Pyramids - Terry Pratchett [9]
Chidder leaned on the window sill.
“Couldn’t you take some of the stuff out of the pyramids, then?” he said.
“Don’t be silly.”
“Sorry.”
Teppic gloomily watched the figures below.
“There’s a lot of people here,” he said, to change the subject. “I didn’t realize it would be so big.” He shivered. “Or so cold,” he added.
“People drop out all the time,” said Chidder. “Can’t stand the course. The important thing is to know what’s what and who’s who. See that fellow over there?”
Teppic followed his pointing finger to a group of older students, who were lounging against the pillars by the entrance.
“The big one? Face like the end of your boot?”
“That’s Fliemoe. Watch out for him. If he invites you for toast in his study, don’t go.”
“And who’s the little kid with the curls?” said Teppic. He pointed to a small lad receiving the attentions of a washed-out looking lady. She was licking her handkerchief and dabbing apparent smudges off his face. When she stopped that, she straightened his tie.
Chidder craned to see. “Oh, just some new kid,” he said. “Arthur someone. Still hanging onto his mummy, I see. He won’t last long.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Teppic. “We do, too, and we’ve lasted for thousands of years.”
A disc of glass dropped into the silent building and tinkled on the floor. There was no other sound for several minutes. Then there was the faint clonk-clonk of an oil can. A shadow that had been lying naturally on the window sill, a morgue for blue-bottles, turned out to be an arm which was moving with vegetable slowness toward the window’s catch.
There was a scrape of metal, and then the whole window swung out in tribological silence.
Teppic dropped over the sill and vanished into the shadow below it.
For a minute or two the dusty space was filled with the intense absence of noise caused by someone moving with extreme care. Once again there was the squirting of oil, and then a metallic whisper as the bolt of a trapdoor leading onto the roof moved gently aside.
Teppic waited for his breath to catch up with him, and in that moment heard the sound. It was down among the white noise at the edge of hearing, but there was no doubt about it. Someone was waiting just above the trapdoor, and they’d just put their hand on a piece of paper to stop it rattling in the breeze.
His own hand dropped from the bolt. He eased his way with exquisite care back across the greasy floor and felt his way along a rough wooden wall until he came to the door. This time he took no chances, but uncorked his oil can and let a silent drop fall onto the hinges.
A moment later he was through. A rat, idly patrolling the drafty passage beyond, had to stop itself from swallowing its own tongue as he floated past.
There was another doorway at the end, and a maze of musty storerooms until he found a stairway. He judged himself to be about thirty yards from the trapdoor. There hadn’t been any flues that he could see. There ought to be a clear shot across the roof.
He hunkered down and pulled out his knife roll, its velvet blackness making a darker oblong in the shadows. He selected a Number Five, not everyone’s throwing knife, but worthwhile if you had the trick of it.
Shortly afterward his head rose very carefully over the edge of the roof, one arm bent behind it but ready to uncurl in a complex interplay of forces that would combine to send a few ounces of steel gliding across the night.
Mericet was sitting by the trapdoor, looking at his clipboard. Teppic’s eyes swiveled to the oblong of the plank bridge, stored meticulously against the parapet a few feet away.
He was certain he had made no noise. He’d have to swear that the examiner heard the sound of his gaze falling on him.
The old man raised his bald head.
“Thank you, Mr. Teppic,” he said, “you may proceed.”
Teppic felt the sweat of his body grow cold. He stared at the plank, and then at the examiner, and then at