Making Money - Terry Pratchett [48]
And now there was the signet ring. Heretofore had told Cosmo that he could get a replica made and use his contacts—his very expensive contacts—at the palace to get it swapped for the real thing. He’d been paid five thousand dollars!
Five thousand dollars!
And the boss was overjoyed. Overjoyed and mad. He’d got a fake ring but he swore it had the spirit of Vetinari flowing in it. Perhaps it did, because Cranberry became part of the arrangement. If you got drawn into Cosmo’s little hobby, Heretofore realized too late, you died.
He reached his room, darted inside, and shut the door. Then he leaned on it.
He ought to run, right now. His savings by now could buy a lot of distance. But the fear subsided a little as he collected his thoughts.
They told him: Relax, relax. The Watch hadn’t come knocking yet, had they? Cranberry was a professional, and the boss was full of gratitude.
So…why not one last trick? Make some real money! What could he “obtain” that the boss would pay him another five thousand for?
Something simple but impressive, that would be the trick, and by the time he found out—if he ever did—Heretofore would be on the other side of the continent, with a new name and suntanned beyond recognition.
Yes…the very thing…
THE SUN WAS HOT, and so were the dwarfs. They were mountain dwarfs and were not at home under open skies.
And what were they here for? The king wanted to know if anything valuable was taken out the hole that the golems were digging for the mad smoking woman, but they weren’t allowed to set foot on it, because that would be trespassing. So they sat in the shade and sweated, while, about once a day, the mad smoking woman who smoked all the time came and laid…things on a crude trestle table in front of them. The things had this in common: they were dull.
There was nothing to mine here, everyone knew. It was barren silt and sand all the way down. There was no fresh water. Such plants as survived here stored winter rain in swollen, hollow roots, or lived off the moisture in the sea mist. The place contained nothing of interest. And what came out of the long sloping tunnel bore this out to the point of boredom.
There were bones of old ships, and occasionally the bones of old sailors. There were a couple of coins, one silver, one gold, which were not dull enough and were duly confiscated. There were broken pots and pieces of statue, which were puzzled over, part of an iron cauldron, an anchor with a few links of chain.
It was clear, the dwarfs considered as they sat in the shade, that nothing came here but by boat. But remember: in matters of commerce and gold, never trust anyone who could see over your helmet.
And then there were the golems. They hated golems, because they moved silently, for all their weight, and looked like trolls. They arrived and departed all the time, fetching timbers from who knew where, marching down into the dark…
And then one day golems came pouring out of the hole; there was a lengthy discussion, and the smoking woman marched over to the watchers. They watched her nervously, as fighters do when approached by a self-confident civilian they know they’re not allowed to kill.
In broken dwarfish she told them that the tunnel had collapsed, and she was going to leave. Everything they’d dug out, she said, were gifts for the king. And she left, taking the wretched golems with her.
That was last week. Since then the tunnel had completely fallen in and the blowing sand had covered everything.
THE MONEY LOOKED after itself. It sailed down the centuries, buried in paperwork, hidden behind lawyers, groomed, invested, diverted, converted, laundered, dried, ironed and polished, and kept safe from harm and taxes, and, above all, kept safe from the Lavishes themselves. They knew their descendents—they’d raised them, after all—and so, the money came