Making Money (44 page)

There was a thunder of applause. There had to be; even if you hated Vetinari, you had to admire the timing.

And now he was coming down the steps, advancing on a frozen and fearful clown.

“The clowns do not run my circus, sir,” he said, grabbing the man by his big red nose and pulling it to the full extent of the elastic. “Is that understood?”

The clown produced a bulbous horn and gave a mournful honk.

“Good. I’m glad you agree. And now I want to talk to Mr. Bent, please.”

There were two honks this time.

“Oh yes he is,” said Vetinari. “Shall we get him out for the boys and girls? What is 15.3 percent of 59.66?”

“You leave him alone! Just you leave him alone!”

The battered crowd parted yet again, this time for a disheveled Miss Drapes, as outraged and indignant as a mother hen. She was clasping something heavy to her sparse bosom, and Moist realized that it was a stack of ledgers.

“This is what it’s all about!” she announced triumphantly, flinging her arms wide. “It’s not his fault! They took advantage of him!”

She pointed an accusatory finger at the dripping ranks of the Lavishes. If a battle goddess was allowed to have a respectable blouse and hair escaping rapidly from a tight bun, then Miss Drapes could have been deified. “It was them! They sold the gold years ago!” This caused a general and enthusiastic uproar on all sides not containing a Lavish.

“There will be silence!” shouted Vetinari.

The lawyers rose. Mr. Slant glared. The lawyers sank.

And Moist wiped pineapple custard from his eyes just in time.

“Look out! He’s got a daisy!” he shouted, and then thought: I just shouted “Look out! He’s got a daisy,” and I think I’m going to remember forever just how embarrassing this was.

Lord Vetinari looked down at the improbably large flower in the clown’s buttonhole. A tiny drop of water glistened in the almost-well-concealed nozzle.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. Now, sir, I do indeed believe you are Mr. Bent. I recognize the walk, you see. If you are not, then all you have to do is squeeze, and all I have to do is let go. I repeat: I’d like to hear from Mr. Bent.”

Sometimes the gods don’t have the right sense of occasion, Moist thought. There should be thunder, a plangent tone, a chord of tension, some kind of celestial acknowledgment that here was the moment of tru—

“9.12798,” said the clown.

Vetinari smiled and patted him on the shoulder.

“Welcome back,” he said, and looked around the room until his gaze found Dr. Whiteface of the Fools’ Guild.

“Doctor, would you take care of Mr. Bent, please? I think he needs to be among his own.”

“It would be an honor, my lord. Seven pies in the air at once and a four-man ladder tie? Exemplary! Whoever you are brother, I offer you the joke handshake of welcome…”

“He’s not going anywhere without me,” said Miss Drapes grimly, as the white-faced clown stepped forward.

“Indeed, who could imagine how he would,” said Vetinari. “And please extend the courtesy of your guild to Mr. Bent’s young lady, Doctor,” he added, to the surprise and delight of Miss Drapes, who clung on daily to the “lady” but had reluctantly said good-bye to the “young” years ago.

“And will somebody please release those people from that ladder? I think a saw will be required,” Vetinari went on. “Drumknott, collect up these intriguing new ledgers that Mr. Bent’s young lady has so kindly supplied. And I think Mr. Lavish needs medical attention—”

“I…do…not!” Cosmo, dripping custard, was trying to remain upright. It was painful to watch. He managed to point a furious but wavering finger at the tumbled books. “Those,” he declared, “are the property of the bank!”

“Mr. Lavish, it is clear to us all that you are ill—” Vetinari began.

“Yes, you’d like everyone to believe that, wouldn’t you—impostor!” Cosmo said, visibly swaying. In his head the crowd cheered.

“The Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork,” said Vetinari, without taking his eyes off Cosmo, “prides itself on its red-leather ledgers, which without fail are embossed with the seal of the city in gold leaf. Drumknott?”

“These are cheap cardboard-bound ones, sir. You can buy them anywhere. The writing within, however, is the unmistakable fine copperplate hand of Mr. Bent.”

“You are sure?”

“Oh, yes. He does a wonderful cursive script.”

“Fake,” said Cosmo, as if his tongue was an inch thick, “all fake. Stolen!”

Moist looked at the watching people and saw the shared expression. Whatever you thought of him, it was not good to see a man fall to bits where he stood. A couple of watchmen were sidling carefully toward him.

“I never stole a thing in my life!” said Miss Drapes, bridling enough for gymkhana. “They were in his wardrobe—” she hesitated and decided she’d rather be scarlet than gray—“and I don’t care what Lady Deirdre Waggon thinks! And I’ve taken a look inside them, too! Your father took the gold and sold it and forced him to hide it in the numbers! And that’s not the half of it!”

“…Beautiful but’fly,” Cosmo slurred, blinking at Vetinari. “You not me any mo’. Walked mile in y’shoes!”

Moist also edged in his direction. Cosmo had the look of someone who might explode at any moment, or collapse, or just possibly fall on Moist’s neck, mumbling things like “You’re m’bestest pal, you are, it’s you’n me ’gainst the worl’ pal.”

Greenish sweat was pouring down the man’s face.

“I think you need a lie-down, Mr. Lavish,” said Moist cheerfully. Cosmo tried to focus on him.

“’S a good pain,” the dripping man confided. “Got ’li’l hat, got got sword o’ t’ouands mens—” and with a whisper of steel, a gray blade, with an evil red glitter to it, was pointing between Moist’s eyes. It didn’t waver. Behind it, Cosmo was trembling and twitching, but the sword stayed rigid and unmoving.

The advancing watchmen slowed down a little. Their job had a pension.

“Will no one at all make any move, please? I think I can deal with this,” said Moist, squinting along the blade. This was a time for delicacy…

“Oh, this is so silly,” said Pucci, strutting forward with a clatter of heels. “We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. It’s our gold, isn’t it? Who cares what he wrote down in his books?”

The phalanx of Lavish lawyers rose very cautiously to their feet, while the two employed by Pucci began to whisper urgently to her. She ignored them. Everyone was staring at her now, not her brother. Everyone was paying attention to her.

“Could you please be quiet, Miss Lavish?” said Moist. The stillness of the blade worried him. Some part of Cosmo was functioning very well indeed.

“Oh yes, I expect you just would like me to shut up, and I’m not going to!” said Pucci gleefully. Like Moist confronted by an open notebook, she triumphantly plunged on without a care: “We can’t steal what already belongs to us, can we? So what if Father put the wretched gold to better use? It was just sitting there! Honestly, why are you all so dense? Everybody does it. It’s not stealing. I mean, the gold still exists, yes? In rings and things. It’s not as though anyone’s going to throw it away. Who cares where it is?”

Moist resisted the impulse to look at the other bankers in the room. Everyone does it, eh? Pucci was not going to get many Hogswatch cards this year. And her brother was staring at her in horror. The rest of the clan, those who weren’t still engrossed in decustarding themselves, were contriving to give the impression that they had never seen Pucci before. Who is this mad woman? said their faces. Who let her in? What is she talking about?

“I think your brother is very ill, miss,” he said.

Pucci tossed her admittedly fine locks dismissively. “Don’t worry about him, he’s just being silly,” she said. “He’s only doing it to attract attention. Silly boyish stuff about wanting to be Vetinari, as if anyone in their right mind would—”

“He’s dribbling green,” said Moist, but nothing cut through the barrage of chatter. He stared at Cosmo’s ravaged face, and everything made sense. Beard. Cap. Sword stick, yes, with someone’s tacky idea of what a blade made from the iron in the blood of a thousand men should look like. And what about the murder of a man who made rings? And under that stinking glove…

This is my world. I know how to do this.

“I beg your pardon! You are Lord Vetinari, aren’t you?” he said.

For a moment, Cosmo drew himself up and a spark of imperiousness shone through.

“Indeed! Yes indeed,” he said, raising one eyebrow. Then it sagged, and his puffy face sagged with it.

“Got ring. Vetin’ry ring,” he mumbled. “’S mine really. Good pain…”

The sword dropped, too.

Moist grabbed the man’s left hand and tore the glove off. It came away with a sucking sound and a smell that was unimaginably, nose-cakingly bad. The nearest guard threw up. So many colors, thought Moist. So many…wiggling things…

And there, still visible in the suppurating mass, was the unmistakable sullen gleam of stygium.

Moist grabbed Cosmo’s other hand.

“I think you ought to come outside, my lord, now you are the Patrician,” he said loudly. “You must meet the people…”

Once again, some inner Cosmo got a slippery grip, enough to cause the dribbling mouth to utter “Yes, this is very important…” before reverting to “Feel ill. Finger looks funny…”

“The sunshine will do it good,” said Moist, taking him gently in tow. “Trust me.”

Gladys Is Doing It For Herself
To the House of Mirth
The history of Mr. Bent
Usefulness of clowns as nurses is questioned
Owlswick gets an angel
The golden secret (not exactly dragon magic)
The return of the teeth
Vetinari looks ahead
The bank triumphant
The Glooper’s little gift
How to spoil a perfect day

O
N THE FIRST
day of the rest of his life Moist von Lipwig woke up, which was nice, given that on any particular day a number of people do not, but woke up alone, which was less pleasing.

It was six a.m., and the fog seemed glued to the windows, so thick that it should have contained croutons. But he liked these moments, before the fragments of yesterday reassembled themselves.

Hold on, this wasn’t the suite, was it? This was his room in the Post Office, which had all the luxury and comfort that you would normally associate with the term “civil-service issue.”

A piece of yesterday fell into place. Oh yes, Vetinari had ordered the bank shut while his clerks looked at everything this time. Moist wished them luck with the late Sir Joshua’s special cupboard…

There was no Mr. Fusspot, which was a shame. You don’t appreciate an early-morning slobber until it’s gone. And there was no Gladys, either, which was worrying.

She didn’t turn up while he was getting dressed, either, and there was no copy of the Times on his desk. His suit needed pressing, too.

He eventually found her pushing a trolley of mail in the sorting room. The blue dress was gone, to be replaced by a gray one which, by the nascent standards of golem dressmaking, looked quite smart.

“Good morning, Gladys,” Moist ventured, “any chance of some pressed trouser?”

“There Is Always A Warm Iron In The Postmen’s Locker Room, Mr. Lipwig.”

“Oh? Ah. Right. And, er…the Times?”

“Four Copies Are Delivered To Mr. Groat’s Office Every Morning, Mr. Lipwig.”

“I suppose a sandwich is totally out of—”

“I Really Must Get On With My Duties, Mr. Lipwig,” said the golem reproachfully.

“You know, Gladys, I can’t help thinking that there’s something different about you,” said Moist.

“Yes! I Am Doing It For Myself,” said Gladys, her eyes glowing.

“Doing what, exactly?”

“I Have Not Ascertained This Yet, But I Am Only Ten Pages Into The Book.”

“Ah. You have been reading a new book? But not one by Lady Deirdre Waggon, I’ll wager.”

“No, Because She Is Out Of Touch With Modern Thought. I Laugh With Scorn.”

“Yes, I imagine you would do,” said Moist thoughtfully. “And I expect Miss Dearheart gave you said book?”

“Yes. It Is Entitled Why Men Get Under Your Feet, By Releventia Flout,” said Gladys earnestly.

And we start out with the best of intentions, thought Moist, find ’em out, dig ’em up, make ’em free. But we don’t know what we’re doing, or what we’re doing it to.