Jingo - Terry Pratchett [40]
Carrot obediently shut his eyes. She’d forbidden him to watch her en route from a human to a wolf, because of the unpleasant nature of the shapes in between. Back in Überwald people went from one shape to the other as naturally as ordinary humans would put on a different coat, but even there it was considered polite to do it behind a bush.
When he reopened them Angua was slinking forward, her whole being concentrated in her nose.
The olfactory presence of the Librarian was a complex shape, a mere purple blur where he had been moving but almost a solid figure where he’d been standing still. Hands, face, lips…they’d be just the center of an expanding cloud in a few hours’ time, but now she could still smell them out.
There must be only the tiniest air currents in here. There weren’t even any flies buzzing in the dead air to cause a ripple of disturbance.
She edged nearer to the window. Vision was a mere shadowy presence, providing a charcoal sketch of a room over which the scents painted their glorious colors.
By the window…by the window…
Yes! A man had stood there, and by the scent of it he hadn’t moved for some time. The smell wavered in the air, on the edge of her nasal skill. The curling, billowing traces said that the window had been opened and closed again, and was there just the merest, tiniest suggestion that he’d held an arm out in front of him?
Her nose raced, trying to form original shapes from the patterns hanging in the room like dead smoke…
When she’d finished, Angua went back to her pile of clothes and coughed politely while she was pulling on her boots.
“There was a man standing by the window,” she said. “Long hair, a bit dry, stinks of expensive shampoo. He was the man who nailed the boards back after Ossie got into the Barbican.”
“Are you sure?”
“Is this nose ever wrong?”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“I’d say he was heavyset, a bit bulky for his height. He doesn’t wash a lot, but when he does he uses Windpike’s Soap, the cheap brand. But expensive shampoo, which is odd. Quite new boots. And a green coat.”
“You can smell the color?”
“No. The dye. It comes from Sto Lat, I think. And…I think he shot a bow. An expensive bow. There’s a hint of silk in the air, and that’s what the strongest bowstrings are made of, isn’t it? And you wouldn’t put one of those on a cheap bow.”
Carrot stood by the window. “He got a good view,” he said, and looked down at the floor. And then at the sill. And on the shelves nearby.
“How long was he here?”
“Two or three hours, I’d say.”
“He didn’t move around much.”
“No.”
“Or smoke, or spit. He just stood and waited. A professional. Mr. Vimes was right.”
“A lot more professional than Ossie,” said Angua.
“Green coat,” said Carrot, as if thinking aloud. “Green coat, green coat…”
“Oh…and bad dandruff,” said Angua, standing up.
“Snowy Slopes?!” shouted Carrot.
“What?”
“Really bad dandruff?”
“Oh, yes, it—”
“That’s why they call him Snowy,” said Carrot. “Daceyville Slopes, the man with the reinforced comb. But I’d heard he’d moved to Sto Lat—”
In unison they said: “—where the dye comes from—”
“Is he good with a bow?” said Angua.
“Very good. He’s good at killing people he never met, too.”
“He’s an Assassin, is he?”
“Oh, no. He just kills people for money. No style. Snowy can barely read and write.”
Carrot scratched his head in sympathetic recollection. “He doesn’t even look at complicated pictures. We’d have got him last year, but he shook his head fast and got away while we were trying to dig out Nobby. Well, well. I wonder where he’s staying?”
“Don’t ask me to follow him in these streets. Thousands of people will have walked over the trail.”
“Oh, there’s people who will know. Someone sees everything in this town.”
MR. SLOPES?
Snowy Slopes gingerly felt his neck, or at least the neck of his soul. The human soul tends to keep to the shape of the original body for some time after death. Habit is a wonderful thing.
“Who the hell was he?” he said.
NOT SOMEONE YOU KNOW? said Death.
“Well, no! I don’t know many people who cut my head off!”
Snowy Slopes’s body had