Tales from the Guilds Ch. 01

At last he reached Scoone Avenue, giving wide berth to Number Seven. The Ramkin townhouse was now the official residence of His Excellency, Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Morpork and Commander of the City Watch and his Lady Sybil. The Guild had an assessment of some AM$600,000 dollars on Sir Samuel but the commission was currently in abeyance as was the AM$1,000,000 price on the Patrician. Attempts on both men's lives had been spectacularly unsuccessful. Most Members who had attempted Lord Vetinari's commission were never seen or even heard about again. Sir Samuel had a more benign attitude. He found jousting with the Guild a sporting venture and nearly all the attempts had resulted in the Assassin returning to the Guild—somewhat the worse for wear. The Commander hadn't read the Guild handbook on traps and deadfalls but the general opinion was that he could have expanded it considerably. Best just to not approach the place, especially when you were as junior as Baldor.

It was at Number Eleven that Woodbead dropped to the ground and took up a position where he could remain invisible while clearly seeing the cellar doors. He sat motionless and in exactly enough quiet to blend in with the soft night noises watching and observing closely. Eventually the incongruity revealed itself. If the drawing on the plan he'd been given was accurate, someone had made an addition. Drifting closer, Baldor saw the unmistakable sign of a set trap, a newly set trap. He smiled to himself. Someone had seen him take the commission papers from the porter's office, someone who knew where the client lived. Sinestra!

Dammit, NIL MORTIFI, SINE LVCRE! Unless someone actually paid him, he couldn't inhume the girl any more than she could deliberately inhume him. However—there was nothing in the Guild's code that prevented either of them from letting the other die through carelessness. After all, the faculty had been doing that to unobservant examinees for years. With a faint smile, Baldor approached the cellar door and disarmed the deadfall. However, when he left . . .

Carefully oiling the hinges, Woodbead lifted the cellar door. As the Beggars had reported, it showed no indication of having been opened for months, possibly years. Carefully propping it slightly open to facilitate a quick getaway, he slipped into the root cellar and waited. Pulling a safety lamp containing a red-glowing imp out of his pocket, he carefully scanned the cellar. Apparently Fothergill was following in his older brother's footsteps and taking all his meals out. No sign of any disturbance showed in the dust of the floor and all the bins along the walls had been empty for years.

He ghosted across the floor and, again putting his oil can to use, opened the door into the scullery. Silence reigned throughout the house. Such servants as lived there must have all been asleep. This was good. Guild practice frowned severely on unnecessary violence, especially when directed towards anyone in the household except the client himself. Now, the schematic showed that the client most likely occupied a bedroom on the second floor. Baldor made his way to the stairs.

The house felt wrong. There ought, Baldor thought, to be the feeling of 'presence', the feeling that someone other than the lessee was home. Perhaps it was scent? He wasn't sure but whatever it was, it wasn't there. Surely Fothergill didn't live here alone? Surely all his time couldn't have been spent at the bank or at restaurants? Possibly it could. Possibly his entire persona was a hoax. It made sense, in a way. If he was paying for this upscale address month to month and spending the rest of his life in the bank offices, it would make sense that he was doing whatever it took to reinforce his image as a man of means. But what if he wasn't? What if he was a complete fraud? Was the alleged embezzlement of the Beggar's Guild a desperate attempt to establish fiscal soundness? If so, it was a terminally fatal error—at least if Baldor had anything to do with it.

The hall led from the scullery and kitchen toward the dining room along the stairs. Servants' quarters would be on the third floor and if the client lived like a 'normal' man of considerable means, he would have his bed chamber overlooking the street. It was the best way to look down on the common run of humanity, the group Baldor most identified with. Checking each tread for any signs of a nightingale floor, Woodbead crept up the flight.

The only shut door on the second floor was the entrance to the bed chamber overlooking Scoone Avenue. Donning his stethoscope, Baldor listened intently for any sound coming through it. He heard only snoring. A puff or two of powdered graphite into the lock and a few quick maneuvers with a set of lock picks and the door swung silently open. There, in a luxurious four poster bed, a vast mound of a man lay on his back, snoring loudly.

Baldor reached back over his neck—and then paused. The client was immensely fat. He called to mind the famous commission taken out on Patricio, Despot of Quirm. That man had weighed in at a solid 43 stone and it had taken an entire team of Assassins to inhume him. Unless the toxin could be placed so as to guarantee entry into the man's bloodstream, all the dart would do was wake him up. Then Baldor would have to resort to Plan B and possibly C. Dr. Mericet's words in lecture came back to haunt him.

"The worst thing that can happen to a beginning Assassin," the tutor had hissed, "is to inhume with ease a succession of clients. This will make him overconfident and inevitably lead to the Old Boy's early demise. Make no hasty moves, no assumptions. Every client is just as interested in your failure as you are in your success. Take no rash chances."

Where on Horsefry's body was a thin enough layer of fat to allow the dart to penetrate to a blood vessel? A thin streak of moonlight showed only one possibility, the man's left ear. Baldor was skilled with the blowpipe but that was a challenging target, even for him. Softly he pushed the dart into the mouthpiece and making no more noise than a spider crossing its web, he crept to within inches of his quarry. A silent deep breath, and a puff of air and Fothergill came awake with the dart protruding from his ear canal. The huge man had just enough time to draw a breath and begin a snarl of rage when the toxin took effect and he sighed, exhaled and fell back motionless.

Baldor tore the receipt page from the commission and pinned it to the late client's nightshirt before fleeing like an unheard breeze down the hall, the stairs, the scullery and to the base of the cellar's outside steps. There he froze, eyes peeled and ears bristling with intensity. Had Sinestra returned? Was the deadfall again reset? If it was not, had another been overlaid on it? No sign. He extended the blowpipe out along a chosen route of escape and encountered—nothing.

Out of the cellar, he raced, pausing only to reset and readjust the trap. Then up the garden wall and across to the nearest building. Scaling the side of the house, he reached the ridgeline and the way back to the Guild. Had Sinestra known? Would she return and examine the trap? He didn't care. Once inside the Guild walls he was again safe, at least from any deliberate hostility. Sliding down a drainpipe, he slipped through his own window, walked over to his bed, sat down and started to shake. He'd done it.

*****

Drumknot padded silently into the Patrician's office and neatened up the boxes on His Lordship's desk. Vetinari nodded approvingly.

"I see, my lord," the clerk began, "that the younger Mr. Horsefry has been 'shuffled off the mortal coil', as they say."

"Indeed," replied the thin man in the black robes, "but at least this time there is no mystery about his demise. Klatchian spider venom seems to have been the elixir of choice."

"And Mr. Woodbead is remarkably young to have inhumed his first client, is he not?"

"Not just young, but upwardly mobile. Unless I am missing someone he is the first Assassin from outside the moneyed classes to take a commission since Zlorf Flannelfoot some hundreds of years ago. It is an historic occasion. He will bear watching."

"Yes sir. Shall I open a file on him? He seems awfully young."

"Do that, Drumknot. Young he may be, but ambitious and skillful. Those are valuable traits if properly channeled. And very dangerous ones if not."

The Patrician's clerk nodded and ghosted out of the room. He was, the Patrician mused, the most naturally silent man he had ever known.