Sourcery

at the nearest drinkers. After that one thing sort of led to another and pretty soon everyone was fighting to get something—either away, out or even.
    Rincewind found himself pulled relentlessly behind the bar. The landlord was sitting on his moneybags under the counter with two machetes crossed on his knees, enjoying a quiet drink. Occasionally the sound of breaking furniture would make him wince.
    The last thing Rincewind saw before he was dragged away was the Librarian. Despite looking like a hairy rubber sack full of water, the orangutan had the weight and reach of any man in the room and was currently sitting on a guard’s shoulders and trying, with reasonable success, to unscrew his head.
    Of more concern to Rincewind was the fact that he was being dragged upstairs.
    “My dear lady,” he said desperately. “What do you have in mind?”
    “Is there a way onto the roof?”
    “Yes. What’s in this box?”
    “Shhh!”
    She halted at a bend in the dingy corridor, reached into a belt pouch and scattered a handful of small metal objects on the floor behind them. Each one was made of four nails welded together so that, however the things fell, one was always pointing upwards.
    She looked critically at the nearest doorway.
    “You haven’t got about four feet of cheesewire on you, have you?” she said wistfully. She’d drawn another throwing knife and was throwing it up and catching it again.
    “I don’t think so,” said Rincewind weakly.
    “Pity. I’ve run out. Okay, come on.”
    “Why? I haven’t done anything!”
    She went to the nearest window, pushed open the shutters and paused with one leg over the sill.
    “Fine,” she said, over her shoulder. “Stay here and explain it to the guards.”
    “Why are they chasing you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Oh, come on! There must be a reason!”
    “Oh, there’s plenty of reasons. I just don’t know which one. Are you coming?”
    Rincewind hesitated. The Patrician’s personal guard was not known for its responsive approach to community policing, preferring to cut bits off instead. Among the things they took a dim view of was, well, basically, people being in the same universe. Running away from them was likely to be a capital offense.
    “I think maybe I’ll come along with you,” he said gallantly. “A girl can come to harm all alone in this city.”

    Freezing fog filled the streets of Ankh-Morpork. The flares of street traders made little yellow haloes in the smothering billows.
    The girl peered around a corner.
    “We’ve lost them,” she said. “Stop shaking. You’re safe now.”
    “What, you mean I’m all alone with a female homicidal maniac?” said Rincewind. “Fine.”
    She relaxed and laughed at him.
    “I was watching you,” she said. “An hour ago you were afraid that your future was going to be dull and uninteresting.”
    “I want it to be dull and uninteresting,” said Rincewind bitterly. “I’m afraid it’s going to be short.”
    “Turn your back,” she commanded, stepping into an alley.
    “Not on your life,” he said.
    “I’m going to take my clothes off.”
    Rincewind spun around, his face red. There was a rustling behind him, and a waft of scent. After a while she said, “You can look around now.”
    He didn’t.
    “You needn’t worry. I’ve put some more on.”
    He opened his eyes. The girl was wearing a demure white lace dress with fetchingly puffed sleeves. He opened his mouth. He realized with absolute clarity that up to now the trouble he had been in was simple, modest and nothing he couldn’t talk his way out of given a decent chance or, failing that, a running start. His brain started to send urgent messages to his sprinting muscles, but before they could get through she’d grabbed his arm again.
    “You really shouldn’t be so nervous,” she said sweetly. “Now, let’s have a look at this thing.”
    She pulled the lid off the round box in Rincewind’s unprotesting hands, and lifted out the Archchancellor’s hat.
    The octarines around its crown blazed in all eight colors of the spectrum, creating the kind of effects in the foggy alley that it would take a very clever special effects director and a whole battery of star filters to achieve by any non-magical means. As she raised it high in the air it created its own nebula of colors that very few people ever see in legal circumstances.
    Rincewind sank gently to his knees.
    She looked down at him, puzzled.
    “Legs given