Thief of Time

A movement in the air made Susan look up. The lightning bolt that had stood rigid over the dead city had gone. The clouds were rolling like ink poured into water. There were flashes within them, sulphurous yellows and reds.

The Four Horsemen are fighting the other Auditors, Lobsang supplied.

“Are they winning?”

Lobsang did not answer.

“I said—”

It's hard for me to say. I can see… everything. Everything that could be…

Kaos listened to history.

There were new words. Wizards and philosophers had found Chaos, which is Kaos with his hair combed and a tie on, and had found in the epitome of disorder a new order undreamed of. There are different kinds of rules. From the simple comes the complex, and from the complex comes a different kind of simplicity. Chaos is order in a mask…

Chaos. Not dark, ancient Kaos, left behind by the evolving universe, but new, shiny Chaos, dancing in the heart of everything. The idea was strangely attractive. And it was a reason to go on living.

Ronnie Soak adjusted his cap. Oh, yes… there was one last thing.

The milk was always lovely and fresh. Everyone remarked on that. Of course, being everywhere at seven in the morning was no trouble to him. If even the Hogfather could climb down every chimney in the world in one night, doing a milk round for most of a city in one second was hardly a major achievement.

Keeping things cool was, however. But there he had been lucky. Mr Soak walked into the ice room, where his breath turned to fog in the frigid air. Churns were stacked across the floor, sparkling on the outside. Vats of butter and cream were piled on shelves that glistened with ice. Rack after rack of eggs were just visible through the frost. He'd been planning to add the ice-cream business in the summer. It was such an obvious step. Besides, he needed to use up the cold.

A stove was burning in the middle of the floor. Mr Soak always bought good coal from the dwarfs, and the iron plates were glowing red. The room, one felt, ought to be an oven, but there was a gentle sizzling on the stove as frost battled with the heat. With the stove roaring, the room was merely an ice-box. Without the stove…

Ronnie opened the door of a white-rimed cupboard and smashed at the ice within with his fist. Then he reached inside.

What emerged, crackling with blue flame, was a sword.

It was a work of art, the sword. It had imaginary velocity, negative energy and positive cold, cold so cold that it met heat coming the other way and took on something of its nature. Burning cold. There had never been anything as cold as this since before the universe began. In fact, it seemed to Chaos, everything since then had been merely lukewarm.

“Well, I'm back,” he said.

The Fifth Horseman rode out, and a faint smell of cheese followed him.

Unity looked at the other two, and at the blue glow that still hovered around the group. They had taken cover behind a fruit barrow.

“If I may make a suggestion,” she said, “it is that w—that Auditors are not good with surprises. The impulse is always to consult. And the assumption is always that there will be a plan.”

“So?” said Susan.

“I suggest total madness. I suggest you and… and the… young man run for the shop, and I will attract the attention of the Auditors. I believe this old man should assist me because he will die soon in any case.”

There was silence.

“Accurate yet unnecessary,” said Lu-Tze.

“That was not good etiquette?” she said.

“It could have been better. However, is it not written, ‘When you have got to go, you have got to go’ ?” said Lu-Tze. “And also that, ‘You should always wear clean underwear because you never know if you will be knocked down by a cart’?”

“Will it help?” said Unity, looking very puzzled.

“That is one of the great mysteries of the Way,” said Lu-Tze, nodding sagely. “What chocolate do we have left?”

“We're down to the nougat now,” said Unity. “And I believe nougat is a terrible thing to cover with chocolate, where it can ambush the unsuspecting. Susan?”

Susan was peering up the street. “Mmm?”

“Do you have any chocolate left?”

Susan shook her head. “Mmm-mmm.”

“I believe you were carrying the cherry cremes?”

“Mmm?”

Susan swallowed, and then gave a cough that expressed, in a remarkably concise way, embarrassment and annoyance.

“I just had one!” she snapped. “I need the sugar.”

“I'm sure no one said you did have more than one,” said Unity meekly.

“We haven't been counting at all,” said Lu-Tze.

“If you have a handkerchief,” said Unity, still diplomatically, “I could wipe away the chocolate around your mouth which must have inadvertently got there during the last engagement.”

Susan glared and used the back of her hand.

“It's just the sugar,” she said. “That's all. It's fuel. And do stop going on about it! Look, we can't just let you die to get—”

Yes, we can, said Lobsang.

“Why?” said Susan, shocked.