Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett [111]
There was a discreet drain in the pavement in case people standing in front of the window drooled too much.
Wienrich and Boettcher were, naturally, foreigners, and according to Ankh-Morpork’s Guild of Confectioners, they did not understand the peculiarities of the city’s taste buds. Ankh-Morpork people, said the guild, were hearty, no-nonsense folk who did not want chocolate that was stuffed with cocoa liquor and were certainly not like effete la-di-dah foreigners who wanted cream in everything. In fact, they actually preferred chocolate made mostly from milk, sugar, suet, hooves, lips, miscellaneous squeezings, rat droppings, plaster, flies, tallow, bits of tree, hair, lint, spiders, and powdered cocoa husks. This meant that, according to the food standards of the great chocolate centers in Borogravia and Quirm, Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as “cheese” and only escaped, through being the wrong color, being defined as “tile grout.”
Susan allowed herself one of their cheaper boxes per month. And she could easily stop at the first layer if she wanted to.
“You needn’t come in,” she said, as she opened the shop door. Rigid customers lined the counter.
“Please call me Myria.”
“I don’t think I—”
“Please?” said Lady LeJean meekly. “A name is important.”
Suddenly, in spite of everything, Susan felt a brief pang of sympathy for the creature.
“Oh, very well. Myria, you needn’t come in.”
“I can stand it.”
“But I thought chocolate was a raging temptation?” said Susan, being firm with herself.
“It is.”
They stared up at the shelves behind the counter.
“Myria…Myria,” said Susan, speaking only some of her thoughts aloud. “From the Ephebian word myrios, meaning “innumerable.” And LeJean as a crude pun of ‘legion’…oh dear.”
“We thought a name should say what a thing is,” said her ladyship. “And there is safety in numbers. I am sorry.”
“Well, these are their basic assortments,” said Susan, dismissing the shop display with a wave of her hand. “Let’s try the back room—are you all right?”
“I am fine, I…fine…” murmured Lady LeJean, swaying.
“You’re not going to pig out on me, are you?”
“We…I…know about willpower. The body craves the chocolate but the mind does not. At least…so I tell myself. And it must be true! The mind can overrule the body! Otherwise, what is it for?”
“I’ve often wondered,” said Susan, pushing open another door. “Ah. The magician’s cave…”
“Magic? They used magic here?”
“Nearly right…”
Lady LeJean leaned on the door frame for support when she saw the tables.
“Oh,” she said. “Uh…I can detect…sugar, milk, butter, cream, vanilla, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, raisins, orange peel, various liqueurs, citrus pectin, strawberries, raspberries, essence of violets, cherries, pineapples, pistachios, oranges, limes, lemons, coffee, cocoa—”
“Nothing there to be frightened of, right?” said Susan, surveying the workshop for useful weaponry. “Cocoa is just a rather bitter bean, after all.”
“Yes, but…” Lady LeJean clenched her fists, shut her eyes and bared her teeth, “put them all together and they make—”
“Steady, steady…”
“The will can overrule the emotions, the will can overrule the instincts—” the Auditor chanted.
“Good, good, now just work your way up to the bit where it says chocolate, okay?”
“That’s the hard one!”
In fact, it seemed to Susan, as she walked past the vats and counters, that chocolate lost some of its attraction when you saw it like this. It was the difference between seeing the little heaps of pigment and seeing the whole picture. She selected a syringe that seemed designed to do something intensely personal to female elephants, although she decided that here it was probably used for doing the