Pyramids

After lights out Teppic lay in bed and thought about religion. It was certainly a very complicated subject.



The valley of the Djel had its own private gods, gods which had nothing to do with the world outside. It had always been very proud of the fact. The gods were wise and just and regulated the lives of men with skill and foresight, there was no question about that, but there were some puzzles.



For example, he knew his father made the sun come up and the river flood and so on. That was basic, it was what the pharaohs had done ever since the time of Khuft, you couldn't go around questioning things like that. The point was, though, did he just make the sun come up in the Valley or everywhere in the world? Making the sun come up in the Valley seemed a more reasonable proposition, after all, his father wasn't getting any younger, but it was rather difficult to imagine the sun coming up everywhere else and not the Valley, which led to the distressing thought that the sun would come up even if his father forgot about it, which was a very likely state of affairs. He'd never seen his father do anything much about making the sun rise, he had to admit. You'd expect at least a grunt of effort round about the dawn. His father never got up until after breakfast. The sun came up just the same.



He took some time to get to sleep. The bed, whatever Chidder said, was too soft, the air was too cold and, worst of all, the sky outside the high windows was too dark. At home it would have been full of flarelight from the necropolis, its silent flames eerie but somehow familiar and comforting, as though the ancestors were watching over their valley. He didn't like the darkness.



The following night in the dormitory one of the boys from further along the coast shyly tried to put the boy in the next bed inside a wickerwork cage he made in Craft and set fire to him, and the night after that Snoxall, who had the bed by the door and came from a little country out in the forests somewhere, painted himself green and asked for volunteers to have their intestines wound around a tree. On Thursday a small war broke out between those who worshipped the Mother Goddess in her aspect of the Moon and those who worshipped her in her aspect of a huge fat woman with enormous buttocks. After that the masters intervened and explained that religion, while a fine thing, could be taken too far.



Teppic had a suspicion that unpunctuality was unforgivable. But surely Mericet would have to be at the tower ahead of him? And he was going by the direct route. The old man couldn't possibly get there before him. Mind you, he couldn't possibly have got to the bridge in the alley first . . . He must have taken the bridge away before he met me and then he climbed up on the roof while I was climbing up the wall, Teppic told himself, without believing a word of it.



He ran along a roof ridge, senses alert for dislodged tiles or tripwires. His imagination equipped every shadow with watching figures.



The gong tower loomed ahead of him. He paused, and looked at it. He had seen it a thousand times before, and scaled it many times although it barely rated a 1.8, notwithstanding that the brass dome on top was an interesting climb. It was just a familiar landmark. That made it worse now; it bulked in front of him, a stubby menacing shape against the greyness of the sky.



He advanced more slowly now, approaching the tower obliquely across the sloping roof. It came to him that his initials were there, on the dome, along with Chiddy's and those of hundreds of other young assassins, and that they'd carry on being up there even if he died tonight. It was sort of comforting. Only not very.



He unslung his rope and made an easy throw on to the wide parapet that ran around the tower, just under the dome. He tested it, and heard the gentle clink as it caught.



Then he tugged it as hard as possible, bracing himself with one foot on a chimney stack.



Abruptly, and with no sound, a section of parapet slid outwards and dropped.



There was a crash as it hit the roof below and then slid down the tiles. Another pause was punctuated by a distant thump as it hit the silent street. A dog barked.



Stillness ruled the rooftops. Where Teppic had been the breeze stirred the burning air.



After several minutes he emerged from the deeper shadow of a chimney stack, smiling a strange and terrible smile.



Nothing the examiner could do could possibly be unfair. An assassin's clients were invariably rich enough to pay for extremely ingenious protection, up to and including hiring assassins of his own[5]. Mericet wasn't trying to kill him; he was merely trying to make him kill himself.



He sidled up to the base of the tower and found a drainpipe. It hadn't been coated with slipall, rather to his surprise, but his gently questing fingers did find the poisoned needles painted black and glued to the inner face of the pipe. He removed one with his tweezers and sniffed it.



Distilled bloat. Pretty expensive stuff, with an astonishing effect. He took a small glass phial from his belt and collected as many needles as he could find, and then put on his armoured gloves and, with the speed of a sloth, started to climb.



'Now it may well be that, as you travel across the city on your lawful occasions, you will find yourselves in opposition to fellow members, even one of the gentlemen with whom you are currently sharing a bench. And this is quite right and /what are you doing Mr Chidder no don 't tell me I'm sure I wouldn't want to know see me afterwards/ proper. It is open to everyone to defend themselves as best they may. There are, however, other enemies who will dog your steps and against whom you are all ill-prepared /who are they Mr Cheesewright?'/



Mericet spun round from his blackboard like a vulture who has just heard a death-rattle and pointed the chalk at Cheesewright, who gulped.



'Thieves' Guild, sir?' he managed.



'Step out here, boy.'



There were whispered rumours in the dormitories about what Mericet had done to slovenly pupils in the past, which. were always vague but horrifying. The class relaxed. Mericet usually concentrated on one victim at a time, so all they had to do now was look keen and enjoy the show. Crimson to his ears, Cheesewright got to his feet and trooped down the aisle between the desks.



The master inspected him thoughtfully.



'Well, now,' he said, 'and here we have Cheesewright, G., skulking across the quaking rooftops. See the determined ears. See the firm set of those knees.'



The class tittered dutifully. Cheesewright gave them an idiotic grin and rolled his eyes.



'But what are these sinister figures that march in step with him, hey? /Since you find this so funny, Mr Teppic, perhaps you would be so good as to tell Mr Cheesewright?'/



Teppic froze in mid-laugh.



Mericet's gaze bored into him. He's just like Dios the high priest, Teppic thought. Even father's frightened of Dios.



He knew what he ought to do, and he was damned if he was going to do it. He ought to be scared.



'Ill-preparedness,' he said. 'Carelessness. Lack of concentration. Poor maintenance of tools. Oh, and over-confidence, sir.'



Mericet held his gaze for some time, but Teppic had practised on the palace cats.



Finally the teacher gave a brief smile that had absolutely nothing to do with humour, tossed the chalk in the air, caught it again, and said: 'Mr Teppic is exactly right. Especially about the over-confidence.'



There was a ledge leading to an invitingly open window. There was oil on the ledge, and Teppic invested several minutes in screwing small crampons into cracks in the stonework before advancing.



He hung easily by the window and proceeded to take a number of small metal rods from his belt. They were threaded at the ends, and after a few seconds' brisk work he had a rod about three feet long on the end of which he affixed a small mirror.



That revealed nothing in the gloom beyond the opening. He pulled it back and tried again, this time attaching his hood into which he'd stuffed his gloves, to give the impression of a head cautiously revealing itself against the light. He was confident that it would pick up a bolt or a dart, but it remained resolutely unattacked.



He was chilly now, despite the heat of the night. Black velvet looked good, but that was about all you could say for it. The excitement and the exertion meant he was now wearing several pints of clammy water.



He advanced.



There was a thin black wire on the window sill, and a serrated blade screwed to the sash window above it. It was the work of a moment to wedge the sash with more rods and then cut the wire; the window dropped a fraction of an inch. He grinned in the darkness.



A sweep with a long rod inside the room revealed that there was a floor, apparently free of obstructions. There was also a wire at about chest height. He drew the rod back, affixed a small hook on the end, sent it back, caught the wire, and tugged.



There came the dull smack of a crossbow bolt hitting old plaster.



A lump of clay on the end of the same rod, pushed gently across the floor, revealed several caltraps. Teppic hauled them back and inspected them with interest. They were copper. If he'd tried the magnet technique, which was the usual method, he wouldn't have found them.



He thought for a while. He had slip-on priests in his pouch. They were devilish things to prowl around a room in, but he shuffled into them anyway. (Priests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.) Mericet was a poisons man, after all. Bloat! If he tipped them with that Teppic would plate himself all over the walls. They wouldn't need to bury him, they'd just redecorate over the top.[6]



The rules. Mericet would have to obey the rules. He couldn't simply kill him, with no warning. He'd have to let him, by carelessness or over-confidence, kill himself.



He dropped lightly on to the floor inside the room and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. A few exploratory swings with the rods detected no more wires; there was a faint crunch underfoot as a priest crushed a caltrap.



'In your own time, Mr Teppic.'



Mericet was standing in a corner. Teppic heard the faint scratching of his pencil as he made a note. He tried to put the man out of his mind. He tried to think.



There was a figure lying on a bed. It was entirely covered by a blanket.



This was the last bit. This was the room where everything was decided. This was the bit the successful students never told you about. The unsuccessful ones weren't around to ask.



Teppic's mind filled up with options. At a time like this, he thought, some divine guidance would be necessary. Where are you, dad?'



He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him at breakfast every day.



He unslung his crossbow and screwed its greased sections together. It wasn't a proper weapon, but he'd run out of knives and his lips were too dry for the blowpipe.



There was a clicking from the corner. Mericet was idly tapping his teeth with his pencil.



It could be a dummy under there. How would he know? No, it had to be a real person. You heard tales. Perhaps he could try the rods- He shook his head, raised the crossbow, and took careful aim.



'Whenever you like Mr Teppic.'



This was it.



This was where they found out if you could kill.



This was what he had been trying to put out of his mind.



He knew he couldn't.



Octeday afternoons was Political Expediency with Lady T'malia, one of the few women to achieve high office in the Guild. In the lands around the Circle Sea it was generally agreed that one way to achieve a long life was not to have a meal with her Ladyship. The jewellery of one hand alone carried enough poison to inhume a small town. She was stunningly beautiful, but with the kind of calculated beauty that is achieved by a team of skilled artists, manicurists, plasterers, corsetiers and dressmakers and three hours' solid work every morning. When she walked there was a faint squeak of whalebone under incredible stress.