Hogfather

Five businessmen sat round a table, lit by a candle stuck in a saucer. There was an open bottle between them. They were taking some care to keep it away from the candle flame.

‘’s gone six,’ said one, a huge man with dreadlocks and a beard you could keep goats in. ‘The clocks struck ages ago. He ain’t coming. Let’s go.’

‘Sit down, will you? Assassins are always late. ’Cos of style, right?’

‘This one’s mental.’

‘Eccentric.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘A bag of cash.’

The three that hadn’t spoken yet looked at one another.

‘What’s this? You never said he was an Assassin,’ said Chickenwire. ‘He never said the guy was an Assassin, did he, Banjo?’

There was a sound like distant thunder. It was Banjo Lilywhite^{11} clearing his throat.

‘Dat’s right,’ said a voice from the upper slopes. ‘Youse never said.’

The others waited until the rumble died away. Even Banjo’s voice hulked.

‘He’s’ — the first speaker waved his hands vaguely, trying to get across the point that someone was a hamper of food, several folding chairs, a tablecloth, an assortment of cooking gear and an entire colony of ants short of a picnic — ‘mental. And he’s got a funny eye.’

‘It’s just glass, all right?’ said the one known as Catseye, signalling a waiter for four beers and a glass of milk. ‘And he’s paying ten thousand dollars each. I don’t care what kind of eye he’s got.’

‘I heard it was made of the same stuff they make them fortune-telling crystals out of. You can’t tell me that’s right. And he looks at you with it,’ said the first speaker. He was known as Peachy, although no one had ever found out why.[4]

Catseye sighed. Certainly there was something odd about Mister Teatime, there was no doubt about that. But there was something weird about all Assassins. And the man paid well. Lots of Assassins used informers and locksmiths. It was against the rules, technically, but standards were going down everywhere, weren’t they? Usually they paid you late and sparsely, as if they were doing the favour. But Teatime was OK. True, after a few minutes talking to him your eyes began to water and you felt you needed to scrub your skin even on the inside, but no one was perfect, were they?

Peachy leaned forward. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I reckon he could be here already. In disguise! Laughing at us! Well, if he’s in here laughing at us—’ He cracked his knuckles.

Medium Dave Lilywhite, the last of the five, looked around. There were indeed a number of solitary figures in the low, dark room. Most of them wore cloaks with big hoods. They sat alone, in corners, hidden by the hoods. None of them looked very friendly.

‘Don’t be daft, Peachy,’ Catseye murmured.

‘That’s the sort of thing they do,’ Peachy insisted. ‘They’re masters of disguise!’

‘With that eye of his?’

‘That guy sitting by the fire has got an eye patch,’ said Medium Dave. Medium Dave didn’t speak much. He watched a lot.

The others turned to stare.

‘He’ll wait till we’re off our guard then go ahahaha,’ said Peachy.

‘They can’t kill you unless it’s for money,’ said Catseye. But now there was a soupçon of doubt in his voice.

They kept their eyes on the hooded man. He kept his eye on them.

If asked to describe what they did for a living, the five men around the table would have said something like ‘This and that’ or ‘The best I can’, although in Banjo’s case he’d have probably said ‘Dur?’ They were, by the standards of an uncaring society, criminals, although they wouldn’t have thought of themselves as such and couldn’t even spell words like ‘nefarious’. What they generally did was move things around. Sometimes the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, say, or in the wrong house. Sometimes the things were in fact people who were far too unimportant to trouble the Assassins’ Guild with, but who were nevertheless inconveniently positioned where they were and could much better be located on, for example, a sea bed somewhere.[5] None of the five belonged to any formal guild and they generally found their clients among those people who, for their own dark reasons, didn’t want to put the guilds to any trouble, sometimes because they were guild members themselves. They had plenty of work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B or, of course, to the bottom of the C.

‘Any minute now,’ said Peachy, as the waiter brought their beers.

Banjo cleared his throat. This was a sign that another thought had arrived.

‘What I don’ unnerstan,’ he said, ‘is …’

‘Yes?’ said his brother.[6]

‘What I don’ unnerstan is, how longaz diz place had waiters?’

‘Good evening,’ said Teatime, putting down the tray.

They stared at him in silence.

He gave them a friendly smile.

Peachy’s huge hand slapped the table.

‘You crept up on us, you little—’ he began.

Men in their line of business develop a certain prescience. Medium Dave and Catseye, who were sitting on either side of Peachy, leaned away nonchalantly.

‘Hi!’ said Teatime. There was a blur, and a knife shuddered in the table between Peachy’s thumb and index finger.