Mort - Terry Pratchett [8]
Death shook his head.
THEY DO IT ALL THEMSELVES, he said. THERE’S NO MAGIC. PEOPLE CAN’T SEE ME, THEY SIMPLY WON’T ALLOW THEMSELVES TO DO IT. UNTIL IT’S TIME, OF COURSE. WIZARDS CAN SEE ME, AND CATS. BUT YOUR AVERAGE HUMAN…NO, NEVER. He blew a smoke ring at the sky, and added, STRANGE BUT TRUE.
Mort watched the smoke ring wobble into the sky and drift away towards the river.
“I can see you,” he said.
THAT’S DIFFERENT.
The Klatchian waiter arrived with the bill, and placed it in front of Death. The man was squat and brown, with a hairstyle like a coconut gone nova, and his round face creased into a puzzled frown when Death nodded politely to him. He shook his head like someone trying to dislodge soap from his ears, and walked away.
Death reached into the depths of his robe and brought out a large leather bag full of assorted copper coinage, most of it blue and green with age. He inspected the bill carefully. Then he counted out a dozen coins.
COME, he said, standing up. WE MUST GO.
Mort trotted along behind him as he stalked out of the garden and into the street, which was still fairly busy even though there were the first suggestions of dawn on the horizon.
“What are we going to do now?”
BUY YOU SOME NEW CLOTHES.
“These were new today—yesterday, I mean.”
REALLY?
“Father said the shop was famous for its budget clothing,” said Mort, running to keep up.
IT CERTAINLY ADDS A NEW TERROR TO POVERTY.
They turned into a wider street leading into a more affluent part of the city (the torches were closer together and the middens further apart). There were no stalls and alley corner traders here, but proper buildings with signs hanging outside. They weren’t mere shops, they were emporia; they had purveyors in them, and chairs, and spittoons. Most of them were open even at this time of night, because the average Ankhian trader can’t sleep for thinking of the money he’s not making.
“Doesn’t anyone ever go to bed around here?” said Mort.
THIS IS A CITY, said Death, and pushed open the door of a clothing store. When they came out twenty minutes later Mort was wearing a neatly-fitting black robe with faint silver embroidery, and the shopkeeper was looking at a handful of antique copper coins and wondering precisely how he came to have them.
“How do you get all those coins?” asked Mort.
IN PAIRS.
An all-night barber sheared Mort’s hair into the latest fashion among the city’s young bloods while Death relaxed in the next chair, humming to himself. Much to his surprise, he felt in a good humor.
In fact after a while he pushed his hood back and glanced up at the barber’s apprentice, who tied a towel around his neck in that unseeing, hypnotized way that Mort was coming to recognize, and said, A SPLASH OF TOILET WATER AND A POLISH, MY GOOD MAN.
An elderly wizard having a beard-trim on the other side stiffened when he heard those somber, leaden tones and swung around. He blanched and muttered a few protective incantations after Death turned, very slowly for maximum effect, and treated him to a grin.
A few minutes later, feeling rather self-conscious and chilly around the ears, Mort was heading back towards the stables where Death had lodged his horse. He tried an experimental swagger; he felt his new suit and haircut rather demanded it. It didn’t quite work.
Mort awoke.
He lay looking at the ceiling while his memory did a fast-rewind and the events of the previous day crystallized in his mind like little ice cubes.
He couldn’t have met Death. He couldn’t have eaten a meal with a skeleton with glowing blue eyes. It had to be a weird dream. He couldn’t have ridden pillion on a great white horse that had cantered up into the sky and then went…
…where?
The answer flowed into his mind with all the inevitability of a tax demand.
Here.
His searching hands reached up to his cropped hair, and down to sheets of some smooth slippery material. It was much finer than the wool he was used to at home, which was coarse and always smelled of sheep; it felt like warm, dry ice.
He swung out of