‘Hold on, Jim, hold on just one minute,’ said Harry Upwright carefully. ‘What’s your game, Mr Postman? The coaches always used to carry passengers too, right? And then there was no mail to take but people still wanted to travel, and the coaches were just standing around and the horses were needing to be fed, so our dad paid for the fodder and the vet’s bills and no one—’
‘Just take my mail,’ said Moist. ‘That’s all. Every coach takes the mailbags and drops them off where I say. That’s all. Tell me where you’ll get a better deal tonight, eh? You could try your luck pleading finders keepers to Vetinari but that’d take a while to sort out and in the meantime you’d lose all that lovely revenue… No? Okay. Glady—’
‘No! No! Wait a minute,’ said Harry. ‘Just the mailbags? That’s all?’
‘What?’ said Jim. ‘You want to negotiate? Why? They say possession’s nine points of the law, right?’
‘And I possess a lot of golems, Mr Upwright,’ said Moist. ‘And you don’t possess any deeds, mortgages or bills of sale.’
‘Yeah? And you won’t possess any teeth, mister!’ said Jim, rolling forward.
‘Now, now,’ said Moist, stepping quickly in front of Mr Pump and raising a hand. ‘Don’t kill me again, Mr Upwright.’
Both the brothers looked puzzled.
‘I’ll swear Jim never laid a finger on you, and that’s the truth,’ said Harry. ‘What’s your game?’
‘Oh, he did, Harry,’ said Moist. ‘Lost his temper, took a swing, I went over, hit my head on that old bench there, got up not knowing where the hell I was, you tried to hold Jim back, he hit me with that chair, the one just there, and down I went for keeps. The golems got you, Harry, but Jim went on the run, only to be tracked down by the Watch in Sto Lat. Oh, what scenes, what chases, and you both ended up in the Tanty, the charge against the pair of you being murder—’
‘Here,
‘—and this morning Mr Trooper measured you up for the last necktie and there you were, standing in that room under the gallows, knowing that you’d lost your business, you’d lost your coaches, you’d lost your fine horses, and in two minutes—’
Moist let the sentence hang in the air.
‘And?’ said Harry. Both brothers were watching him with expressions of horrified confusion which would coalesce into violence inside five seconds if this didn’t work. Keeping them off balance was the ticket.
Moist counted to four in his head, while smiling beatifically. ‘And then an angel appeared,’ he said.
Ten minutes can change a lot. It was enough to brew two cups of tea thick enough to spread on bread.
The brothers Upwright probably didn’t believe in angels. But they believed in bullshit, and were the type to admire it when it was delivered with panache. There’s a kind of big, outdoor sort of man who’s got no patience at all with prevaricators and fibbers, but will applaud any man who can tell an outrageous whopper with a gleam in his eye.
‘Funny you should turn up tonight,’ said Harry.
‘Oh? Why?’
‘ ‘cos a man from the Grand Trunk came round this afternoon and offered us big money for the business. Too much money, you could say.’
Oh, thought Moist, something’s starting…
‘But you, Mr Lipwig, is giving us nothing but attitude and threats,’ said Jim. ‘Care to raise your offer?’
‘Okay. Bigger threats,’ said Moist. ‘But I’ll throw in a new paint job on every coach, gratis. Be
‘Is she an angel?’ said Harry.
‘He probably hopes not, hur, hur.’ Jim had a laugh like a bull clearing its throat.
‘Hur, hur,’ said Moist solemnly. ‘Just carry the bags, gents. The Post Office is going places and you could be in the driving seat.’
The brothers exchanged a glance. Then they grinned. It was as if one grin spread across two glistening red faces.
‘Our dad would’ve liked you,’ said Jim.
‘He sure as hell wouldn’t like the Grand Trunk devils,’ said Harry. ‘They need cutting down to size, Mr Lipwig, and people are saying you’re the man to do it.’
‘People die on them towers,’ said Jim. ‘We see, you know. Damn right! The towers follows the coach roads. We used to have the contract to haul lads out to the towers and we heard ‘em talking. They used to have an hour a day when they shut the whole Trunk down for maint’nance.’
‘The Hour of the Dead, they called it,’ said Harry. ‘Just before dawn. That’s when people die.’
Across a continent, the line of light, beads on the pre-dawn darkness. And, then, the Hour of the Dead begins, at either end of the Grand Trunk, as the upline and downline shutters clear their messages and stop moving, one after the other.
