#'does it look good across the range of curliness i hit across several days

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

i didn't get a pic the past couple days when the curls were still curling but i am v. v. pleased with my haircut :)

[gaytaztrash]

Bedtime

A fic based on this post: http://theoppositeofprofound.tumblr.com/post/164769171479/a-concept-lup-being-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night

           The moon base had fallen silent hours ago. Every able member of the Bureau had set to work repairing the damage done on the Day of Story and Song, and they’d gotten a lot done, but even three days later, the world was still reeling and exhausted from the shock. Work stopped about the time the sun went down, and everyone was asleep not long after.

           Except Lup.

           Barry and Taako had put the letter she’d sealed with a kiss over a decade ago now into the pod in the back room of the Fantasy Costco, and from the lingering DNA on the seal a fresh new Lup-body had begun to grow, but it wasn’t nearly inhabitable yet. This spectral form couldn’t meditate the way elves were supposed to. She had discovered that in the cycles after she and Barry had become liches. It hadn’t been pleasant during their journey, and it wasn’t pleasant now. For a little while, the quiet and solitude was peaceful, but after the first few hours of the first night it was boring; there was only so long she could feel content watching Barry snore peacefully or Lucretia toss and turn, and she wanted to give Taako and his spooky boyfriend some privacy. She and Barry were still on shaky ground with this world’s Raven Queen, and she wasn’t going to fuck up their chances of getting off easy by interrupting Kravitz’s private sappy time with her brother. No matter how bad she wanted to get back at Taako for doing the same to her and Barry or to her and Lucretia. They would have to strike a deal before she could ruin his good time.  

           So instead, she drifted across the Bureau of Balance campus, looking at the repairs that had been finished and what was still left to do, marveling at how much of Lucretia’s personality was reflected in its construction – the grassy quad covered in graceful trees, exactly the sort of place where she had always loved to sit while she watched and wrote in her notebooks; the glass domes, a style of architecture that she had fallen in love with during their…seventy-first? Seventy-second cycle? It was the seventy-second, right. That had been a peaceful one. They had found the Light in a matter of days and spent the rest sightseeing, and Lucretia had asked Lup along to tour one of the biggest cities in that plane. The downtown area had been filled with domes just like these, rising and falling all around and catching the light from the plane’s two suns, reflecting it off in prisms in every direction. She’d filled a whole notebook with sketches of them and conjectures about their construction. Lup could see it as if it were yesterday: Lucretia’s eyes bright as they flickered from the domes back to her notebook, curls falling into her face until Lup pinned them back with one of the dozen or so hairclips she’d learned to bring with her whenever she went out sightseeing with her. She’d been so vibrant, so full of energy, so young. Now she was the Director, and tired, and it would take time before she finally warmed up again. She’d cut her hair so short. She had always said it would be too difficult to deal with long if she hadn’t had the others’ help. But she had whispered to Lup yesterday that she thought she might start to grow it out again now.

           It was hard to believe after so long that things were finally right. Lup hoped that if she looked around the campus, silent and peaceful, for long enough, she might finally come to believe it.

           There was a light on inside one of the domes.

           Lup frowned. It was three a.m. What reasonable living person on the base was up? Gods, she hoped it wasn’t Lucretia again. The woman needed her rest. She drifted closer.

           A sign above the door into the dome proclaimed it to be the Bureau of Balance library. The light was coming from deep inside; probably a reading nook. Maybe someone had fallen asleep reading in there? It was probably that nerdlord with the beard. She could wake him up and scare him a bit. That would break the monotony just fine. She drifted inside.

           The library oozed Lucretia’s personality, too; the shelves were high and the aisles narrow, muffling sound so that it felt as if it were only her and the books in the world. The shelves opened into little nooks crammed with squashy armchairs and little tables where you could pile your books or set your favorite reading drink (on a coaster, naturally, and away from the books please). It took Lup several wrong turns to track the source of the light to a nook right in the center of the library, and for a moment, she didn’t see anyone there; only piles of books ranging from technical tomes on spellcasting and runes to what looked to be a young adult mystery series. Then she noticed the puff of curly black hair sticking up above the pile. Not the nerdlord; the nerdbaby. It was Angus McDonald. He was awake.

           “What the hell are you still doing up, little man?” Lup asked.

           Angus jumped and looked up from his book. His eyes were puffy and there were dark circles in the skin underneath them that his glasses didn’t quite cover. It wasn’t a good look for a kid. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry, miss – Miss Lup, I’m sorry, I didn’t think that anyone else was awake and I just couldn’t sleep so I thought –”

           “You’re fine, kiddo,” Lup said. “Knock off that ‘Miss Lup’ garbage, though. We fought in a battle together, I think we’re there. Do you know what time it is?”

           “Three ten,” Angus said.

           “That’s right,” Lup said. “And you’re ten, and I’m going to bet that’s way past your bedtime. I know you’re the closest there is to a responsible adult on this base, but somebody ought to have put you to bed about six hours ago.”

           “I tried, Miss, but I couldn’t sleep,” Angus said. “I thought this was a good place to not bother anybody.”

           Lup couldn’t exactly sit, incorporeal as she was, but she drifted down into the armchair next to Angus’s and rested there. “You’re too polite for your own good, little man,” she told him. “You’re a smart kid – haven’t you figured out by now how many people on this base care about you?”

           Angus looked down. “I…I just don’t want to bother anyone,” he said. “Everyone’s so tired from Story and Song and working to repair the base. The only person who might be up is the Direc… Miss Lucretia, and she needs to sleep, too.”

           “You need it as much as she does,” Lup said. She rose. “Come on, Ango, we’re bringing you back to your room and I’ll tuck you in. I’d tell you a bedtime story, but I think Fisher and Junior already told you most of my best ones.” She waved a hand and a bookmark flew in to mark Angus’s spot before the book snapped shut.

           “I’m ten years old, I don’t need to be tucked in,” Angus said. He grabbed for the book as Lup moved it back onto the pile, but he missed. “I’m not going to sleep. Please give that back.”

           “You’re stubborn. I see why Taako likes you. Nope,” she said, and magicked the whole pile out of reach when Angus grabbed for it again. “You need sleep, kiddo! I’m making it my duty to not leave you alone until you get it.”

           “I’m not going to sleep, Miss Lup.”

           “And why the fuck not?”

           “I just can’t!”

           Lup folded her arms. “Well, I’ve got no choice then, have I?” she asked, and cast Sleep.

           A soft breeze spun around the armchair that Angus was in. The kid’s eyelids drooped, and he swayed in his seat for a moment; then the breeze faded, Angus blinked, and he frowned at Lup. “Did you just try to magic me to sleep, Miss?”

           “…Mayyyyybe,” Lup said. Internally, she swore. Son of a bitch. I thought that would work.

           Angus folded his arms. “I appreciate your concern, Miss Lup, but we fought a battle together, I think we’re there.”

           Lup stared at him for a moment. Then she broke down laughing. “I like you a lot, little man,” she said. “But you’ve met your stubborn match.” Then she flung the hem of her robe around and vanished from the library.

           She reappeared out in the middle of the grassy quad and started to pace. Who would be her best bet in helping to get the kid to bed? Magnus, Merle, and Taako had met him first. Magnus loved him unreservedly, but he could barely be trusted to be responsible for himself. Merle was also untrustworthy; he’d told her about his own children and Lup had had to work not to laugh at the idea. Merle fuckin’ Highchurch, a father of two? And moreover, he refused to admit he liked the kid, although after a hundred years with him Lup knew enough to be able to tell that he really did. Taako liked him, too, but he was more likely to keep him up encouraging him to use his newly-learned magic to play inconvenient and mildly illegal pranks on everyone in the Bureau than to get him to go to bed. Lucretia adored him, but Angus was right: she needed sleep just as much as he did. Lup was sure she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in at least ten years. Barry had only known him a few days. Davenport him had known him as long as Lucretia, but he’d spent most of that time as a shadow of himself. The closest interaction they had had was silently playing chess one day, according to what Davenport had told her. He’d expressed affection for him, but he didn’t know the kid. That, and he was either currently asleep curled around Merle or awake, and if he was awake, Lup didn’t want to think about what was going on in Merle’s chambers.

           Magnus. Magnus was the best bet. She sighed, squared her shoulders, and headed for the elevator that led down to the boys’ chambers.

           It was dark in there, except for the faint light of the world below coming through the window in the floor. Plants lined every flat surface in the apartment that wasn’t covered in half-finished and completed woodcarvings; faint, long-ingrained smells of meals past emanated from the kitchen. Lup felt a wave of nostalgia hit her. Add several dozen books, scattered pens and notebooks, a few pairs of spare glasses, and instruments and novelties picked up from a hundred worlds, and it was the Starblaster in miniature. They’d forgotten everything, but they hadn’t changed. As soon as they’d come together again, they’d fallen into their old routines without even realizing.

           The bedrooms were alcoves on the left side of the room, blocked off from the rest by hanging curtains. Lup made for the one made from wood beads. She brushed through it without rustling the strings – there were benefits to being incorporeal.

           A large lump, covered by blankets despite the relative warmth of the night, marked Magnus in the bed. Muffled snoring came from below the pile. It shifted slightly as Lup whispered, “Magnus. Mags. Wake up.”

           Magnus muttered something incoherent. Lup repeated his name, a bit louder this time. “I need your help, Maggie.”

           The lump shifted again. After Lup called him a few more times, he finally sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Wassup Lulu?” he mumbled. “It’s the middleufthenight. I was sleepin’.”

           “I know, and I’m sorry about that,” Lup said. “I need you to give me a hand with something.”

           “What d’you need?” he asked.

           “Your boy detective,” she said. “He’s in the library and he won’t go to sleep.”

           Magnus hid a yawn behind a hand. “You’ve got magic,” he said.

           “Little shit resisted. Have I told you how much I love the kid?”

           “Uh-huh. ‘Kay, I’ll go with. Lemme find pants.”

           Lup sighed. “I was hoping you’d grow out of sleeping nude,” she said. “Do you know how many times I wanted to scrub my eyes out with bleach on the Starblaster?”

           Magnus grinned and flipped her off as he got up. Lup turned determinedly away. She heard Magnus rustling around on the floor. “You of all people oughtta get it,” he said. “How much time did you spend without a shirt on after that fantasy HRT kicked in? Same deal.”

           “Not the same deal. Boobs and penis are not in the same category of body parts.”

           “Whatever.” There was a bit more rustling. Lup kept her eyes averted until she heard a noise that definitely did not come from Magnus. Then she turned. There was still a lump, albeit much smaller, under the blankets, and it was moving.

           “Hey Maggie.”

           “Huh?”

           Lup folded her arms. “Who were you sleeping naked with in your bed?”

           “Uh.” Magnus had stopped with his pants halfway zipped. “Tits.”

           Lup grinned. She couldn’t see colors in the dark, but she knew Magnus was starting to blush bright red. “You wanna tell me who you’re fucking, my dude?”

           As Magnus scrambled for words, the lump moved again, and a head popped out of the mass of blankets. The face was almost covered with a mass of long bedhead curls, but Lup made out a short, curly beard and a pair of squinting, bleary eyes. “Mags?” the person asked in a voice that sounded as if they had a bad head cold. “Wuzgoinon?”

Lup clapped a hand to her mouth, but since they were both spectral, it didn’t do anything to hide her shout of laughter.

           “You’re fucking the nerdlord???”

           “Great, I’m glad the whole base knows now,” Magnus muttered, flushing deeper and deeper by the second. “Lucas, go back to sleep, apparently Angus won’t go to bed and I’m going to help.”

           There were sounds of stirring in the other boys’ bedrooms. Magnus sighed. “Fuck you,” he told Lup.

           “Why is he still awake?” Lucas asked blearily. “Do you need a hand, what’s up?” He reached for the bedside table and fumbled for a few seconds before he found his glasses and shoved them back onto his face. Lup had doubled over. She shouldn’t laugh, she shouldn’t laugh, she shouldn’t laugh –

           Four heads poked through the curtain, one above the other, and Lup lost it. “What the hell is going on in here?” Merle asked. “It’s fucking three in the morning! Some of us are trying to sleep.”

           “What in the world is he doing here?” Taako asked, looking at Lucas.

           “Would you all please shut up,” Davenport said. “Lup! What’s happening?”

           Lup tried to push down her laughter. “I – I was around the base because I can’t sleep like this and I found –” She stopped for a second and held back another peal of laughter – “I found Angus awake in the library and wanted Magnus’s help convincing him to go to bed, and when I came to get him I found – I found –” She burst out laughing again, pointing at Lucas.

           Magnus finished zipping up his pants. “I’m fucking coming, let’s just get Ango to bed and then forget about this,” he said.

           “No, no, no,” Taako said, “we are not forgetting about this. Since when have you and Lucy there been uhhhhh, doin’ it, huh?”

           “Please don’t call me Lucy,” Lucas said.

           “Please just go back to sleep, you guys,” Magnus said. “This isn’t a big deal.”

           “I would disagree,” Kravitz said.

           “Can I please just go make the little kid who is up at three in the morning go to bed?” Magnus asked. He picked another pair of pants up off the floor and threw them at Lucas, who didn’t raise his hands in time and caught them with his face. Lup started howling with laughter again. Taako joined her. Davenport had dropped his head into his hands. Lucas pulled the pants under his pile of blankets and started to put them on.

           “Well, we’re all up, we might as well make it a group mission at this point,” Merle said. “You wanna go muscle the kid to sleep, Dav?”

           “I guess,” Davenport said through his hands. “Let’s make this quick. I don’t want to think about what I just saw here.”

When Lup led her army of pseudo-parents into the library, she heard faint voices coming from the middle nook where Angus had holed up with his pile of books. She frowned and looked at the others. Most of them shrugged. Davenport cocked his head to listen and then said, “I think that’s Barry and Lucretia.”

           Lup sighed. “My useless insomniac partners,” she muttered. “All right, that’s just a couple more we have to put to bed.” She marched through the shelves and stopped in the middle of the nook, looking around at Angus, Barry, and Lucretia.

           “Why the fuck are you people all still awake.”

           “Dear, please don’t swear in front of Angus,” Lucretia said.

           “I work with adults, Miss Lucretia, I’m used to it,” Angus said.

           Barry looked around. “So babe,” he said, “not that I mind, but why are all of you here?”

           “Well, I was planning to just have Maggie pick the kid up and make him go to bed, but I ended up with a whole lot more backup,” Lup said. “Which is good, because apparently I have to force the two of you to go to sleep, too. What is going on?”

           “Miss Lucretia and Mr. Barry couldn’t sleep either and came here,” Angus said. “Why is Mr. Lucas here?”

           “You know, that is a good question,” Taako said. “Magnus, why is Mr. Lucas here?”

           “Shut the hell up, Taako.”

           “Watch your fucking language, Magnus,” Merle said.

           “Come on,” Lup said. “Time for bed, all three of you. Get up.”

           “Lup, dear, I’m perfectly capable of deciding for myself when I’ll go to bed –”

           “Lucretia, you look like you haven’t slept since we got to this plane. Magnus, do your thing.”

           Magnus picked Angus up out of his chair and slung him over his shoulder fireman-style. Lup caught Taako’s eye and winked; then she snapped and cast Levitation on Lucretia. Taako followed suit and cast on Barry. They both rose from their chairs with cries of protest.

           “Come on!” Lup ordered. “We’re all going the fuck to bed!”

           She turned and marched with the others out of the library and back towards the elevator.

           On the way there, she positioned herself between Kravitz and Lucas, who were helping to push Barry’s and Lucretia’s floating forms along. “Did the kid tell you why he couldn’t sleep?” she asked them.

           Lucretia sighed. “He’s had a difficult few days,” she said. “He couldn’t stand being alone in the dark.”

           “Lucretia and I were hoping to at least help him fall asleep in the library if he couldn’t fall asleep on his own in his room,” Barry said, “but apparently you had other plans.”

           Lup grinned. “I’ve always got a plan of my own, babe, that’s a guarantee,” she said.  

           Back in the chambers, they collected blankets and pillows from the boys’ rooms and the cushions from the couch and chair and made a sort of nest over the window in the floor. “Nobody is sleeping alone tonight,” Lup declared.

           With nine people curled up, the floor was crowded, but it looked incredibly cozy, Lup thought as the lights went out and the others began to fall asleep. She drifted down to occupy a clear space of floor a little bit away. She watched them and smiled.

The nest came again, night after night, and months later, when her body re-formed, she finally joined them. She closed her eyes happily, nestled between Barry and Lucretia, listening to the soft rise and fall of their breath and feeling their warmth against her. It had taken so long to find her family. None of them would ever let go again.

[readbookywooks]

This is the bright candlelit room where the life-timers are stored – shelf upon shelf of them, squat hourglasses, one for every living person, pouring their fine sand from the future into the past. The accumulated hiss of the falling grains makes the room roar like the sea. This is the owner of the room, stalking through it with a preoccupied air. His name is Death. But not any Death. This is the Death whose particular sphere of operations is, well, not a sphere at all, but the Discworld, which is flat and rides on the back of four giant elephants who stand on the shell of the enormous star turtle Great A'Tuin, and which is bounded by a waterfall that cascades endlessly into space. Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten. Death clicks across the black and white tiled floor on toes of bone, muttering inside his cowl as his skeletal fingers count along the rows of busy hourglasses. Finally he finds one that seems to satisfy him, lifts it carefully from its shelf and carries it across to the nearest candle. He holds it so that the light lints off it, and stares at the little point of reflected brilliance. The steady gaze from those twinkling eye-sockets encompasses the world turtle, sculling through the deeps of space, carapace scarred by comets and pitted by meteors. One day even Great A'Tuin will die, Death knows; now, that would be a challenge. But the focus of his gaze dives onwards towards the blue-green magnificence of the Disc itself, turning slowly under its tiny orbiting sun. Now it curves away towards the great mountain range called the Ramtops. The Ramtops are full of deep valleys and unexpected crags and considerably more geography than they know what to do with. They have their own peculiar weather, full of shrapnel rain and whiplash winds and permanent thunder-storms. Some people say it's all because the Ramtops are the home of old, wild magic. Mind you, some people will say anything. Death blinks, adjusts for depth of vision. Now he sees the grassy country on the turnwise slopes of the mountains. Now he sees a particular hillside. Now he sees a field. Now he sees a boy, running. Now he watches. Now, in a voice like lead slabs being dropped on granite, he says: YES. There was no doubt that there was something magical in the soil of that hilly, broken area which – because of the strange tint that it gave to the local flora – was known as the octarine grass country. For example, it was one of the few places on the Disc where plants produced reannual varieties. Reannuals are plants that grow backwards in time. You sow the seed this year and they grow last year. Mort's family specialised in distilling the wine from reannual grapes. These were very powerful and much sought after by fortune-tellers, since of course they enabled them to see the future. The only snag was that you got the hangover the morning before, and had to drink a lot to get over it. Reannual growers tended to be big, serious men, much given to introspection and close examination of the calendar. A farmer who neglects to sow ordinary seeds only loses the crop, whereas anyone who forgets to sow seeds of a crop that has already been harvested twelve months before risks disturbing the entire fabric of causality, not to mention acute embarrassment. It was also acutely embarrassing to Mort's family that the youngest son was not at all serious and had about the same talent for horticulture that you would find in a dead starfish. It wasn't that he was unhelpful, but he had the land of vague, cheerful helpfulness that serious men soon learn to dread. There was something infectious, possibly even fatal, about it. He was tall, red-haired and freckled, with the sort of body that seems to be only marginally under its owner's control; it appeared to have been built out of knees. On this particular day it was hurtling across the high fields, waving its hands and yelling. Mort's father and uncle watched it disconsolately from the stone wall. 'What I don't understand,' said father Lezek, 'is that the birds don't even fly away. I'd fly away, if I saw it coining towards me.' 'Ah. The human body's a wonderful thing. I mean, his legs go all over the place but there's a fair turn of speed there.' Mort reached the end of a furrow. An overfull woodpigeon lurched slowly out of his way. 'His heart's in the right place, mind,' said Lezek, carefully. 'Ah. 'Course, 'tis the rest of him that isn't.' 'He's clean about the house. Doesn't eat much,' said Lezek. 'No, I can see that.' Lezek looked sideways at his brother, who was staring fixedly at the sky. 'I did hear you'd got a place going up at your farm, Hamesh,' he said. 'Ah. Got an apprentice in, didn't I?' 'Ah,' said Lezek gloomily, 'when was that, then?' 'Yesterday,' said his brother, lying with rattlesnake speed. 'All signed and sealed. Sorry. Look, I got nothing against young Mort, see, he's as nice a boy as you could wish to meet, it's just that —' 'I know, I know,' said Lezek. 'He couldn't find his arse with both hands.' They stared at the distant figure. It had fallen over. Some pigeons had waddled over to inspect it. 'He's not stupid, mind,' said Hamesh. 'Not what you'd call stupid.' 'There's a brain there all right,' Lezek conceded. 'Sometimes he starts thinking so hard you has to hit him round the head to get his attention. His granny taught him to read, see. I reckon it overheated his mind.' Mort had got up and tripped over his robe. 'You ought to set him to a trade,' said Hamesh, reflectively. 'The priesthood, maybe. Or wizardry. They do a lot of reading, wizards.' They looked at each other. Into both their minds stole an inkling of what Mort might be capable of if he got his well-meaning hands on a book of magic. 'All right,' said Hamesh hurriedly. 'Something else, then. There must be lots of things he could turn his hand to.' 'He starts thinking too much, that's the trouble,' said Lezek. 'Look at him now. You don't think about how to scare birds, you just does it. A normal boy, I mean.' Hamesh scratched his chin thoughtfully. 'It could be someone else's problem,' he said. Lezek's expression did not alter, but there was a subtle change around his eyes. 'How do you mean?' he said. 'There's the hiring fair at Sheepridge next week. You set him as a prentice, see, and his new master'll have the job of knocking him into shape. 'Tis the law. Get him indentured, and 'tis binding.' Lezek looked across the field at his son, who was examining a rock. 'I wouldn't want anything to happen to him, mind,' he said doubtfully. 'We're quite fond of him, his mother and me. You get used to people.' 'It'd be for his own good, you'll see. Make a man of him.' 'Ah. Well. There's certainly plenty of raw material,' sighed Lezek. Mort was getting interested in the rock. It had curly shells in it, relics of the early days of the world when the Creator had made creatures out of stone, no-one knew why. Mort was interested in lots of things. Why people's teeth fitted together so neatly, for example. He'd given that one a lot of thought. Then there was the puzzle of why the sun came out during the day, instead of at night when the light would come in useful. He knew the standard explanation, which somehow didn't seem satisfying. In short, Mort was one of those people who are more dangerous than a bag full of rattlesnakes. He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe. Which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one. The Creator had a lot of remarkably good ideas when he put the world together, but making it understandable hadn't been one of them. Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals. His father was yelling at him, as usual. Mort threw the rock at a pigeon, which was almost too full to lurch out of the way, and wandered back across the field. And that was why Mort and his father walked down through the mountains into Sheepridge on Hogswatch Eve, with Mort's rather sparse possessions in a sack on the back of a donkey. The town wasn't much more than four sides to a cobbled square, lined with shops that provided all the service industry of the farming community. After five minutes Mort came out of the tailors wearing a loose fitting brown garment of imprecise function, which had been understandably unclaimed by a previous owner and had plenty of room for him to grow, on the assumption that he would grow into a nineteen-legged elephant. His father regarded him critically. 'Very nice,' he said, 'for the money.' 'It itches,' said Mort. 'I think there's things in here with me.' There's thousands of lads in the world'd be very thankful for a nice warm —' Lezek paused, and gave up – 'garment like that, my lad.' 'I could share it with them?' Mort said hopefully. 'You've got to look smart,' said Lezek severely. 'You've got to make an impression, stand out in the crowd.' There was no doubt about it. He would. They set out among the throng crowding the square, each listening to his own thoughts. Usually Mort enjoyed visiting the town, with its cosmopolitan atmosphere and strange dialects from villages as far away as five, even ten miles, but this time he felt unpleasantly apprehensive, as if he could remember something that hadn't happened yet. The fair seemed to work like this: men looking for work stood in ragged lines in the centre of the square. Many of them sported little symbols in their hats to tell the world the kind of work they were trained in – shepherds wore a wisp of wool, carters a hank of horsehair, interior decorators a strip of rather interesting hessian wallcovering, and so on. The boys seeking apprenticeships were clustered on the Hub side of the square. 'You just go and stand there, and someone comes and offers you an apprenticeship,' said Lezek, his voice trimmed with uncertainty. 'If they like the look of you, that is.' 'How do they do that?' said Mort. 'Well,' said Lezek, and paused. Hamesh hadn't explained about this bit. He drew on his limited knowledge of the marketplace, which was restricted to livestock sales, and ventured, 'I suppose they count your teeth and that. And make sure you don't wheeze and your feet are all right. I shouldn't let on about the reading, it unsettles people.' 'And then what?' said Mort. 'Then you go and learn a trade,' said Lezek. 'What trade in particular?' 'Well . . . carpentry is a good one,' Lezek hazarded. 'Or thievery. Someone's got to do it.' Mort looked at his feet. He was a dutiful son, when he remembered, and if being an apprentice was what was expected of him then he was determined to be a good one. Carpentry didn't sound very promising, though – wood had a stubborn life of its own, and a tendency to split. And official thieves were rare in the Ramtops, where people weren't rich enough to afford them. 'All right,' he said eventually, 'I'll go and give it a try. But what happens if I don't get prenticed?' Lezek scratched his head. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I expect you just wait until the end of the fair. At midnight. I suppose.' And now midnight approached. A light frost began to crisp the cobblestones. In the ornamental clock tower that overlooked the square a couple of delicately-carved little automatons whirred out of trapdoors in the clockface and struck the quarter hour. Fifteen minutes to midnight. Mort shivered, but the crimson fires of shame and stubbornness flared up inside him, hotter than the slopes of Hell. He blew on his fingers for something to do and stared up at the freezing sky, trying to avoid the stares of the few stragglers among what remained of the fair.