Soul Music

good. A pocket full of decent spells and a well-charged staff will get you out of trouble nine times out of ten.”
    “Nine times out of ten?”
    “Correct.”
    “How many times have you had to rely on them, sir?”
    “Well…there was Mr. Hong…that business with the Thing in the Bursar’s wardrobe…that dragon, you remember…” Ridcully’s lips moved silently as he counted on his fingers. “Nine times, so far.”
    “It worked every time, sir?”
    “Absolutely! So there’s no need to worry. Gangway! Wizard comin’ through.”

    The city gates were open. Glod leaned forward as the cart rumbled in.
    “Don’t go straight to the park,” he said.
    “But we’re late,” said Asphalt.
    “This won’t take long. Go to the Street of Cunning Artificers first.”
    “That’s right on the other side of the river!”
    “It’s important. We’ve got to pick up something.”
    People flocked the streets. This wasn’t unusual, except that this time most of them were moving the same way.
    “And you get down in the back of the cart,” said Glod to Buddy. “We don’t want young women trying to rip your clothes off, eh, Buddy…?”
    He turned. Buddy had gone to sleep again.
    “Speaking for myself—” Cliff began.
    “You’ve only got a loincloth,” said Glod.
    “Well, dey could grab it, couldn’t dey?”
    The cart threaded its way through the streets until it turned into Cunning Artificers.
    It was a street of tiny shops. In this street you could have anything made, repaired, crafted, rebuilt, copied, or forged. Furnaces glowed in every doorway; smelters smoked in every backyard. Makers of intricate clockwork eggs worked alongside armourers. Carpenters worked next door to men who carved ivory into tiny shapes so delicate that they used grasshoppers’ legs, cast in bronze, for saws. At least one in every four craftsmen was making tools to be used by the other three. Shops didn’t just abut, they overlapped; if a carpenter had a big table to make, he relied on the goodwill of his neighbors to make space, so that he’d be working at one end of it while two jewelers and a potter were using the other end as a bench. There were shops where you could drop in to be measured in the morning and pick up a complete suit of chain mail with an extra pair of pants in the afternoon.
    The cart stopped outside one small shop and Glod leapt down and went inside.
    Asphalt heard the conversation:
    “Have you done it?”
    “Here you are, mister. Right as rain.”
    “Will it play? You know I said where you have to have spent a fortnight wrapped in a bullock hide behind a waterfall before you should touch one of these things.”
    “Listen, mister, for this kind of money it had me in the shower for five minutes with a chamois leather on me head. Don’t tell me that’s not good enough for folk music.”
    There was a pleasant sound, which hung in the air for a moment before being lost in the busy din of the street.
    “We said twenty dollars, right?”
    “No, you said twenty dollars. I said twenty-five dollars,” said a cunning voice.
    “Just a minute, then.”
    Glod came out, and nodded at Cliff.
    “All right,” he said. “He’s too cunning for me. Cough up.”
    Cliff growled, but fumbled for a moment somewhere at the back of his mouth.
    They heard the cunning artificer say, “What the hell’s that?”
    “A molar. Got to be worth at least—”
    “It’ll do.”
    Glod came out again with a sack, which he tucked under the seat.
    “Okay,” he said. “Head for the park.”

    They went in through one of the back gates. Or, at least, tried to. Two trolls barred their way. They had the glossy marble patina of Chrysoprase’s basic gang thugs. He didn’t have henchmen. Most trolls weren’t clever enough to hench.
    “Dis is for der bands,” one said.
    “Dat’s right,” said the other one.
    “We are The Band,” said Asphalt.
    “Which one?” said the first troll. “I got a list here.”
    “Dat’s right.”
    “We’re the Band With Rocks In,” said Glod.
    “Hah, you ain’t them . I’ve seen them . Dere’s a guy with this glow round him, and when he plays der guitar it goes—”
    Whauauauaummmmm-eeeee-gngngn .
    “Dat’s right —”
    The chord curled around the cart.
    Buddy was standing up, guitar at the ready.
    “Oh, wow,” said the first troll. “This are amazing! ” He fumbled in his loincloth and produced a dog-eared piece of paper. “You couldn’t write your name down, could you?