Hugh nodded and smiled encouragingly. Rincewind snarled at him.
As a student wizard Rincewind had never achieved high marks in precognition, but now unused circuits in his brain were throbbing and the future might as well have been engraved in bright colors on his eyeballs. The space between his shoulder blades began to itch. The sensible thing to do, he knew, was to buy a horse. It would have to be a fast one, and expensive—offhand, Rincewind couldn’t think of any horse dealer he knew who was rich enough to give change out of almost a whole ounce of gold.
And then, of course, the other five coins would help him set up a useful practice at some safe distance, say two hundred miles. That would be the sensible thing.
But what would happen to Twoflower, all alone in a city where even the cockroaches had an unerring instinct for gold? A man would have to be a real heel to leave him.
The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork smiled, but with his mouth only.
“The Hub Gate, you say?” he murmured.
The guard captain saluted smartly. “Aye, lord. We had to shoot the horse before he would stop.”
“Which, by a fairly direct route, brings you here,” said the Patrician, looking down at Rincewind. “And what have you got to say for yourself?”
It was rumored that an entire wing of the Patrician’s palace was filled with clerks who spent their days collating and updating all the information collected by their master’s exquisitely organized spy system. Rincewind didn’t doubt it. He glanced toward the balcony that ran down one side of the audience room. A sudden run, a nimble jump—a sudden hail of crossbow quarrels. He shuddered.
The Patrician cradled his chins in a beringed hand, and regarded the wizard with eyes as small and hard as beads.
“Let me see,” he said. “Oathbreaking, the theft of a horse, uttering false coinage—yes, I think it’s the Arena for you, Rincewind.”
This was too much.
“I didn’t steal the horse! I bought it fairly!”
“But with false coinage. Technical theft, you see.”
“But those rhinu are solid gold!”
“Rhinu?” The Patrician rolled one of them around in his thick fingers. “Is that what they are called? How interesting. But, as you point out, they are not very similar to dollars…”
“Well, of course they’re not—”
“Ah! you admit it, then?”
Rincewind opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and shut it again.
“Quite so. And on top of these there is, of course, the moral obloquy attendant on the cowardly betrayal of a visitor to this shore. For shame, Rincewind!”
The Patrician waved a hand vaguely. The guards behind Rincewind backed away, and their captain took a few paces to the right. Rincewind suddenly felt very alone.
It is said that when a wizard is about to die Death himself turns up to claim him (instead of delegating the task to a subordinate, such as Disease or Famine, as is usually the case). Rincewind looked around nervously for a tall figure in black (wizards, even failed wizards, have in addition to rods and cones in their eyeballs the tiny octagons that enable them to see into the far octarine, the basic color of which all other colors are merely pale shadows impinging on normal four dimensional space. It is said to be a sort of fluorescent greenish yellow purple).
Was that a flickering shadow in the corner?
“Of course,” said the Patrician, “I could be merciful.”
The shadow disappeared. Rincewind looked up, an expression of insane hope on his face.
“Yes?” he said.
The Patrician waved a hand again. Rincewind saw the guards leave the chamber. Alone with the overlord of the twin cities, he almost wished they would come back.
“Come hither, Rincewind,” said the Patrician. He indicated a bowl of savories on a low onyx table by the throne. “Would you care for a crystallized jellyfish? No?”
“Um,” said Rincewind, “no.”
“Now I want you to listen very carefully to what I am about to say,” said the Patrician amiably, “otherwise you will die. In an interesting fashion. Over a period. Please stop fidgeting like that.
“Since you are a wizard of sorts, you are of course aware that we live upon a world shaped, as it were, like a disc? And that there is said to exist, toward the far rim, a continent which though small is equal in weight to all the mighty land-masses in this hemi-circle? And that this, according to ancient legend, is because it is largely made of gold?”