Interesting Times

'No harm can possibly come to me when I'm with the Great Wizard,' said Butterfly.

'Very true. Very true,' said Twoflower. 'No harm ever came to me, I know that.'

'Besides,' his daughter went on, 'I have the map. And it would be dreadful if you lost your way and accidentally strayed out of the Forbidden City, wouldn't it?'

Rincewind gave in. It struck him that Twoflower's late wife must have been a remarkably intelligent woman.

'Oh, all right,' he said. 'But you're not to get in the way. And you're to do what I tell you, OK?'

Butterfly bowed.

'Lead on, O Great Wizard,' she said.

'I knew it!' said Truckle. 'Poison!'

'No, no. You don't eat it. You rub it on your body,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Watch. And you get what we in civilization call dean.'

Most of the Horde stood waist-deep in the warm water, every man with his hands chastely wrapped around his body. Hamish had refused to relinquish his wheelchair, so only his head was above the surface.

'It's all prickly,' said Cohen. 'And my skin's peeling off and dissolving.'

'That's not skin,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Haven't any of you seen a bath before?'

'Oh, I seen one,' said Boy Willie. 'I killed the Mad Bishop of Pseudopolis in one. You get' - he furrowed his brow - 'bubbles and stuff. And fifteen naked maidens.'

'Whut?'

'Definitely. Fifteen. Remember it well.'

'That's more like it,' said Caleb.

'All we've got to rub is this soap stuff.'

'The Emperor is ritually bathed by twenty-two bath women,' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'I could go and check with the harem eunuchs and wake them up, if you like. It's probably allowable under Entertaining.'

The taxman was warming to his new job. He'd worked out that although the Horde, as individuals, had acquired mountains of cash in their careers as barbarian heroes they'd lost almost all of it engaging in the other activities (he mentally catalogued these as Public Relations) necessary to the profession, and therefore were entitled to quite a considerable rebate.

The fact that they were registered with no revenue collecting authority anywhere was entirely a secondary point. It was the principle that counted. And the interest too, of course.

'No, no young women, I insist,' said Mr Saveloy. You're having a bath to get clean. Plenty of time for young women later.'

'Gotta date when all this is over,' said Caleb, a little shyly, thinking wistfully of one of the few women he'd ever had a conversation with. 'She's got her own farm, she said. I could be all right for a duck.'

'I bet Teach don't want you to say that,' said Boy Willie. 'I bet he'd say you gotta call it a waterfowl.'

'Huh, huh, hur!'

'Whut?'

Six Beneficent Winds sidled over to the teacher as the Horde experimented with the bath oil, initially by drinking it.

'I've worked out what it is you're going to steal,' he said.

'Oh, yes?' said Mr Saveloy politely. He was watching Caleb who, having had it brought home to him that he might have been adopting the wrong approach all his life, was trying to cut his nails with his sword.

'It's the legendary Diamond Coffin of Schz Yu!' said Six Beneficent Winds.

'No. Wrong again.'

'Oh.'

'Out of the baths, gentlemen,' said the teacher. 'I think... yes... you've mastered commerce, social intercourse—'

'—hur, hur, hur... sorry—'

'—and the principles of taxation,' Mr Saveloy went on.

'Have we done that? What are they, then?' said Cohen.

'You take away almost all the money that the merchants have got,' said Six Beneficent Winds, handing him a towel.

'Oh, is that it? I've been doing that for years.'

'No, you've been taking away all the money,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's where you go wrong. You kill too many of them, and the ones you don't kill you leave too poor.'

'Sounds frightfully good to me,' said Truckle, excavating the cretaceous contents of an ear. 'Poor merchants, rich us.'

'No, no, no!'

'No, no, no?'

'Yes! That's not civilized!'

'It's like with sheep,' Six Beneficent Winds explained. 'You don't tear their skin off all in one go, you just shear them every year.'

The Horde looked blank.

'Hunter-gatherers,' said Mr Saveloy, with a touch of hopelessness. 'Wrong metaphor.'

'It's the marvellous Singing Sword of Wong, isn't it?' whispered Six Beneficent Winds. 'That's what you're going to steal!'

'No. In fact, "steal" is rather the wrong word. Well, anyway, gentlemen... you might not yet be civilized but at least you're nice and clean, and many people think this is identical. Time, I think, for... action.'

The Horde straightened up. This was back in the area they understood.

'To the Throne Room!' said Ghenghiz Cohen.

Six Beneficent Winds wasn't that fast on the uptake, but at last he put two and two together.

'It's the Emperor!' he said, and raised his hand to his mouth in horror tinged with evil delight. 'You're going to kidnap him!'

Diamonds glittered when Cohen grinned.

There were two dead guards in the corridor leading to the private Imperial apartments.