I Shall Wear Midnight

‘Listen to my advice,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘I don’t usually give things away, but I feel quite chipper about catching that lad who kept breaking my windows. So I’m in the mood for a good mood. There is a lady who I am sure would be very keen to talk to you. She lives in the city, but you’ll never find her no matter how hard you try. She will find you, though, in the blink of a second, and my advice is that when she does, you listen to everything she might tell you.’

‘So how do I find her?’ said Tiffany.

‘You’re feeling sorry for yourself and not listening,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘She will find you. You’ll know it when she does. Oh my word, yes.’ She reached into a pocket and produced a small round tin, the lid of which she flicked open with a black fingernail. The air suddenly felt prickly. ‘Snuff?’ she said, offering the tin to Tiffany. ‘Dirty habit, of course, but it clears the tubes and helps me think.’ She took a pinch of the brown powder, tipped it onto the back of the other hand and sniffed it up with a sound like a honk in reverse. She coughed and blinked once or twice and said, ‘Of course, brown bogeys are not to everybody’s liking, but I suppose they add to that nasty witch look. Anyway, I expect they’ll soon give us dinner.’

‘They’re going to feed us?’ said Tiffany.

‘Oh yes, they’re a decent bunch, although the wine last time was a bit off in my opinion,’ said Mrs Proust.

‘But we’re in prison.’

‘No, my dear, we’re in the police cells. And, though nobody’s saying it, we’re locked in here for our protection. You see, everyone else is locked out, and although they sometimes act dumb, policemen can’t help being clever. They know that people need witches; they need the unofficial people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and when right is wrong and when wrong is right. The world needs the people who work around the edges. They need the people who can deal with the little bumps and inconveniences. And little problems. After all, we are almost all human. Almost all of the time. And almost every full moon Captain Angua comes to me to make up a prescription for her hardpad.’

The snuff tin was produced again.

After a while Tiffany said, ‘Hardpad is a disease of dogs.’

‘And werewolves,’ said Mrs Proust.

‘Oh. I thought there was something odd about her.’

‘She stays on top of it, mind you,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘She shares lodgings with Captain Carrot and doesn’t bite anybody — although, come to think about it, she possibly bites Captain Carrot, but least said soonest mended, I’m sure you will agree. Sometimes what is legal isn’t what is right, and sometimes it needs a witch to tell the difference. And sometimes a copper too, if you have the right kind of copper. Clever people know this. Stupid people don’t. And the trouble is, stupid people can be oh so very clever. And by the way, miss, your boisterous little friends have escaped.’

‘Yes,’ Tiffany said. ‘I know.’

‘Isn’t that a shame, despite the fact that they faithfully promised the Watch to stay?’ Mrs Proust evidently did like to retain a reputation for nastiness.

Tiffany cleared her throat. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose Rob Anybody would tell you that there are times when promises should be kept and times when promises should be broken, and it takes a Feegle to know the difference.’

Mrs Proust grinned hugely. ‘You could almost be from the city, Miss Tiffany Aching.’

If you needed to guard something that didn’t need guarding, possibly because no one in their right mind would want to steal it, then Corporal Nobbs of the City Watch was, for want of a better way of describing him, and in the absence of any hard biological evidence to the contrary, your man. And now he stood in the dark and crunching ruins of the King’s Head, smoking a horrible cigarette made by rolling up all the stinking butts of previously smoked cigarettes into some fresh cigarette paper and sucking the horrible mess until some kind of smoke appeared.

He never noticed the hand that lifted his helmet off, hardly even felt the forensic blow to the head, and certainly did not feel the calloused little hands that placed the helmet back on his head as they lowered his sleeping body to the ground.

‘OK,’ said Rob Anybody in a hoarse whisper, looking around at the blackened timbers. ‘Now, we don’t have much time, ye ken, so—’

‘Well, well, I just knew that you wee scunners would come back here if I waited long enough for ye,’ said a voice in the dark. ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit and a fool to his folly, so the criminal returns to the scene of his crime.’