The reason that they had done well, he’d realized, was that sooner or later people went soft. Take the trollish Breccia, f’rinstance. Once the Honk and Slab route had been established all the way to Uberwald, and the rival clans had been eliminated, the trolls had got soft. The tons acted like society lords.{17} It was the same everywhere — the big old gangs and families reached some kind of equilibrium with society and settled down to be a specialist kind of businessman. They cut down on henchmen and employed butlers instead. And then, when there was a bit of difficulty, they needed muscle that could think … and there was the New Firm, ready and willing.
And waiting.
One day there’d be time for a new generation, Mr Pin thought. One with a new way of doing things, one without the shackles of tradition holding them back. Happening people. Mr Tulip, for example, happened all the time.
‘Hey, will you — ing look at this?’ said the happening Tulip, who had uncovered another painting. ‘Signed by Gogli, but it’s a — ing fake. Look at the way the light falls here, willya? And the leaves on this tree? If — ing Gogli painted that, it was with his — ing foot. Probably by some — ing pupil …’
While they had been marking time in the city Mr Pin had followed Mr Tulip, trailing scouring powder and canine worming tablets, through one after another of the city’s art galleries. The man had insisted. It had been an education, mostly for the curators.
Mr Tulip had the instinct for art which he did not have for chemistry. Sneezing icing sugar and dribbling foot powder, he was ushered into private galleries, where he ran his bloodshot eye over nervously proffered trays of ivory miniatures.
Mr Pin had watched in silent admiration while his colleague spoke colourfully and at length on the differences between ivory faked the old way, with bones, and the — ing new way the — ing dwarfs had come up with, using — ing refined oil, chalk and — ing Spirits of Nacle.
He’d lurched over to the tapestries, declaimed at length about high and low weaving, burst into tears in front of a verdant scene, and then demonstrated that the gallery’s prized thirteenth-century Sto Lat tapestry couldn’t be more than a hundred years old because, see that — ing bit of purple there? No way was that — ing dye around then. ‘And … what’s this? An Agatean embalming pot from the P’gi Su Dynasty?{18} Someone took you to the — ing cleaners, mister. The glaze is rubbish.’
It was astounding, and Mr Pin had been so enthralled that he had all but forgotten to slip a few small valuable items into his pocket. But in truth he was familiar with Tulip on art. When they had occasionally to torch a premises Mr Tulip always made sure that any truly irreplaceable pieces were removed first, even though that meant taking extra time to tie the inhabitants to their beds. Somewhere under that self-inflicted scar tissue and at the heart of that shuddering anger was the soul of a true connoisseur with an unerring instinct for beauty. It was a strange thing to find in the body of a man who would mainline bath salts.
The big doors at the other end of the room swung open, revealing the dark space beyond.
‘Mr Tulip?’ said Mr Pin.
Tulip drew himself away from a painstaking examination of a possible Tapasi table, with its magnificent inlay work involving dozens of — ing rare veneers.
‘Huh?’
‘Time to meet the bosses again,’ said Mr Pin.
William was just getting ready to leave his office for good when someone knocked at his door.
He opened it cautiously, but it was pushed the rest of the way.
‘You utterly, utterly — ungrateful person!’
It wasn’t a nice thing to be called, especially by a young lady. She used a simple word like ‘ungrateful’ in a way that would require a dash and an ‘ing’ in the mouth of Mr Tulip.
William had seen Sacharissa Cripslock before, generally helping her grandfather in his tiny workshop. He’d never paid her much attention. She wasn’t particularly attractive, but she wasn’t particularly bad-looking, either. She was just a girl in an apron, doing slightly dainty things in the background, such as light dusting and arranging flowers. Insofar as he’d formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.
Now he could see her a lot plainer, mostly because she was advancing towards him across the room, and in the light-headed way of people who think they’re just about to die he realized that she was quite good-looking if considered over several centuries. Concepts of beauty change over the years, and two hundred years ago Sacharissa’s eyes would have made the great painter Caravati bite his brush in half; three hundred years ago the sculptor Mauvaise would have taken one look at her chin and dropped his chisel on his foot; a thousand years ago the Ephebian poets would have agreed that her nose alone was capable of launching at least forty ships. And she had good medieval ears.
Her hand was quite modern, though, and it caught William a stinging blow on the cheek.
‘That twenty dollars a month was nearly all we had!’
‘Sorry? What?’
‘All right, he isn’t very fast, but in his day he was one of the best engravers in the business!’
‘Oh … yes. Er …’ William had a sudden flash of guilt about Mr Cripslock.
‘And you took it away, just like that!’
‘I didn’t mean to! The dwarfs just … things just happened!’
‘You’re working for them?’
‘Sort of … with them …’ said William.
‘While we starve, I suppose?’
Sacharissa stood there panting. She had a well-crafted supply of other features that never go out of fashion at all and are perfectly at home in any century. She clearly believed that severe, old-fashioned dresses toned these down. They did not.
‘Look, I’m stuck with them,’ said William, trying not to stare. ‘I mean, stuck with the dwarfs. Lord Vetinari was very … definite about it. And it’s suddenly all become very complicated—’
‘The Guild of Engravers is going to be livid about this, you do know that?’ she demanded.
‘Er … yes.’ A desperate idea struck William rather harder than her hand. ‘That’s a point. You wouldn’t like to, er, be official about that, would you? You know: “We are livid,” says spokesm— spokeswoman for the Guild of Engravers?’
‘Why?’ she said suspiciously.
‘I’m desperate for things to put in my next edition,’ said William desperately. ‘Look, can you help me? I can give you — oh, twenty pence an item, and I could use at least five a day.’
She opened her mouth to snap a reply, but calculation cut in. ‘A dollar a day?’ she said.
‘More, if they’re nice and long,’ said William wildly.
‘For that letter thing you do?’
‘Yes.’
‘A dollar?’
‘Yes.’
She eyed him with mistrust. ‘You can’t afford that, can you? I thought you only got thirty dollars yourself. You told grandfather.’
‘Things have moved on a bit. I haven’t caught up with it myself, to tell you the truth.’
She was still looking at him doubtfully, but natural Ankh-Morpork interest in the distant prospect of a dollar was gaining the upper hand.
‘Well, I hear things,’ she began. ‘And … well, writing things down? I suppose that’s a suitable job for a lady, isn’t it? It’s practically cultural.’