the Discworld seems to be in a time of population growth, and accounting for Ephebe being a little bit smaller, 41,250/50,949*13=10.5 million. Now, these people are spread out all across the country. Ephebe City would be a much smaller city than Ankh-Morpork.

⁹ Assuming four slaves per one free Ephebian yields that percentage of 80%. Some free Ephebians own no slaves. Some own over 50. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece#Demographics]

After another guided trip through the Labyrinth, Deacon was once again outside the Palace and about town. He hardly knew where to start. Investigate the condition of the human Ephebian slaves? Look for more golems? Dig into those Ankh-Morpork arms that had been brought over for sale by the Thesmos? Check out that weird parabolic reflector dish - nah, it probably only had religious significance.

Deacon ended up in a tavern. It all came down to a tavern, in Ephebe and elsewhere. The place was absolutely lousy with philosophers. He couldn’t turn a corner without stumbling over a philosopher. They appeared to live lives of idle contemplation, split between time in barrels and time at the bar.

Who was supporting all that idle contemplation?

It wasn’t yet noon, the sun still rising in the strikingly blue sky, so unlike Ankh-Morpork’s grey clouds, and the philosopher Metaxa was already buying the whole bar a round. He shouted cheerily, “For the Anesthesia!”

Deacon asked the barkeep, in Morporkian, “”What’s the Anesthesia?” He sipped on a glass of retsina, a pine resin wine that had been devised by the Ephebians as an act of passive aggression against invaders. It was almost entirely like turpentine but with lower nutritional value. He was bringing a bottle home for Nick.

The barkeep, who was polishing the bar, also replied in Morporkian, “It’s the beginning of spring, and, more importantly, the maturation of the newest vintage of wine. The three festival days are Pitooie, Chloe, and Pots.”¹⁰

The bar was decorated with spring flowers, Deacon noted, and he’d seen children running about with flowers in their hair.

“It’s a time to praise Tuvelpit and get yourself drunk enough to pass out. Anesthesia,” said the barkeep. “Another retsina?”

¹⁰ Due to either cosmic coincidence or cross-reality leakage, Roundworld has had similar festivals.

Chapter Text

Vending Machine * Bathhouse * Hot Button * Too Big

Deacon evaded getting himself drunk enough to pass out and instead explored more of Ephebe City. He came across a strange machine that felt oddly familiar. It had a glass front and goods in rows and columns, and there was a slot for coins. He fumbled for his wallet and pulled out a few cercs that he’d got at a money exchange in Ankh-Morpork. He put one into the device experimentally, and the coin fell onto a pan that turned a lever, and a clay bottle of water popped out.

Deacon picked up the bottle of water and stared at it, dumb-founded. This was a vending machine! He popped off the cork and started sipping his water as he ambled down the street.

He caught a kid giving him a weird look, and he returned an innocent ‘what’ look. The kid said, “Mister, you know that’s holy water, right?”

Deacon sputtered. Then he went back to drinking it, because it was water he didn’t have to chew, and coming from Ankh-Morpork, that made it a treat.

While Ephebe City was built into cliffs and hills, it was, like Ankh-Morpork, a port city at the mouth of a river. In Ephebe City’s case, it was the River Stiks, which flowed down from the Pyrinakle Mountains of Ur, in the rimwards direction. It was said that drinking the water of the River Stiks led to forgetfulness, because it led to going to the tavern and drinking to get the taste out of your mouth, and one thing led to another…

Deacon walked to the turnwise side of the city to see the River Stiks for himself. Dotted along the river, he could see water wheels, and some poking about taught him that the water wheels ran such things as mills for flour, lumber, paper, textiles, and metal; kneading machines; pottery wheels…

The Ankh couldn’t be used for water wheels, Deacon didn’t think, what with its inimical… texture, but the water wheels seemed a reasonable enough construct here. The power of water turning filled the same role that donkeys or golems would in Ankh-Morpork, and unlike golems, Deacon didn’t have to worry that the water was being mistreated. He assumed that water was into being paddled.

Deacon thought about the plumbing again as he paced along the banks of the river, frowning thoughtfully to himself. So maybe he did need to worry about the water being mistreated. As Deacon walked to where the river met sea, he saw, adjoining the river, a vast cement pipe, dumping out what could be charitably be referred to as ‘water’, albeit of a vastly different character than the river water.

Thanking the Commonwealth and Ankh-Morpork for deadening his nose, Deacon dove in.

Ephebe City had sewers. Not the abandoned, unused sewer networks of Ankh-Morpork, where people had to pay Harry King to take away their refuse lest they end up on the wrong side of a classist law that Deacon didn’t think the Watch really enforced. Real sewers.

When he came up in a pocket of air, under what looked to be a manhole above, filtering faint sunlight down to Deacon around the edges, he laughed to himself, startling some rats. Real sewers!

He could get into - or out of - the Palace.

Deacon spent quality hours puttering around the sewers of Ephebe City. Some of the best times of his life had been spent underground. When he was quite satisfied that he’d mapped out the sewer system sufficiently to be able to get into the Palace, bypassing the Labyrinth, he let the current carry him back out to a different disgorgement site than he’d entered. As he hauled himself out of the river, Deacon shook himself and looked back over his shoulder.

The river had all sorts of ships and boats. They puttered about with sail and oar. Deacon looked again. There was a ship that had sails, yes, but also… sidewheels?¹¹

Deacon scratched his head. It was like a water mill wheel in reverse, the sidewheels pushing the ship faster than the wind could push her sails. White clouds gently trailed the ship.

Steam.

Despite the fact that he was sopping wet and stunk like a sewer, Deacon gestured to the sidewheeler and asked, “So how does that work?”

The great thing was, philosophers loved to talk. The bad thing was that they’d start with the first axiomatic principles. A little old bald man with a long, white beard started, “If one considers the basic principles of thermodynamics…”

A little girl with flowers in her hair said, “It’s just a hybrid steamship, mister. You need a bath.”

‘Just a hybrid steamship’, like it was nothing special to her, and Deacon realized he’d been speaking Ephebian when he’d asked the question and that the philosopher and the girl had answered in kind - and that meant there’d been the word for ‘steamship’ in Zinon’s vocabulary before he left home.

Trains were new in Ankh-Morpork. They’d been around maybe a year, Deacon thought? How long had Ephebe had steamships?

He made his way to a bathhouse. It was an ornate structure, where the open maws of gryphons offered showers and tiers of steps led down to circular pools for lounging. It also offered bathing sands, vapor baths with hot air, and massages with aromatic oils. The bathing attendant suggested, rather pointedly, that perhaps Deacon could do with one of those.

The bathing attendant. Deacon studied her, glimpsing back over his shoulder. She looked like a tired, bored working stiff anywhere, someone who had seen entirely too many unclothèd bottoms and who couldn’t be bothered to care anymore. She could have been a retail worker in Ankh-Morpork, though she was in a chiton, not the haphazard fashions Deacon was more familiar with. He reflected that, Galatea aside, he hadn’t exactly seen any slaves, as far as he knew.

There was no one in chains. He’d never walked by anyone being beaten with a lash. But 80% of the population were supposed to be slaves! Where were they?

As he showered, he overheard her muttering, “One more year. Just one more year, and I’m paid off.”

“Come again?” Deacon prompted.

“One more year, and I’m free,” said the bathing attendant. She handed Deacon a towel. Then she pointed over at another bathing attendant. “Then I’m buying him.”

Deacon’s fingers clutched at the towel, as his eyes widened behind his sunglasses. He needed to do some more walking and talking rather desperately, he saw.

¹¹ Examples from Roundworld are rather more recent than Ancient Greece, but if Ephebe had fast steam a century ago, they could no doubt reproduce something similar.

The Patrician knew slavery was a hot button for Deacon, and he’d pressed it, carelessly, casually, and Deacon had known the Patrician was doing it to him, and he’d let him do it, anyway. He wasn’t going to say that what went on Ephebe wasn’t slavery, because it was, but it wasn’t chattel slavery the way America had done it. It wasn’t like raiders and Caesar's Legion. Deacon was never going to make excuses for slavery, but he needed to know exactly what he was dealing with.

The barkeep at the first bar Deacon had ducked into? Was a slave, he blithely told Deacon, after Deacon gave him a handsome tip. He ran the bar by himself, in charge of three other slaves who served as cook and waitresses, and he sent a fixed tax-payment to his owner on a quarterly basis. He could have paid himself off years ago, but he didn’t want to.

Slaves in Ephebe had specific rights, guaranteed to them since the rule of the long-ago Tyrant So Long¹². They had three meals a day, at least one with meat, one free day a week, and two weeks being-allowed-to-run-away every year. The good master would even pay to have them brought back. A bad master could be prosecuted by any citizen who was of a mind to uphold the social contract. No one could assault a slave without legal repercussions. No slave could be put to death without a trial. They could worship freely. They could, like the barkeep did, hold down their own businesses.

If he paid himself off, the barkeep said, that went away, and for what - the right to vote? The right to own slaves? For the right to starve in poverty if the bar had a bad year? Nah, that wasn’t worth it, not to him.

Folks became slaves three ways. Some were born into it; the barkeep had been. If free Ephebians defaulted on their debts, their creditors became their owners. If free Ephebians committed certain crimes, they could also be enslaved. Long ago, the barkeep said, Ephebians had taken slaves by war, piracy, banditry, and buying them off other countries, but that was long ago. The island of Crinix had been particularly notorious for slaving pirates, but these days, their slaves were all home grown.

They didn’t want foreigners getting in on their choice deal.

Deacon walked away from the bar again in a daze, and he couldn’t tell if it was the retsina or what he’d learned. In Ankh-Morpork, jokes about One Man, One Vote aside, no one had a vote, so did it matter that much that Ephebian slaves didn’t have a vote? It wasn’t like common Ankh-Morporkians had something those Ephebian slaves were missing out on, and Ankh-Morporkian employers didn’t owe their employees meals or weeks off or anything, really. What Ankh-Morporkian employees had, their Guilds had fought for, tooth and nail and nail-embedded-in-board.

In Ephebe, slaves were all around him. Bathing attendants. Barkeeps. Potters at their wheels. Sailors climbing the rigging of hybrid sidewheel steamships plying the River Stiks. Farmers in the fig and olive fields outside the city. Deacon couldn’t say their lives were any worse than the working poor of Ankh-Morpork, and in some ways, their lives might have been a damn sight better. Fucking Vetinari, why wasn’t that in the manila folder that Drumknott had given Deacon!?

He knew why.

Head and heart hurting, Deacon went back to the Palace and his room, ignoring the tray of peeled grapes that Galatea offered him, and he collapsed on his bed.

¹² So Long ago...

Deacon was awoken by Galatea lightly poking at him. She had written: It Is Time For Your Appointment.

He hadn’t meant to nap that long; the afternoon was gone. Deacon put on some clothing that was more diplomatic than red pyjamas, and he headed out - pneumatic sliding door? Why hadn’t he noticed the pneumatic sliding door earlier? What else was he missing?

Deacon took a step back, looking at his room again critically, as he rubbed the bleariness out of his eyes. He was missing things because he wasn’t expecting to see them. He paused a moment, looking at the floor. It was warm, and it warmed the whole room. He hadn’t noticed that, and he asked Galatea, “Why’s the floor warm?”

Central Heating. Flues Planted In The Ground Circulate Heat Generated By Fire. Spring Days Can Be Cold.

Deacon had to stop thinking of Ephebe as just another old-timey fantasy land. So they had donkeys carrying goods up the streets. They also had pneumatic sliding doors and central heating! So maybe it wasn’t pre-War tech or Institute tech, but it was definitely technology that had gone a different way than Ankh-Morpork had.

Kourtaki was waiting outside for Deacon, and he took him to the Symposium, where the greatest minds of Ephebe met for knife-and-fork-tea and to listen to themselves talk.

Attiki, a little bald storyteller with a long white beard, was telling the story of - “- so our dear Tyrant knew that the Omnian delegation was up to no good, a rat load of ingrates, they were -” - some old conflict.

Deacon did spy Phyllo and Charybdis. He didn’t spy any women who weren’t waiting on the feast tables, and the only people sitting at the table were men of Ephebian birth, mostly older men, too. Gorgons and furies were native to Ephebe, but he hadn’t seen one yet. Deacon sidled over to Phyllo and Charybdis, and he sat down next to Charybdis, who had a way for drawing a guy in. In his accented Morporkian, Charybdis exclaimed, “Mr. Lias! You made it! Oh, I want to introduce you to Apelia. Apelia, come over here!”

Suddenly, there was another bald, bearded man on Deacon’s other side. He must have been Apelia. “Mr. Lias! Kourtaki said that you said that you’re 1/8th gorgon? You know I’d love to look at your eyes -”

-

“Nnoot a good idea,” said Deacon, leaning the other way until he bumped into Charybdis.

Apelia pulled out a pair of thick glasses. “Nonsense. I’ve designed prism glasses. They refract the light, and I’m sure they’d protect me from gorgons, because light that’s been refracted is hardly the same light anymore. Of course, they could be used to treat diseases of the eye, like the stravismós? But that’s hardly important. What’s important is that I could finally look upon Steno and she upon me.” He sighed heavily.

“Apelia’s mad about gorgons,” said Charybdis, plucking up a wriggling tentacle from the vast feast laid out before them and eating it delicately.

“They’re the perfect women! No hair,” said Apelia wistfully.

“You could just buy your woman a shaver,” said Phyllo.

“No, those Ankh-Morpork imp devices are rubbish. Not like good old clockwork,” Apelia said firmly.

Deacon rubbed his bald head. He wasn’t wearing a wig right now. He wanted to blend in. He murmured, “How do you think I get my head so shiny and bald?”

Apelia looked at Deacon appraisingly, “Oh yes, you are quite bald…”

“Mr. Lias, try the fetid cheese,” said Charybdis.

Every culture had its little pranks on visitors, and as soon as the cheese hit his tongue, Deacon felt that he was eating one of them.

People were noticing him. A more important philosopher, to judge by the shininess of his head and the length of his white beard, boomed, “You must be Mr. Lias, the Ankh-Morpork diplomat! Now we must discuss -”

“Slavery? The treatment of women? Nonhuman rights?” Deacon suggested flippantly.

“- no, the return of our marbles,” the man concluded.

Deacon stared.

The vast hall fell to silence.

The man shook an accusing finger at Deacon. “You know what your forefathers did!”

“I genuinely don't,” said Deacon, who didn’t have forefathers. He didn’t even have one father. “Clue me in.”

“When our library was burnt by the Omnians, you Ankh-Morpork trespassers stole our marbles! They are of great historical value to us! And you let them languish in the basement of your so-called Royal Art Museum. Hah, royalism! You may have chopped off the head of your king, but you still lick his boots,” the man ranted.

“Oh. I see,” said Deacon, drumming his fingers on the table. “We’ll give them back, then.”

The man stopped cold. “You will?”

“Sure,” said Deacon. If he couldn’t talk Vetinari into talking the Royal Art Museum into it, he’d just break in and steal them himself. Maybe some of his street kid pals would want to help. Maybe Whispers would get mad, but that was Whispers’s problem.

“Really?”

“Swear?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” The man looked a little embarrassed. “Well, I think Calliga wanted to discuss the applications of surface condensers…”

The crowd went off in that direction for a while. Deacon mingled, trying to find smaller groups that he could actually talk to. “So, y’ever thought about not having slaves?”

“You ever think about not using knife and fork?” said Aris, another philosopher.

“Sure. Tacos,” said Deacon.

Aris gave him a grey look. “I mean, slaves are one of the tools that make civilisation work.”

“Nah,” Deacon said.

Aris’s grey look on a blue hue. “Unless we brought back the constructs of Neoldian¹³, as they were in the Golden Age, and looms would weave on their own and music play itself and pots form on the wheel untouched by human hand, there will always be slaves. Call them what you want, Mr. Lias.”

Deacon thought about Adora talking about Ur, how golems had catered to the every want and need of their human masters. He thought about the Institute’s goals. He thought about Galatea, who was probably still standing where he’d left her in his quarters. “So, if you had more golems, you’d free the slave class?”

And replace it with a different one.

“It’s only a hypothetical,” Aris said loftily. “The gods won’t allow more golems to be made.”

“No, it’s only a hypothetical,” cut in Polydeukes, “because we’ve tried to free the slaves before, and they won’t have it. Lazy sots like having three meals a day and two weeks running-away.”

“Have you considered assuring free citizens of three meals a day and two weeks running-away, too?” Deacon asked lightly. God, why couldn’t they just call vacation time what it was?

Polydeukes looked at Deacon like he was mad. “Next you’ll be saying an education ought to be free, too?”

“Sure.” Deacon shrugged.

Polydeukes threw back his head and laughed. “Oh Mr. Lias, you’re so funny!”

“I’m a card,” said Deacon glumly. “So why’s the Symposium a sausage fest? I mean, no women…” Aside from the omnipresent but unnoticed waitresses who made sure the supply of thick, salty wine, peeled grapes, fetid cheese, and tentacle-things never ran low.

He knew why. He just wanted to hear the answer.

Aris chortled, “You’re a whole deck, Mr. Lias! Everyone knows their brains would overheat. They’re much too delicate for the heavy work of thinking.”

Deacon had seen women hauling 60 gallon wine jugs on their heads up inclines that a goat wouldn’t touch. “Uh… huh. And I hear you get gorgons and furies out here?”

“In the foothill of the Pyrinankles,” said Aris dismissively. “Nuisances, the lot of them, furies on the rocky outcrops and gorgons living in the caves, harassing our quarrymen and miners. They’re brazen, these days. Sometimes, you’ll get gorgons in the cities on market days, but they’ve got to wear headscarves and sunglasses, and then you get tits like Apelia chasing them.”

Deacon sighed. He thought about the goals outlined in the manila folder. “Y’know, I really appreciate how warmly Ephebe has welcomed the clacks system.”

“It’s not that much different from the old hydraulic telegraph system,”¹⁴ said Aris.

“The hydraulic telegraph was extremely limited in the messages that it could send!” Polydeukes argued.

“The what,” said Deacon.

“Oh, it’s old rubbish,” Polydeukes dismissed. “Limited to line of sight by an observer.”

“But it had its charms,” sighed Aris, “You know, you have an, ahem, vertical rod floating in a container on a hill, and the same thing set up on another hill. You light a torch, the receiving operator lights a torch to let you know he’s synchronized, and then you both open the spigots at the bottom of your containers. You let water drain out until you hit the desired code inscribed on your, ahem, vertical rod, and you douse your torch, and he checks what code his is showing. It was all right for simple things, like ‘Calvary arrived in the country’ or ‘Out of wine’”.

Deacon nodded along. “Sooo… can you stop arguing about where the clacks towers ought to go?”

The Grand Trunk had been complaining to Vetinari that they were making next to no progress in Ephebe, because as soon as they’d have a tower set up, with lovely Ironic columns of white marble, some cad in a white toga would say it’d be better if only it were a bit to the left, if one really considered the geometry of it all, and then the slave labour would start taking the whole thing down, and they’d have to start over from first principles again.

Aris replied immediately, “No.”

In a rare moment, Polydeukes agreed, “Absolutely not.”

“Right…” Deacon said reluctantly. “Okay, slavery, rights of women, rights of nonhumans, the clacks system… oh! The ontological guerillas. Don’t suppose you could come out with a statement condemning them?”

“They don’t exist,” said Aris, matter-of-fact, “They’ll tell you that themselves.”¹⁵

Deacon picked up his cup of thick, salty wine and drained it. Then he grabbed a shot of ouzo and did that, too.

Polydeukes snapped his fingers. “You know, you could do something about all this tourism business. Oh, certainly, it brings in money, but it’s a terrible bother. Why, philosophers have been banned from Papylos to make it a philosopher-free zone for the tourists! I was born there! Well. Conceived. Definitely conceived.”

“You don’t say,” Deacon said wryly.

¹³ Also known as Dennis, Janitor and General Handyman at Dunmanifestin.

¹⁴ Limited, but still interesting.

¹⁵ Ephebian ontological guerillas, a vicious band of terrorist philosophers trying to spread their doctrine that our existence is purely an abstract experience mediated by our limited sensory experience which cannot be relied upon to provide accurate perspectives or any true reality should one exist.

“It’s too big,” Deacon said to Galatea, after he’d returned to his quarters and flopped out on his nice, warm bed. He was drunker than he wanted to be.

Many Men Say That. It Is Seldom True.

“No, I mean… I’m just some stranger. I can’t fix anything. Is it messed up that you call this place a democracy and only 3% of the people can vote? Yeah. But if the masses want the vote, they’re going to have to take it for themselves, if and when they decide they want it. Is slavery messed up? Abso-freaking-lutely. Rights for women? Right for nonhumans? Do something about dickering about clacks placement? Stop the ontological guerillas? Send the tourists back home? I can’t do jack about anything.”

At the mention of ‘jack’, Galatea started writing…

Deacon craned his head to look at what she was writing. “Well, okay, I can do that, but I’m not going to, and no, I don’t need help with that.” What could he do? He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, trying to will away his growing headache. “Just tell me how to get to a casino.”

The next morning, after he’d drunk his coffee, grinds and all, and ate his breakfast and dressed for the day, Deacon handed Kourtaki a big sack of derechmi. “A thousand. Count ‘em.”

Kourtaki blinked, and he did. Faintly, he said, “Everything seems to be in order, ah, Mr. Lias. Well, well, well, aren’t you a… connoisseur of fine marble.”

“Absolutely. Can I get a receipt?” said Deacon.

“Galatea is, ah, government property, but I’m sure that I can write her off as surplus,” said Kourtaki, who took Deacon to his own little office in the Palace and wrote up Deacon a neat receipt on a scroll.

In Ephebian. Interestingly, Kourtaki had written that Deacon had paid 800 derechmi for Galatea, not 1000. Deacon bet that spare 200 was going right in Kourtaki’s pocket.

Pretending not to be able to read it - he’d only ever used Morporkian for ‘official business’, and he didn’t want to tip his hand too soon - Deacon asked, “Can I get a copy in Morporkian, too? The customs Watchmen will want to see it.”

Deacon swore that Ankh-Morpork only bothered with customs because Whispers wanted his men to stay awake, though maybe he was doing something with all that information he was collecting. Whispers had hidden depths, like a sewer system.

Kourtaki wrote one out for Deacon in Morporkian, with the number being 1000. Slimy bastard. Deacon knew the type.

He didn’t have any appointments until late in the day, so Deacon took the scrolls and went back to his quarters and Galatea.

She looked at the receipts in his hands and wrote: I Have Not Had A Private Owner For Centuries.

“Yeah, well, you won’t have one long, if I have any say in it,” Deacon muttered, “Sorry if this is too personal a question, but do you have a chem?”

The Transformation of Ephebe: Painted Golems and the Creation of Classical Ephebe said that there were three main styles of Ephebian golems: white marble with articulated joints, like Galatea; metal golems, often golden, called kourai khryseai; and more familiar pottery golems, who were subdivided into black figure, red figure, and white ground, based off how they were painted. What it didn’t say was if Ephebian golems had chems. Robin Graves hadn’t gotten close enough to an active Ephebian golem to check, basing much of the research of the book off metal shrapnel and potsherds from destroyed golems found at dig sites.

Galatea knelt before him and opened her head.

Deacon had a look, and he felt like he had to scrub his brain.

He was never sure if golems with their heads open could hear - that was something he ought to ask Klug, he decided - but he explained aloud, anyway, “So, uh, no idea if this is going to work, but in Ankh-Morpork, if you put a golem’s receipt in their head, they’re Free, so… here goes nothing.”

He took the Ephebian receipt, folded up the scroll, and fit it in her head. Then he closed her head.

Her carefully articulated hands clutched at her temples, and she jerkily rose into a standing position and tipped back her head, mouth open in a silent scream. Then her furnace-red eyes locked on Deacon, who took a few paces back and found himself up against a marble wall. She clutched up the notebook and wrote, underlining it: Golem Must Work.

Deacon put up his hands, “And hey, it’s cool! We’ll get you a job. Whatever you want!”

Galatea looked at Deacon. I Will Work For You. Until My Price Is Repaid.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, so… diplomatic negotiations are going… okay? I’m pretty sure the Tyrant’s gonna let Ankh-Morpork have an embassy here.” He had no idea if the Tyrant would let Ankh-Morpork set up an embassy. “So I’ll need embassy staff, right? And first, I’ve got to get a site, so if you could maybe go price some places… well, okay, actually, before we do, let’s get you some clothes.”

Galatea wrote: I Have A Selection Of Outfits. Some Clients Find It Very Naughty To See A Clothed Golem.

Deacon closed his eyes, unwillingly thinking about troll strip clubs. “I bet they do.”

I Could Dress Up Like The Tyrant, If You Like. Clients Say, If They’re Going To Get Screwed By A Politician -

“Let’s not do that outfit.”

Chapter Text

Something Goes Wrong * A Sight * Embassy

Deacon couldn’t fix Ephebe. He was just one man, on one diplomatic visit. Ephebe would have to fix Ephebe. But he could free some golems, and he could set up an embassy for Ankh-Morpork.

Mr. Lias was definitely a crazy foreigner, based off the way that the shop clerk reacted when Mr. Lias bought his personal golem a fashionable and, more importantly, concealing chiton. The streets were lined with statues. A golem was just a statue that moved. What did a golem need clothes for?

Because I feel like I need to wash out my brain like it’s laundry day after a sewer dive, and this makes me feel better, and Galatea doesn’t mind.

As they walked away from the clothing store, Deacon asked, “So what’s your deal, anyway? Your story.”

It Was Said That There Was a King, Long Before Democracy, Who Was Also a Sculptor, Who Sculpted a Statue So Beautiful That Petulia Took Pity Upon Him And Granted Him a Wife.

“Uh huh. Petulia. A goddess taking pity? Giving a man a wife? Try the other one,” said Deacon.

It Was Said That In The Sacred Temples of Petulia, There Were A Thousand Holy Priestesses Who Could Make Men Worship Upon Their Knees.

“I don’t doubt that,” Deacon said mildly.

It Was Said That The Cult Image Of Petulia of Knee-Dose Was So Beautiful That Lucky Of Samosa Arranged To Be Shut In With It Overnight.

As Galatea gave him a series of stories, Deacon reflected that he probably deserved this.

Lucky Of Samosa Paid A Derechmi And A Half. That Was A Lot Of Money At The Time.

Deacon let out a low whistle. “Hell, it’s a lot of money now,” thinking about how Kourtaki had said Galatea’s going rate was three cercs these days. How depreciation came for them all. “Are there more of you? I mean, your style of golem?”

Galatea gestured that he should follow, and they went on a hike to the city outskirts and beyond. Ephebe City was one of those cities that, like Ankh-Morpork, was built upon itself, and you couldn’t walk ten steps without finding some ruin of extreme historical significance. The place where Galatea finally paused, though, looked like a rubbish dumping ground. She sorted absently through potsherds and broken wine barrels until she pulled out half a shattered marble head.

Deacon winced. He blurted, “I’m sorry. I… I mean, any others who might be... functional?”

The Temple Of Petulia Of Knee-Dose Was Destroyed In -146 UC By Your Calendar.

Over two thousand years ago, if she wasn’t pulling his leg. “Any other golems around here?”

I Don’t Get Out Much.

“Right, so… let’s go price real estate.”

Deacon returned for his dinner meeting, which was with some council of merchants, fishers, and farmers, who mainly wanted to discuss strengthening trade ties with Ankh-Morpork, by which they meant they wanted to sell more product at a higher markup. Phyllo and Charybdis had also shown up, possibly because it was a dinner meeting, or possibly this was just how diplomacy worked. Deacon didn’t know. He was making it up as he went.

“How do you know Vimes the Butcher, anyway?” asked Charybdis, cheerily.

Deacon was always down to hear dirt about his best friend, but Mr. Lias was a member of the Ankh-Morpork Diplomatic Corps, which meant that he was probably a toff, albeit a toff who was unusually open about his strange tastes. If the aristocracy had one child for a heir, one for the church, and one for the military, then they’d start looking to shove a fourth child in the Diplomatic Corps. How did Mr. Lias know Vimes the… Butcher? Did Mr. Lias have to know Vimes? Deacon lied, “I went to Hugglestones with one of the nephews of Her Grace, Lady Sybil. So why do you call Vimes that?”

“Everyone knows what Vimes the Butcher did to Borogravia!” Phyllo scolded.

“And what he did to the Istanzian ambassador,” added Charybdis.

“And Prince Cadram of the Seriphate of Klatch - I don’t think they ever found the body, there…”

“And Koom Valley.”

“And Bonk.”

“And -”

“Oh yeah, I know all that,” lied Deacon, who didn’t know any of it, but who figured Mr. Lias would. “Vimes the Butcher. Right.” Boy, he needed to have a word with Whispers about his PR, didn’t he?

One of the representatives of Ephebian farming interests gestured to the dinner laid out before them and said, “We have made for you ‘turnip chips’. It is our wish that you will enjoy this traditional Ankh-Morporkian dish.”

What other countries thought Ankh-Morporkians ate was a trip, Deacon was learning, but shit, it was probably better than actual Ankh-Morporkian food. Deacon dug in.

“We can probably sell him common pandoras; he doesn’t know anything about fish,” asided one of the fishery representatives to another, in Ephebian.

Deacon wouldn’t say he knew nothing about fish. He liked fish, and shopping from Verity Pushpram was an education in and of itself. The common pandora was cheap for a reason: it was a boney little fish, a sort of porgy. He was playing the dumb Ankh-Morporkian, though. As if he hadn’t heard the aside, he said, “Y’know, these turnips are just like Gramma Lias…’s, er, chef used to make.”

In Ephebian.

People who had not hitherto been paying attention to Deacon were suddenly paying close attention to him.

Behind his shades, Deacon blinked.

Charybdis said faintly, “Mr. Lias, I didn’t realize that you spoke Ephebian.”

“Uh, yeah, we have that language requirement at Hugglestones,” said Deacon in Ephebian. Something had gone terribly wrong; the English/Morporkian words were all gone from his brain. Dammit, he was even thinking in Ephebian! He had known that taking DiMA up on his offer was reckless, but he’d let himself get talked into it, anyway. He considered what he could do to get DiMA back. Deacon didn’t even think he could prank DiMA; he suspected the strange synth wouldn’t react enough to be worth the effort that pranking him would take.

The fishery representatives were giving Deacon a very odd look. Shit shit shit! Hadn’t Zinon been a fisherman’s son? Just what did Deacon’s Ephebian accent sound like? Desperately trying to play it cool, Deacon waved a hand dismissively and said smoothly, “So… Fig prices. How about we talk about that?”

Back at his room, Galatea was studiously writing out notes on the real estate market. She was taking her apparent new role as diplomatic attaché to Mr. Lias very seriously. Golems did everything very seriously. Even when ol’ Klug, the Golem who typically worked the desk of the Trust back in Ankh-Morpork, tried to practice his jokes, he did so seriously.

Deacon paced the room and pulled out the manila folder and tried to read Drumknott’s informational packet. He couldn’t even make sense of the letters, he realized, with growing panic. He took a deep breath, because otherwise, he’d be hyperventilating, and Deacon admitted, “Something went wrong with my brain, and I don’t know Morporkian anymore.”

Which Gods Have You Offended Most Recently?

Deacon crossed his arms and sulked, “Why are you assuming I’ve offended a god?”

Galatea gave him a level look.

He ran a hand over the short ginger beard that he’d been able to grow out so far, and he said, “Ugh, you think it’s that?”

The Gods Strike Men Down For Their Hubris.

“That’s a thought… but I’m just gonna blame this guy I know instead,” said Deacon. “Okay, there’s the one operational clacks tower in Ephebe City, and it signals over to New Djeli, and it signals to Al Khali, which signals to Gebra, which signals to Ankh-Morpork, so if I try to get a message back to him, there’s… seven people it’s got to go through?” Deacon bit his fingernails. “How do I write him a message that’ll make sense to him but no one else along the line…”

Why Not Put It In Ancient Ephebian?

“Uh, ‘cos I don’t know Ancient Ephebian? I mean, that’d be nifty if I did, I bet there aren’t many random clacks operators who can read Ancient Ephebian, but -” Deacon rambled.

You Have Been Reading The Ancient Ephebian That I Write Perfectly Well.

“I what,” said Deacon. He stared down at Galatea’s writing. It… wasn’t at all the same writing on the street signs or the receipt that Kourtaki had written for him or the tavern menus… Galatea was over two thousand years old, wasn’t she? Of course she knew Ancient Ephebian. She was Ancient Ephebian! “Why the hell did you think I’d be able to read Ancient Ephebian?”

Many Men Of Your Station Study The Classics.

Zinon was a wizard, and that meant he was a nerd. So he was practically obligated to know a dead language or two, wasn’t he? So what, DiMA had just copied that over, too? “Why do you assume the guy I’m pissed at can read Ancient Ephebian?”

Well, Zinon could translate it for DiMA, so if Deacon could get out of the Palace and get to the clacks tower, he could get a message off, but it was long past four, which limited his options.

It Was Just A Suggestion.

Deacon let out a big sigh. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s a good suggestion. I’ll be back.”

By night, Deacon wandered out to one of the copses of pine trees in the many gardens of the Palace, and he changed into the guard’s uniform that Galatea had obtained for him, bronze mask and all. Then he wandered over to a restricted spiral set of stairs and walked up to the forbidden third floor and past those crossbowmen with the terribly interesting chain drive crossbows. Walking like he was supposed to be there, he walked into the area that would be directly over the Labyrinth, and he observed that there were, indeed, windows in the floor where the guards could watch people travelling through the maze, if there was anyone in the maze at this hour. All he had to do was look both confident and in need of a smoke break, and no one bothered him.

Deacon made it up to the roof. He looked down at the outside below. It was awfully far away, and his fear of heights was catching up with him. He should have taken the sewer, but he was trying to cut down on how much he was dumping horrible laundry on poor slaves. Deacon prowled the roof, trying to find an unobstructive spot to jump down the sheer marble wall. Then he took a leap of faith.

He landed on a fruit cart. There was always a handy fruit cart around to break a fall, in this sort of scenario. Deacon rolled off, figs spilling all around him. The irate fruit vendor demanded, “Who is your captain? I shall report you to him at once!”

Deacon lied, “Captain Triórkhês,” and he ran for it.

He made it to the one operational clacks tower in Ephebe City, posted his message, and then he had to wait. Light on Discworld didn’t seem like light in the Commonwealth. It wasn’t as fast? If he was lucky, his message would get to Ankh-Morpork in two hours. Now he had time to kill.

Deacon changed into something a bit less obtrusive than a guard’s uniform and went nosing around for those Ankh-Morporkian merchants who were selling arms. Why were they selling arms? Sure, Burleigh & Stronginthearm made nice crossbows if you had the cash, but the Ephebian guards were wandering around with freaking chain drive weapons! Who was buying?

His digging took him to a warehouse down near the docks, where the crates of arms were being loaded onto a ship with new labels that said they were bound for New Djeli. This ship got his attention. It had no sails. It would have been one thing if it had oars, but no, it didn’t have those, either.

It had a paddlewheel¹⁶, and steam rose gently from its smokestacks. The little girl had called the river-going vessel he’d seen a ‘hybrid steamship’. So here was the purebred? Something tickled at the back of his brain. Those philosophers talking about surface condensers…

He slunk over to a sailor and offered him a cigarette, then said in a friendly tone, “Bound for New Djeli, huh?”

The sailor took the cigarette and said, “Sure, sure. Queen Ptraci’s got a mad on for Ankh-Morpork junk. Wants to be ‘modern’.”

“Seems to me, what we’ve got here is way more modern,” said Deacon.

“Course it is, ain’t no one who prototypes like our engineers¹⁷,” said the sailor, with some pride, “but it’d be stupid to sell our best to our neighbours. Might as well give ‘em a parabolic reflector while we’re at it. Nope, best to pawn off Ankh-Morpork rubbish and make some coin in the process.”

Okay, now Deacon had to check that out. He nodded to the sailor and headed off, finding the tall tower with the dish atop it. The base of the tower was mounted on a geared swivel, and the angle of the dish appeared to be controlled by more gearing. A guard stood at the base, bored and smoking. When he saw Deacon approaching, he said, “Shove off.”

Deacon put up his hands. “I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

“Oh, did the village boy’s fishing boat get caught in the crossfire?” the guard snapped, clearly annoyed.

Deacon sniffled, “When we lost the boat, we had to sell my old granny into slavery.”

“Then it wasn’t all bad,” said the guard, philosophically.

So the fuss was true. Ephebe City had a parabolic reflector dish to set boats on fire. What even was this place?

¹⁶ Some examples of purebred paddle steamers.

¹⁷ Thankfully.

Hex pirated off the clacks network. He plucked the message for Zinon out of the night sky and rendered it dutifully for its intended recipient, who was still awake and only on his third cup of coffee for the day. Zinon, who’d been examining the storage capacity of djinni as opposed to imps, read it and then waved over DiMA. Zinon grinned unpleasantly and said, “Looks like you bolloxed up your friend’s brain.”

DiMA covered his mouth and murmured, “Oh dear.” He went and found Igor, who was asleep in his dormitory.

He relayed the message to Igor, who speculated aloud, “Brains can get… malleable, if you work them too much. You don’t think he ate any turnip, do you?”

“I am not an expert on Deacon’s culinary habits,” DiMA admitted.

The return message went quicker than the one Deacon had sent, though Deacon didn’t know it; he only knew the round trip time. Hex tended to use priority codes for his missives. The reply was: DID YOU EAT ANY TURNIP?

Deacon glared sullenly at the message, paid for a reply, and went back to the Palace to get some sleep.

The next morning, Deacon collected the reply. Igor thought that, in consuming turnip so soon after the language transfer via turnip, that some of the sulphur chemicals in the turnip had reset part of Deacon’s brain. He cautioned that it would be best for Deacon to avoid turnip entirely until he returned to Ankh-Morpork. Then Igor and DiMA could have a rummage about Deacon’s brain and see what the matter was.

Deacon was so looking forward to that.

He took Galatea out embassy-hunting again. Deacon had no idea what his budget was, which was fun. Maybe Drumknott had given him a price range, but he couldn’t even read his official paperwork anymore! Surreptitiously, he also tried to look for golems. Water wheels were all over the place, and they replaced a lot of what golems did in Ankh-Morpork, but he knew that golems still ought to be found in businesses with particularly hot materials and poisons and bad smells…

Deacon found a rolling mill, where iron plates were shaped between paired rollers to assure uniformity of thickness. He wondered what they were doing with all that iron plate, but he was more interested in the two kourai khryseai, the golden golems who were at work in the mill alongside the mill-slaves. They appeared to have originally been sculpted as beautiful golden naked women, and they were still beautiful, in their way, but now, they were dented and scratched and had splatters of slag of different metal adhered to their shells. Along with their beauty and grace, they were as strong as any golems, and they slung metal plates with ease.

He found the mill manager, and he asked breezily, “So how much are they?”

The manager looked at Galatea following behind Deacon and snorted. “Kourai khryseai, the work of Neoldian hisself, high in Cori Celesti? Ain’t parting with ‘em. They work day and night, they don’t eat, and all they take off is a holy day, here, and there. None of this two weeks running-away.”

Deacon sighed. Some folks just wouldn’t sell their golems. The golems of the Trust were patient. Owners died. Golems changed hands. Eventually, someone would sell. Golems could afford to be that patient. They lived until they were destroyed. Deacon didn’t have that kind of lifespan.

“I’m not selling any of the slaves, either. Got too many big orders on iron plate to be short staffed, anyway,” the manager added.

“Yeah?” Deacon prompted. Maybe he could get something out of this, even if he couldn’t Free the pair of kourai khryseai.

The manager waved it off. “One of those engineering experiments they’re always doing.”

They passed by the sea again on the way back, and looking out, Deacon saw another steamship. Now that he was looking for them, he saw them everywhere, and no two were the same. This one, instead of a paddlewheel, appeared to have a screw propeller.¹⁸

Ain’t no one who prototypes like our engineers.

¹⁸ We view them as newer, but they go back some way, too.

Deacon was reviewing their short list of embassy sites with Galatea, when Phyllo and Charybdis came by and knocked on his door. Charybdis enthused, “Have we got a sight for you to see!”

Deacon narrowed his eyes. “Is it a statue of a naked women? Because I’m honestly overdosed on those.”

“Nnnoo. Well, okay, there’s a statue of a naked woman involved, but that’s not actually the point this time,” said Charybdis, grabbing Deacon by the arm and dragging him off.

They took Deacon to one of the taller buildings in the city, where they assured him that they’d have an excellent view of the harbour. Deacon didn’t want an excellent view of the harbour from a great height. That was the precise opposite of what he wanted. He felt exposed.

Phyllo uncorked his amphora of wine, took a swig, and passed it to Deacon, who drank glumly. “What are we looking for?”

“There’s going to be an engineering demonstration,” Charybdis said excitedly, and he took the amphora off Deacon’s hands.

Deacon’s gaze swept nervously across the city, as he looked at rooftops, trying to see where a crossbowman would stand to have a line of sight on them. If I were a sniper, I'd be... there... or there. Or even there! Isn't this fun? His gaze drifted over to the parabolic reflector, which gave him the creeps. Now it was moving, reflecting the sun’s light, and the blazing beam swept out to sea.

A little steam tug was towing behind her a rather battered old vessel. Phyllo pointed at it, “Right, that’s the Thysía, she’s been decommissioned, but she’ll have a hero’s send-off.”

“What’s the experiment?” Deacon asked, shifting, uncomfortably.

At that point, from far widdershins, something twice as fast as any three-mast clipper that Deacon had ever seen came barreling over the waves. She was sleek. She gleamed, like metal. The parabolic reflector swept over to poor old Thysía, who caught ablaze.

“That’s the Stróvilia!” Charybdis said excitedly, gesturing wildly at the rapidly-approaching vessel.

Stróvilia? That meant what… turbidity?

As flames licked over the Thysía, the Stróvilia ran her clean through and left two smouldering wooden half-wrecks behind her, sinking in the waves as the tug cut the tow. The Stróvilia sped on, unscathed.

Phyllo and Charybdis then ran down to the docks, and Deacon followed in a daze. The Stróvilia made several cheeky passes, putting on a show, and eventually came to dock.

She was iron, gleaming under the blue sky, not flammable wood, with an incidental statue of a naked woman at the prow, almost as an afterthought. Any wooden vessel that came to Ephebian waters had to worry about the god damn parabolic reflector, but not Stróvilia, who was free to ram clean through enemy vessels with impunity. Maybe the ship was a lady, but Deacon had a look around the aft, anyway. The screw propeller that he’d seen hadn’t been nearly as fast, and there was no way she was a paddle wheel.

He saw turbines. Stróvilia. Turbinia.

Deacon sat down on the floor of the Tyrant’s office and admitted, defeated, “Yeah, I’m just going to sign whatever you wrote up.” Then it would be Vetinari’s problem, and Deacon would go home and hug all of his friends and maybe even a street kid who didn’t look particularly inclined to shank him.

Ephebe was a bloody Pandora’s box nightmare of philosophers deriving first principles and then engineers putting them in action. They made ridiculous prototypes without stopping to ask if they should. This would have probably been fine, but Deacon knew that Ankh-Morpork took, okay, stole designs from other places, knocked them off, refined them, and mass-produced them, and that was the problem. When people got their hands on technology that outstripped their ethics, that was how you got the War. That was how you got the Brotherhood of Steel, who ironically were the thing they pretended to want to prevent. That was how you got the Institute.

Deacon couldn’t do a damn thing about any of it but drink some retsina.

The Tyrant smiled benignly at Deacon, like the reflected rays of the sun. He unrolled the scroll that he’d gestured with earlier. The Tyrant glanced over it and summarized, “You’re going to place punitively high tariffs on manufactured goods. We shall be very offended by this and refuse to sell you any.”

“I am?” Deacon said weakly. The Patrician wasn’t a fan of tariffs, but Ankh-Morpork manufacturers would view these as protection, and maybe it would delay Deacon’s horrible visions of an Ankh-Morpork merchant-marine navy spreading economic domination across the Disc to an unspecified time in the future. Vetinari would have to understand.

The Tyrant continued smoothly, “You already have, in fact. However, you will also offer very favourable terms on the import of figs, olives, grapes, wine, and seafood.”

Deacon sighed. “Sure.”

“You will return the marbles.”

Deacon snapped his fingers. “Already agreed to that.”

“I know. We will, of course, provide the transport for them.”

Deacon frowned and tilted his head. “Okay?”

“And I shall allow Ankh-Morpork to establish a formal embassy, so that our nations may share a more fluid discourse. Ankh-Morpork will, of course, return the favour.”

“Good talk,” said Deacon, and he signed the scroll Adrastos Lias, Ankh-Morpork Diplomatic Corps. The scroll was written in Ephebian. He understood every word.

The Tyrant hesitated and then commented, “By the way, were you going for a fisherman’s accent? Because that’s what you’ve got.”

Deacon clacksed a copy of the scroll back to Ankh-Morpork for the Patrician to review and, realising that he might not be able to read the damn reply, he sent another message to Unseen University, asking if there was any kind of stop gap they could give him.

Then he and Galatea went out to buy an embassy. The site they’d settled on was just the basement of a temple. It was homey for Galatea, and Deacon had always liked the underground.

As they examined the new space, Deacon explained, “So, you’ll run the embassy here. Ankh-Morpork will be sending other diplomats over. They’ll probably be brainless toffs, but if not, they’re probably Assassins, who… still might be brainless toffs, but with more knives. Feel free to… steer them.” If anyone was in a position to understand the issues that the poor, the women, and the nonhumans of Ephebe faced, it was Galatea. “I want you to understand, you don’t have to do anything they ask you to, if you don’t feel comfortable with it.”

You Disapprove Of What I Do.

Deacon shook his head. “I don’t disapprove of what you do. I disapprove that you were made to do it. I just think you should have had a choice in the whole matter. Anyway, so… you’ve got blackmail on a whole bunch of politicians, don’t you?”

Yes.

Deacon grinned. “You’re going to be great at this. You can clacks me at the Golem Trust if you ever need anything.”

Chapter Text

A Paranoid Part * Listener * Plausible Deniability

A paranoid part of Deacon wondered if the Patrician and the Tyrant had already hashed out terms together and if the Patrician had just sent Deacon down here to put a bow on it all. Hell, maybe the Patrician had sent Deacon here to get Deacon out of his city for a while. Who knew? Not Deacon.

He opened up the Patrician’s reply. He couldn’t read it. Shit. He opened up the new note from Zinon, DiMA, and Igor on the Turnip Issue. They speculated that it just might be possible to rewire his brain back to its previous state with the correct application of a different turnip recipe, but they also warned that the wrong turnip could wipe his mind forever. Deacon looked over the recipe, squinting, and he went down to the market.

This was a Tinker Tom level of ridiculous, he thought, as he bought himself two turnips, a brown onion, flour, an egg, cumin, fresh mint, olive oil, and fetid cheese. Then he went to the kitchenette in the new embassy and cooked himself up some fetid turnip fritters. Deacon chewed them thoughtfully, and after he’d given them some time to digest, he took another look at the Patrician’s reply.

Now that made sense, though as his gaze drifted downward, he saw:

Your presence has been requested in Tsort. Please do not delay in your attendance.

Deacon opened his mouth to say something that wasn’t particularly polite. No words came out. Deacon tried again, increasingly concerned. Galatea watched him curiously, and eventually, she wrote: You Cannot Speak.

On the verge of panic, Deacon nodded.

She offered him the notebook and pencil. He took it. He stared at it. Then he burst into tears. Deacon sat down in one of the new chairs, and Galatea put her hand on his shoulder.

Deacon arrived in Tsort able to understand and read Morporkian and Ephebian and unable to speak or write either. He could communicate by gestures, but as far as he could tell, he couldn’t sign.

He was going to steal DiMA’s staff and strap it to the lightning rod of the dome of the Temple of Small Gods. Deacon didn’t care if DiMA wouldn’t react to the prank. He had to do something.

The Tsortians welcomed him warmly. After all, he’d chatted them up at the ducal wedding, too.

When the Tsortians realized that he wasn’t saying much or… anything, one of them grinned and said, “Oh, a Listener¹⁹! Capital, they’re so expensive these days…”

¹⁹ Someone who is paid to listen, and a bit extra to smile and nod in an encouraging fashion. A good Listener is hard to find.

Seasick and frustrated, Deacon staggered back into Ankh-Morpork, dragging his luggage behind him. He went right to Unseen University and made DiMA understand by pantomime that he could not speak. DiMA looked quite horrified at himself and cringed, murmuring, “I never meant for… well, nevermind. Let’s figure out what’s wrong.”

He brought Igor around. They took measurements. They ran tests. They set up a bubbling green cauldron. They discussed.

Zinon came over, dipped his mug in the cauldron, and drank, watching DiMA with some amusement in his eyes. DiMA gently put a hand on Zinon’s shoulder, and the three of them went off to a study room. They returned, and DiMA spoke hesitantly, “It would appear that you need to consume Zinon’s yaya’s turnip skordthalia recipe. His family was, you see, too poor for potatoes. And you have to spread it on herring.”

As Deacon left Unseen University, Nick Valentine walked up to him, in his Constable’s uniform, with the little policeman rat on his shoulder. Deacon gave Nick the Hug of Plausible Deniability, which was a hug quick enough that if no one saw it, it didn’t really happen. Then he pulled a bottle of retsina out of his luggage and held it out to Nick.

Nick put his hands out and said, “No gifts. Besides, I’m on duty. You need to come with me. You’re wanted at the Palace.”

“Wanted as in desired or wanted as in my current face is on some posters?” Deacon asked.

Nick rolled his eyes. “Desired. There’s no warrant out for your arrest. Should there be?”

“Absolutely not,” Deacon lied.

After another nerve-wracking wait in the waiting area with the damn clock, Deacon was ushered in.

“Mr. Deacon,” said the Patrician, his hands neatly folded, “You put a golem Seamstress in charge of our new embassy in Ephebe.”

There was a long pause. Finally Deacon, still a bit rattled by the clock, shrugged and prompted, “Yeah?”

The Patrician smiled faintly. “That is, possibly, the most Ankh-Morpork thing you could have done.” He looked back down at the papers spread in front of him, and behind his sunglasses, Deacon hazarded a glance as well. The Patrician wouldn’t have them laying all over if he didn’t want Deacon to look, would he? Probably not, the man was, if nothing else, deliberate.

The papers included copies of the treaties in Morporkian and Ephebian (Deacon found he could still read both) and two older documents concerning some sort of research dig in Ephebe. One was in Ephebian and granted access to the site with permission to temporarily remove objects approved by Ephebe for study before ultimately returning them. The other was in Morporkian, and at first glance looked to be a translation of the first one, but instead granted permission for permanent removal for “safekeeping” of any objects the Morporkians deemed appropriate. Both were signed with the same name, probably an Ephebian official, and if you didn’t look too close, looked like they could be the same handwriting.

Huh.

The Patrician looked up at Deacon, then glanced back down at the documents in a way that said, “I know what you are looking at, despite your attempts to hide your eyes, because it is where I want you to be looking,” and then he looked back up at Deacon. Vetinari spoke, as though making casual conversation about an interesting bit of trivia, “You know, one of my predecessors once swore that no true Ankh-Morporkian would ever agree to send back the Ephebian Marbles, which were widely believed to be ours by right. It would seem that time has proven him mistaken, considering it was agreed to by Mr. A. Lias, a true Ankh-Morporkian.”

“That’s what the paperwork says,” Deacon agreed cheerfully.

“Indeed. It would be most unfortunate if Mr. Lias were to prove of the same provenance as certain documents,” said Vetinari, plucking the Morporkian “translation” of the old research documents and casually discarding it into his office fireplace.

Deacon had never seen a man dispose of paperwork with such nonchalant menace before. So, don’t burn this cover, or he’d get burned. Check. “Hey, Mr. Lias is such a genuine Ankh-Morporkian, he doesn’t pay his taxes… but I kid.”

Drumknott supplied dutifully, “We do actually have tax records for Mr. A. Lias.”

Fair enough. Paying taxes was actually a great way to sell a cover, and Deacon liked roads that weren’t a pothole party as much as the next man.

Vetinari concluded, “I believe we understand each other, Mr. Lias. Dismissed.”

It wasn’t until after Deacon had left the Patrician’s office that he finally spotted a copy of the latest Ankh-Morpork Times half-crumpled on the ground, but the article he saw sent him straight towards the Vimes estate.²⁰

²⁰ The conversation that resulted, however, was another story for another time.

Dorfl had learned many things from working in the Watch. For example, understanding why Nobby Nobbs was still a Watchman demanded that Dorfl gain a thorough understanding of the concept of plausible deniability. Dorfl was also a Trustee of the Golem Trust. Having Deacon as an employee provided an advanced course in plausible deniability, compared even to what he’d already learned in the Watch.

Dorfl was both curious and suspicious by nature, and yet, Dorfl did not ask why Deacon had been up on the dome of the Temple of Small Gods, when Constable Pediment the gargoyle reported to Dorfl that this had been so.

Deacon checked in at the Trust the morning after his return. He reported that he had found two kourai khryseai, so that the Golem Trust could track their locations, even if their current owner wasn’t willing to sell. That was fine. Dorfl had time. When Deacon reported that he had successfully purchased a two thousand year old white marble temple golem for 1000 derechmi, furnishing a copy of the receipt, Dorlf did not ask Deacon where he obtained that money.

If he asked Deacon, he might find out, and then he might have to do something about it.

Dorfl merely said, “You Will be Repaid, And In Turn, You Will Repay Your Source.”

By their own hands, or none.