Mort

kindly. “It’s rather a long story—”
    A bell jangled by his head.
    “—which will have to wait. He wants to see you in his study. I should run along if I were you. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Understandable, really. Up the steps and first door on the left. You can’t miss it—”
    “It’s got skulls and bones around the door?” said Mort, pushing back his chair.
    “They all have, most of them,” sighed Albert. “It’s only his fancy. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”
    Leaving his breakfast to congeal, Mort hurried up the steps, along the corridor and paused in front of the first door. He raised his hand to knock.
    E NTER .
    The handle turned of its own accord. The door swung inward.
    Death was seated behind a desk, peering intently into a vast leather book almost bigger than the desk itself. He looked up as Mort came in, keeping one calcareous finger marking his place, and grinned. There wasn’t much of an alternative.
    A H , he said, and then paused. Then he scratched his chin, with a noise like a fingernail being pulled across a comb.
    W HO ARE YOU, BOY ?
    “Mort, sir,” said Mort. “Your apprentice. You remember?”
    Death stared at him for some time. Then the pinpoint blue eyes turned back to the book.
    O H YES , he said, M ORT . W ELL, BOY, DO YOU SINCERELY WISH TO LEARN THE UTTERMOST SECRETS OF TIME AND SPACE ?
    “Yes, sir. I think so, sir.”
    G OOD . T HE STABLES ARE AROUND THE BACK . T HE SHOVEL HANGS JUST INSIDE THE DOOR .
    He looked down. He looked up. Mort hadn’t moved.
    I S IT BY ANY CHANCE POSSIBLE THAT YOU FAIL TO UNDERSTAND ME ?
    “Not fully, sir,” said Mort.
    D UNG, BOY . D UNG . A LBERT HAS A COMPOST HEAP IN THE GARDEN . I IMAGINE THERE’S A WHEELBARROW SOMEWHERE ON THE PREMISES . G ET ON WITH IT .
    Mort nodded mournfully. “Yes, sir. I see, sir. Sir?”
    Y ES ?
    “Sir, I don’t see what this has to do with the secrets of time and space.”
    Death did not look up from his book.
    T HAT , he said, IS BECAUSE YOU ARE HERE TO LEARN .

It is a fact that although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION , he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on. Now his horses were always flesh-and-blood beasts, from the finest stock.
    And, Mort learned, very well fed.
    Some jobs offer increments. This one offered—well, quite the reverse, but at least it was in the warm and fairly easy to get the hang of. After a while he got into the rhythm of it, and started playing the private little quantity-surveying game that everyone plays in these circumstances. Let’s see, he thought, I’ve done nearly a quarter, let’s call it a third, so when I’ve done that corner by the hayrack it’ll be more than half, call it five-eighths, which means three more wheelbarrow loads…. It doesn’t prove anything very much except that the awesome splendor of the universe is much easier to deal with if you think of it as a series of small chunks.
    The horse watched him from its stall, occasionally trying to eat his hair in a friendly sort of way.
    After a while he became aware that someone else was watching him. The girl Ysabell was leaning on the half-door, her chin in her hands.
    “Are you a servant?” she said.
    Mort straightened up.
    “No,” he said, “I’m an apprentice.”
    “That’s silly. Albert said you can’t be an apprentice.”
    Mort concentrated on hefting a shovelful into the wheelbarrow. Two more shovelfuls, call it three if it’s well pressed down, and that means four more barrows, all right, call it five, before I’ve done halfway to the…
    “He says,” said Ysabell in a louder voice, “that apprentices become masters, and you can’t have more than one Death. So you’re just a servant and you have to do what I say.”
    …and then eight more barrows means it’s all done all the way to the door, which is nearly two-thirds of the whole thing, which means….
    “Did you hear what I said, boy?”
    Mort nodded. And then it’ll be fourteen more barrows, only call it fifteen because I haven’t swept up properly in the corner, and….
    “Have you lost your tongue?”
    “Mort,” said Mort mildly.
    She looked at him furiously. “What?”
    “My name is Mort,” said Mort. “Or Mortimer. Most people call me Mort. Did you want to talk to me about something?”
    She was speechless for a moment, staring from his face to the shovel