The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

wasn’t embarrassed about anything.

    She opened the cutlery drawer for a spoon. It stuck. She rattled it, pulled at it and swore a few times, but it stayed stuck.
    ‘Oh, yes, go ahead,’ said a voice behind her. ‘See how much help that is. Don’t be sensible and stick your hand under the top and carefully free up the stuck item. Oh no. Rattle and curse, that’s the way!’
    Tiffany turned.
    There was a skinny, tired-looking woman standing by the kitchen table. She seemed to be wearing a sheet draped around her and was smoking a cigarette. Tiffany had never seen a woman smoke a cigarette before, but especially never a cigarette that burned with a fat red flame and gave off sparks.
    ‘Who are you?’ she said sharply.
    ‘Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck In Drawers,’ said the woman. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
    ‘There’s a goddess just for that?’ said Tiffany.
    ‘Well, I find lost corkscrews and things that roll under furniture,’ said Anoia, off-handedly ‘They want me to do stuck zips, and I’m thinking about that. But mostly I manifest whensoever people rattle stuck drawers and call upon the gods.’ She puffed on her cigarette. ‘Got any tea?’
    ‘But I didn’t call on anyone!’
    ‘You did,’ said Anoia. ‘You cussed. Sooner or later, every curse is a prayer.’ She waved the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette and something in the drawer went pling. ‘It’ll be all right now. It was the fish slice. Everyone has one, and no one knows why. Did anyone in the world ever knowingly go out one day and buy a fish slice? I don’t think so.’

    Annagramma was as vain as a canary in a room full of mirrors.

    Roland tugged the sword out of its scabbard. It was heavy and not at all like the flying, darting silver thing that he’d imagined. It was more like a metal club with an edge.
    He gripped it in both hands and managed to hurl it out into the middle of the slow, dark river.
    Just before it hit the water a white arm rose and caught it. The hand waved the sword a couple of times, and then disappeared with it under the water.
    ‘Was that supposed to happen?’ he said.
    ‘A man throwin’ his sword awa’?’ yelled Rob. ‘No! Ye’re no’ supposed tae bung a guid sword intae the drinkie!’ ‘No, I mean the hand,’ said Roland. ‘It just—’
    ‘Ach, they turn up sometimes.’ Rob Anybody waved a hand as if midstream underwater sword jugglers were an everyday occurrence.
    *
    When the noise had died down a bit the drummer beat the drum a few times and the accordionist played a long drawn-out chord, the legal signal that a Morris Dance is about to begin, and people who hang around have only got themselves to blame.

 
    I T’S an offer y you can’t refuse.
    Who would not wish to be the man in charge of Ankh-Morpork’s Royal Mint and the bank next door?
    It’s a job for life. But, as former conman Moist von Lipwig is learning, life is not necessarily for long.
    The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire. There’s something nameless in the cellar (and the cellar itself is pretty nameless), and it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss. A three-hundred-year-old wizar is after his girlfriend, he’s about to be exposed as a fraud, but the Assassins’ Guild might get him first. In fact, lots of people want him dead.
    Oh. And every day he has to take the Chairman for walkies.
    Everywhere he look looks he’s making enemies.
    What he should be doing is … Making Money!
    The Guild of Thieves paid a twenty-dollar bounty fee for a non-accredited thief brought in alive, and there were oh, so many ways of still being alive when you were dragged in and poured out on the floor.
    *
    ‘You Have An Appointment Now With Lord Vetinari,’ said the golem.
    ‘I’m sure I don’t.’
    ‘There Are Two Guards Outside Who Are Sure You Do.’
    *
    Lord Vetinari lifted an eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his salad, raises the rest of the lettuce.
    *
    ‘[The bank] was built as a temple, but never used as one.’
    ‘Really?’ said Moist. ‘Which god?’
    ‘None, as it turned out. One of the kings of Ankh commanded it to be built about nine hundred years ago,’ said Bent. ‘I suppose it was a case of speculative building. That is to say, he had no god in mind.’
    ‘He hoped one would turn up?’
    ‘Exactly sir.’
    ‘Like bluetits?’ said Moist, peering around. ‘This place was a kind of celestial bird box?’
    *
    ‘It costs more