Maskerade

anything?” said Salzella.
    “I saw a great creature with great flapping wings and great big holes where his eyes should be!!” said Christine.
    “I’m afraid I just saw something white up in the ceiling,” said Agnes. “Sorry.”
    She blushed, aware of how useless that sounded. Perdita would have seen a mysterious cloaked figure or something…something interesting…
    Salzella smiled at her. “You mean you just see things that are really there?” he said. “I can see you haven’t been with the opera for long, dear. But I may say I’m pleased to have a level-headed person around here for once—”
    “Oh, no !” screamed someone.
    “It’s the Ghost!!” shrieked Christine, automatically.
    “Er. It’s the young man behind the organ,” said Agnes. “Sorry.”
    “Observant as well as level-headed,” said Salzella. “Whereas I can see that you, Christine, will fit right in here. What’s the matter, André?”
    A fair-haired young man peered around the organ pipes.
    “Someone’s been smashing things, Mr. Salzella,” he said mournfully. “The pallet springs and the backfalls and everything. Completely ruined. I’m sure I won’t be able to get a tune out of it. And it’s priceless .”
    Salzella sighed. “All right. I’ll tell Mister Bucket,” he said. “Thank you, everyone.”
    He gave Agnes a gloomy nod, and strode off.

    “You shouldn’t ort to do that to people,” said Nanny Ogg in a vague sort of way, as the coach began to get up speed.
    She looked around with a wide, friendly grin at the now rather disheveled occupants of the coach.
    “Morning,” she said, delving into the sack. “I’m Gytha Ogg, I’ve got fifteen children, this is my friend Esme Weatherwax, we’re going to Ankh-Morpork, would anyone like an egg sandwich? I’ve brung plenty. The cat’s been sleepin’ on them but they’re fine, look, they bend back all right. No? Please yourself, I’m sure. Let’s see what else we’ve got…ah, has anybody got an opener for a bottle of beer?”
    A man in the corner indicated that he might have such a thing.
    “Fine,” said Nanny Ogg. “Anyone got something to drink a bottle of beer out of?”
    Another man nodded hopefully.
    “Good,” said Nanny Ogg. “Now, has anybody got a bottle of beer?”
    Granny, for once not the center of attention as all horrified eyes were on Nanny and her sack, surveyed the other occupants of the coach.
    The express stage went right over the Ramtops and all the way through the patchwork of little countries beyond. If it cost forty dollars just from Lancre, then it must have cost these people a lot more. What sort of folk spent the best part of two months’ wages just to travel fast and uncomfortably?
    The thin man who sat clutching his bag was probably a spy, she decided. The fat man who’d volunteered the glass looked as if he sold things; he had the unpleasant complexion of someone who’d hit too many bottles but missed too many meals.
    They were huddled together on their seat because the rest of it was occupied by a man of almost wizardly proportions. He didn’t appear to have woken up when the coach stopped. There was a handkerchief over his face. He was snoring with the regularity of a geyser, and looked as though the only worries he might have in the world were a tendency for small objects to gravitate toward him, and the occasional tide.
    Nanny Ogg continued to rummage around in her bag and, as was the case when she was preoccupied, her mouth had wired itself to her eyeballs without her brain intervening.
    She was used to traveling by broomstick. Long-distance ground travel was a novelty to her, so she’d prepared with some care.
    “…lessee now…book of puzzles for long journeys…cushion…foot powder…mosquito trap…phrase book…bag to be sick into…oh dear…”
    The audience, which against all probability had managed to squeeze itself farther away from Nanny during the litany, waited with horrified interest.
    “What?” said Granny.
    “How often d’you reckon this coach stops?”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I should’ve gone before we left. Sorry. It’s the jolting. Anyone know if there’s a privy on this thing?” she added brightly.
    “Er,” said the probable spy, “we generally wait until the next stop, or—” He stopped. He had been about to add “there’s always the window,” which was a manly option on the bumpier rural stretches, but he stopped himself in the horrible apprehension that