“Perhaps the servants can serve it now, my lord?” said Madam.
“Don't trust servants serving food,” said Winder. “Sneakin' about. Could slip somethin' in.”
“Do you mind if I do it, then, my lord?”
“Yeah, all right,” said Lord Winder, watching the cake carefully. “I'll have the ninth piece you cut.” But in fact he snatched the fifth piece, triumphantly, as if saving something precious from the wreckage.
The cake was disassembled. Lord Winder's objection to servants handling food withered once the food was headed for other people, and so the party spread out a little as the guests pondered the ancient question of how to hold a plate and a glass and eat at the same time without using one of those little glass-holding things that clip on the side of the plate and make the user look as though they're four years old. This takes a lot of concentration, and that might have been why everyone was so curiously self-absorbed.
The door opened. A figure walked into the room. Winder looked up, over the top of his plate.
It was a slim figure, hooded and masked, all in black.
Winder stared. Around him, the conversation rose, and a watcher above might have noticed that the drift of the party tides was such that they were leaving a wide empty path, stretching from the door all the way to Winder, whose legs didn't want to move.
As it strolled towards him the figure reached both hands behind it and they came back each holding a small pistol bow. There were a couple of small
“Brw?” said Winder, staring. His mouth was open, and stuffed with cake. People chattered on. Somewhere, someone had told a joke. There was laughter, perhaps a shade shriller than might normally be the case. The noise level rose again.
Winder blinked. Assassins didn't do this. They snuck around. They used the shadows. This didn't happen in real life. This was how it happened in dreams.
And now the creature was in front of him. He dropped his spoon, and there was a sudden silence after it clanged on the ground.
There was another rule. Wherever possible, the inhumed should be told who the Assassin was, and who had sent him. It was felt by the Guild that this was only fair. Winder did not know this, and it was not widely advertised, but nevertheless, in the midst of terror, eyes wide, he asked the right questions.
“Who sent yer?”
“I come from the city,” said the figure, drawing a thin, silvery sword.
“Who are yer?”
“Think of me as…your future.”
The figure drew the sword back, but it was too late. Terror's own more subtle knife had done its work. Winder's face was crimson, his eyes were staring at nothing, and coming up from the throat, through the crumbs of cake, was a sound that merged a creak with a sigh.
The dark figure lowered its sword, watched for a moment in the echoing silence, and then said: “Boo.”
It reached out one gloved hand and gave the Patrician a push. Winder went over backwards, his plate dropping from his hand and shattering on the tiles.
The Assassin held his bloodless sword at arm's length and let it drop on the floor beside the corpse. Then he turned and walked slowly back across the marble floor. He shut the double doors behind him, and the echoes died away.
Madam counted slowly to ten before she screamed. That seemed long enough.
Lord Winder got to his feet, and looked up at the black-clad figure.
“Another one? Where did you creep in from?”
I DO NOT CREEP.
Winder's mind felt even fuzzier than it had done over the past few years, but he was certain about cake. He'd been eating cake, and now there wasn't any. Through the mists he saw it, apparently close but, when he tried to reach it, a long way away.
A certain realization dawned on him.
“Oh,” he said.
YES, said Death.
“Not even time to finish my cake?”
NO. THERE IS NO MORE TIME, EVEN FOR CAKE. FOR YOU, THE CAKE IS OVER. YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE.
A grapnel thudded into the wall beside Vimes. There were shouts along the barricade. More hooks snaked up and bit into the wood.
Another rain of arrows clattered on the roofs of the houses. The attackers weren't ready to risk hitting their own side, but arrows were snapping and bouncing in the street below. Vimes heard shouts, and the clang of arrows on armour.
A sound made him turn. A helmeted head rose level with his and the face beneath it blanched in terror when it saw Vimes.
“That was my
The man fell back, by the sound of it, on to other climbers. Men were yelling all along the parapet.
Vimes pulled out his truncheon. “At 'em, lads,” he yelled. “Truncheons! Nothing fancy! Bop 'em on the fingers and let gravity do the work! They're goin'
He ducked, pressing close to the wood, and tried to find a spyhole—
“They're using big catapults,” said Sandra, who'd found a gap a few feet away. “There's a—”
