#95 - Mime - To Dance on the Edge of Death - nleseul - Discworld

[nleseul.livejournal.com]

Title: To Dance on the Edge of Death
Fandom: Discworld
Characters: A young Lord Vetinari and an original character, with a cameo appearance by a young Sam Vimes
Prompt: Mime
Rating: Rated T for Teen.
Warnings: Includes non-graphic murder.
Summary: It is well known that Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, despises mimes and street performers. Is this merely a character quirk or a calculated affectation, or does he have good reason for his hatred?
Word Count: 3,268

It is often claimed by poets that rain is the tears of the gods, who weep for the misfortunes of men[1]. The poets who claim this are generally not well-acquainted with the gods of the Discworld, who ordinarily regard mortal misfortune as bloody good entertainment, and are entirely willing to take a hand in creating some, if they find that not enough presents itself at any given time. A smaller number of poets, of course, assert that rain is caused by water condensing around particles of dust in the upper atmosphere, creating droplets which are then pulled to the ground by the gravity of Great A’Tuin, the massive turtle upon whose back stand the four great elephants who bear the Disc, but their poems are generally not very well regarded, due to a certain lack of romance.

Whatever the cause, it was raining in the streets of Ankh-Morpork, the Disc’s greatest city. If the gods did weep, they would surely have wept for Ankh-Morpork, if only in the way that one weeps for an onion. Like an onion, Ankh-Morpork was a complex place of many layers. And, like an onion, it stank.

In the pooled rainwater that lay upon the cobblestones of the Street of Small Gods, there were splashes, as would be caused by feet in heavy boots. Cloaks, seen in the light of a streetlamp to bear the symbol of the Palace Guard, swished about with rapid motion. There was clinking of chain mail, and a great deal of shouting, largely phrases similar to “Come back here, you bugger!” and “Which way did he go?”

Gradually the sound of their boots faded into the distance, leaving this particular stretch of street empty, save for the shadows in the space between two of the tightly-packed temples that lined the street.

A few minutes later, the sound of footsteps again became audible, subtly different from the previous sound in a wet, squelching way that might suggest to the perceptive listener that the walker wore thin, cheap boots. The owner of the boots came within the light of the street lamp, and its red flame was reflected from dented armor and a brass Watch badge bearing only the engraved numerals 177.

The watchman slowed as he passed the lamp, and abruptly looked to the side, at the shadows between the temples. “Evening,” he said.

Havelock Vetinari was surprised. It took an uncommon sort of person to notice him when he was endeavoring to remain unseen, thanks to a careful study in his youth of some observations on the art of concealment by a perceptive—and more importantly, unperceived—man by the name of Lord Winstanleigh Greville-Pipe. He unfolded himself from where he crouched in the shadows and stood, peering at the face of the watchman as he did so. Yes, this would be the man to see him, if anyone could.

“Good evening, Sergeant Vimes,” he said calmly.

Vimes, he remembered, had been one of the men wearing the lilac with John Keel on the ostensibly Glorious 25^th of May some ten years previous. He had taken note of the man a few times in the intervening years as he rose from Lance-Constable to Sergeant in the night Watch. Every watchman who had served under Keel during his short time in Ankh-Morpork had undoubtedly learned a great deal from him, but Vimes more than anyone else seemed to have taken the old sergeant’s lessons to heart. With each passing year, Vimes grew more and more Keel-like. John Keel had also looked into shadows.

Vimes was standing casually, looking for all the world like a man on a stroll, enjoying the night air, who had stopped for a chat with a friend—which was doubly incongruous, given the rain, and the fact that the night air of Ankh-Morpork was only slightly more enjoyable than the night air in a privy. “Seems to have been a commotion of sorts up at the Palace,” he said. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“I understand that an Assassin was interrupted while attempting to inhume the Patrician,” said Vetinari.

“Mad Lord Snapcase?” Vimes said. “Good gods, man, what are these people thinking? The city is in enough of a mess already; I can’t imagine what would happen if Snapcase’s current favored advisor were to be forced into a position of power.”

“I believe the advisor in question would be adequately competent to see to the affairs of the city until a suitable Patrician could be appointed.”

“It’s a damned potted plant!” said Vimes.

“Actually, I believe that the Lord Chrysanthemum has recently fallen out of favor,” said Vetinari smoothly. “The Patrician now relies on the wisdom of the newly-appointed Lady Swiftbiscuit, who formerly served as the Patrician’s mount. This has generally been regarded as one of the wiser acts of his term of office, I am told.”

“This is ridiculous!” exclaimed Vimes. “Houseplants and horses in the Oblong Office! And this after that pointless war with Pseudopolis. The Palace is a madhouse, and the last thing the place needs right now is an assassination.”

“As you say, Sergeant,” said Vetinari.

Vimes sighed. “You know, if I were of a suspicious turn of mind, I might point out that, with the dark clothing and the hiding in shadows and all, you happen to look a great deal like an Assassin right now.”

“Not at all, sir. If you look closely, you will see that I am wearing various shades of dark green. Members of the Assassin’s Guild, as I am sure you know, wear exclusively black.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” said Vimes. “I should have noticed that.”

But that’s exactly the point: you don’t notice dark green, Vetinari was thinking. Unlike black. One of many observations for which I am indebted to the Lord Winstanleigh Greville-Pipe. But he said nothing.

“The Palace guards sometimes have trouble with their colors, however,” Vimes went on. “Along with their letters and numbers. And it would not do for some good citizen like yourself, minding his own business crouching in some shadows, to be waylaid by a guard who mistakes dark green for black.”

“Indeed,” said Vetinari. “It would be most unfortunate if anyone were to be hurt.”

“Don’t let me detain you, then,” said Vimes. “I’m sure you have things you’d much rather be doing than hiding in alleyways in this rain. Good night.” He turned and continue his walk down the street. When he had gone some distance past Vetinari, he pulled a bell from his belt, rang it a couple of times, and called to the night: “Two o’clock and all’s well!”—though not too loudly; shouting loudly at night in Ankh-Morpork was generally an excellent way of drawing attention that would make all be decidedly not well.

Vetinari, who did indeed have things he would rather be doing, judged that pursuit from the palace pursuit from the Palace had likely been abandoned by this point, began walking in the direction opposite that which Vimes had gone, towards the agreed rendezvous point, outside a glassblower’s on the Street of Cunning Artificers.

The rainy streets remained deserted, and as he walked he encountered only a particularly fragrant beggar, who mumbled something about “Millennium hand and shrimp” as he passed. Unfortunately, the street outside the glassblower’s was equally deserted, and he looked around warily, wondering if some ill had befallen her.

And suddenly he was seized roughly from behind, and a sharp blade was pressed against his throat. Instinctively he seized the assailant’s arm and prepared himself to fight, when he heard a feminine voice murmur softly in his ear, “Got you.”

Had Havelock Vetinari been a person prone to smiling, he would surely have done so then; as it was, his expression merely became slightly softer. Most people would have noticed no difference, but he knew that his assailant could read his face well enough to recognize his feelings. And, uncharacteristically, he found that acceptable.

“Impressive,” he said. “I did not notice you at all this time.”

Quiet laughter as she released him. “You’ll have to be careful, Havelock, now that there’s someone in the city who can surprise you. It’ll be a new experience for you.”

He did not point out that at the place where he had gripped her, a slight pressure would have left her entire arm temporarily useless, and he could have applied such pressure much more quickly than she could have used the knife. It was worthwhile to allow her to continue feeling confident. He turned and regarded her. Like him, she was wearing loose clothing, primarily in shades of dark green. That Vetinari, who had seen to it that every copy of Lord Greville-Pipe’s book—even the engraver’s original plates—had been destroyed, had chosen to divulge a part of its secrets to Estolia Maven should be sufficient indication of his regard for her. And that she was able to understand them and apply them successfully was one indicative cause of that regard.

“So what happened?” she asked, as they walked together back to the Assassin’s Guild. “I heard the alarm being raised in Snapcase’s bedchamber, and I had to leave in a hurry, but I’m sure I heard him shouting at people afterwards. Did you not get him?”

“I miscalculated,” said Vetinari. Estolia raised an eyebrow, apparently finding this hard to believe. “It seems that Lord Snapcase keeps in his bedchamber an elderly dog by the name of Mr. Tinkles, whom I did not anticipate having to neutralize. Mr. Tinkles raised the alarm upon noticing a stranger, and the guards were in the room before I was able to inhume the Patrician.”

This time she was unable to restrain her laughter. “The great Havelock Vetinari, defeated by a dog named Mr. Tinkles! Gods, that’s rich.”

“I am glad you find it amusing,” Vetinari said levelly. “If it is of any comfort to you, I believe the client, recognizing the difficulty of the task, agreed to pay half the fee even in the event of failure.” That was not entirely true; he could not tell her—not yet, at least—that this attempt on the Patrician had been calculated to fail. Or that there was in fact no client, other than himself and his aunt, Madam Roberta Meserole, and the Assassin’s Guild had not been involved in the arrangement at all. An apparently bungled attempt at inhumation now was simply intended to nudge the minds of People Who Mattered towards imagining a world in which Snapcase was no longer a factor. The man would have to be killed eventually, of course, but only once public opinion favored his removal, and the proper replacement.

“Oh, bugger the money, Havelock,” Estolia said. “Neither of us needs it in our station, and most of it would just go into Guild coffers anyway. It was fun, wasn’t it? Going where the rest of the Guild was afraid to go, and coming that close to the best-protected man in Ankh-Morpork? My heart was racing the whole time I was setting up your distraction, and it felt so good, dancing on the edge of death, and knowing that I was a capable enough dancer to do it.”

They had arrived outside the Assassins’ Guild, a rather pleasant-looking building located adjacent to the grim façade of the Fools’ Guild. Outside the latter, a single bedraggled-looking mime, his face painted white with eerie markings around his eyes, was feeling at the edges of an invisible box. The tin cup in front of him seemed to be collecting only rainwater.

“Some might say that it is dangerous for an Assassin to take such pleasure in her tasks,” said Vetinari. Neither he nor Estolia made any move to enter the Guild; they lingered outside, water pouring over their faces and soaking their dark green garments. “That we are merely servants, who kill in order to honor our contracts, and not for the sake of the task itself. That if we savored what we do too much, we might no longer be content to be servants, and seek power for ourselves.”

“Some like Downey, maybe,” Estolia said, pushing at his chest playfully. Vetinari and Downey had been rivals in the Guild for years. “And he’d also say we should be wearing official Guild black, and probably be dead in a gutter somewhere after the guards spotted us. But you’re not like Downey, or any of the goody-goods in the Guild. You could never be anyone’s servant, Havelock. Any more than I could.”

Vetinari said nothing. Finding it strangely discomfiting to meet her gaze, he looked past her at the mime, who was now climbing an invisible ladder.

Her hands darted forward suddenly, as if aiming for his ticklish spots. He actually had none, but he caught her hands regardless. “Oh, lighten up, Havelock!” she said, continuing to squirm in his grip. “You enjoyed it too; I know you too well for you to hide that. You’re just as much a dancer as I am.” She struggled to free her hands, but he now held her pinned immobile against him.

“But I don’t think I would have loved it so if not for you,” she went on. “It was good because we were doing it together. Dance partners on the edge of the abyss.” She laughed. “Isn’t that a lovely thought? And we’ll be doing it again, won’t we? You got so close to Snapcase that people will see he isn’t invulnerable. There’ll be more unguarded talk of removing him. Someone else will take out a contract. And we’ll handle it, won’t we, Havelock? Together?”

“Assuredly,” said Vetinari.

She smiled. “But we don’t need to stop there, do we? We’re meant to be more than just hired killers. With time, we could own this city. We can see where all the levers are, and how all the wheels turn. We could make the whole thing work properly. We could lift it up to that tiny point of stability, up above the chaos that Snapcase and Winder and the whole line of madmen have let it slide into, and keep it there. A whole city, dancing on the edge, with us dancing at its heart. Isn’t that a delicious thought?”

Vetinari was running the things he had told her through his mind, afraid for a moment that he had let something of his plans slip. What she was saying was too close, much too close, to his own thoughts.  But he knew he had not; his words were never anything save closely guarded. It was only that she was too much like him, and all too natural that her thoughts would lead her to similar places.

“There is a time and a place for such plans, and this is not it,” he said. “We should be in our beds now, in any case.” Nevertheless, he did not release her from his hold.

“Oh, not just yet,” she said. “I want the memory of tonight’s dance to linger. I want to savor the way it ends.”

“How does it end?” he asked.

Then she was leaning forward against his body, her lips parted. He felt her breath caressing his face. And he was moving his head forward to meet her lips.

And there was the sudden impact of something small and swift striking her from behind. Her eyes widened in shock, and her muscles were suddenly limp. And his body was moving without thought, lowering her suddenly inert form to the wet cobblestones as his eyes scanned the street, taking in the glint of metal in the hand of the mime, pulling the hidden daggers from his robes, throwing once, twice, thrice, piercing the attacker in neck, gut, and heart.

Thought returned, and he looked down at Estolia. He could tell at a glance that she was no longer breathing. He turned her body over and inspected the wound. A tiny bolt protruded from her back, the dark green cloth around it stained by a darker liquid. He smelled blood, and a faint odor he recognized as a fast-acting poison.

He stood and walked to inspect the mime, who was already breathing his last. He wondered if the man had even been an official Guild fool, or if it was merely a convenient disguise. There was probably no way to know. His mind was at work, connecting the dots that formed the path that had led him here, with that weapon in hand. Snapcase must have planned for this scenario. The Palace Guards had not been expected to catch an Assassin. Their role had been only to make a great deal of noise, which would alert others, more skilled at what needed to be done. Even if the Patrician had died, their orders would have been carried out nonetheless; Snapcase did not want his killer to live.

But they had not expected multiple Assassins. He picked up the tiny weapon the mime had carried; it was little more than a tube with a spring and a trigger. Such things were so deadly and so easy to conceal that Assassins, who generally aimed to give their target a sporting chance of survival, were officially prohibited by Guild rules from carrying them. But you would only get one shot with it. A shot that could have struck either of them.

Vetinari dropped the thing and crushed it with his boot. Feeling sick, he turned to look at Estolia’s body again. He was loath to leave her in the street for Harry King’s gnolls to collect, but he could not bring himself to touch her now. He went to the door of the Guild and banged on it with the iron knocker, a coded knock that indicated a Guild member in danger. Then he quickly leapt and began to climb the wall of the building, ascending to an unlocked window and slipping back into his bedroom.

A part of him wanted to return the palace tonight, and see Snapcase dead immediately for this. But plans had been made that did not permit Snapcase’s death so soon, and so he controlled the desire. Instead, he simply took parchment and a quill from the desk, dipped the quill in ink, and began to draw, in broad, angry strokes, the mime, attempting to climb up an invisible ladder from the bottom of a dark pit. He thought for a moment, and added several scorpions around the mime’s feet. Then he sketched in a sign, reading “Learn the words.” It seemed a fitting fate.

But he knew it was late, and so he buried the desire to inflict any further abuse on the ghost of Estolia’s killer and took to his bed. And he dreamed of the city, spinning precariously on a precipice over the edge of the abyss. He dreamed of the city’s influence spreading across the whole of the Sto Plains, across the whole of the Disc. He dreamed of it being dragged kicking and screaming out of the Century of the Fruitbat, into the Century of the Anchovy and beyond. He dreamed of himself, balancing at the center of it all. Dancing at the edge of death, alone, in honor of the dance partner who would not be joining him.

And his first act as Patrician, in the city of his dreams, would be to expel all mimes from Ankh-Morpork forever, on pain of death.

---

[1] And dwarfs. And trolls. Although some poets, usually of the old, aristocratic, and wealthy variety, hold that two of these groups compose a significant part of the misfortune of the third.