Thief of Time

to be one of the options available in the immediate future.
    And then there was Lady LeJean. She gave Igor the willies, and he was a man not usually subject to even the smallest willy. She wasn’t a zombie and she wasn’t a vampire, because she didn’t smell like one. She didn’t smell like anything. In Igor’s experience, everything smelled like something.
    And there was the other matter.
    “Her feet don’t touch the ground, thur,” he said.
    “Of course they do,” said Jeremy, buffing up part of the mechanism with his sleeve. “She’ll be here again in a minute and seventeen seconds. And I’m sure her feet will be touching the ground.”
    “Oh, thometimeth they do, thur. But you watch when thhe goeth up or down a thtep, thur. Thhe doethn’t get it exactly right, thur. You can jutht thee the thadow under her thoeth.”
    “Thoeth?”
    “On her feet, thur,” sighed Igor. The lisp could be a problem, and in truth any Igor could easily fix it, but it was part of being an Igor. You might as well stop limping.
    “Go and get ready by the door,” said Jeremy. “Floating in the air doesn’t make you a bad person.”
    Igor shrugged. He was entertaining the idea that it didn’t mean you were a person at all and, incidentally, he was rather worried that Jeremy seemed to have dressed himself with a little more care this morning.
    He’d decided in these circumstances not to broach the subject of his hiring, but he had been working that one out. He’d been hired before his ladyship had engaged Jeremy to do this work? Well, all that showed was that she knew her man. But she’d hired him in Bad Schüschein, herself. And he’d got himself onto the mail coach that very day. And it turned out that Lady LeJean had visited Jeremy on that day, too.
    The only thing faster than the mail coach between Uberwald and Ankh-Morpork was magic, unless someone had found a way to travel by semaphore. And LeJean hardly looked like a witch.
    The shop’s clocks were putting up a barrage of noise to signal the passing of seven o’clock when Igor opened the front door. It always Did * to anticipate the knock. That was another part of The Code of the Igors.
    He wrenched it open.
    “Two pints, sir, lovely and fresh,” said Mr. Soak, handing him the bottles. “And a day like this just says fresh cream, doesn’t it?”
    Igor glared at him but took the bottles.
    “I prefer it when it’th going green,” he said haughtily. “Good day to you, Mr. Thoak.”
    He shut the door.
    “It wasn’t her?” said Jeremy, when he arrived back in the workshop.
    “It wath the milkman, thur.”
    “She’s twenty-five seconds late!” said Jeremy, looking concerned. “Do you think anything could have happened to her?”
    “Real ladieth are often fathionably late, thur,” said Igor, putting the milk away. It was icy cold under his fingers.
    “Well, I’m sure her ladyship is a real lady.”
    “I wouldn’t know about that, thur,” said Igor, who in fact had the aforesaid very strong doubts in that area. He walked back into the shop and got ready with his hand on the handle just as the knock came.
    Lady LeJean swept past Igor. The two trolls ignored him and took up their positions just inside the workshop. Igor put them down as hired rock, anyone’s for two dollars a day plus walking-around money.
    Her ladyship was impressed.
    The big clock was nearing completion. It wasn’t the squat, blocky thing that Igor’s grandfather had told him about. Jeremy had, much to Igor’s surprise—for there wasn’t a scrap of decoration anywhere in the house—gone for the impressive look.
    “Your grandfather helped to make the first one,” Jeremy had said. “So let’s build a grandfather’s clock, eh?” And there it stood—a slim, long-case clock in crystal and spun glass, reflecting the light in worrying ways.
    Igor had spent a fortune in the Street of Cunning Artificers. For enough money, you could buy anything in Ankh-Morpork, and that included people. He’d made sure that no crystal cutter or glass worker had done enough of the work to give them any sort of clue about the finished clock, but he’d worried needlessly about that. Money could buy a lot of disinterest. Besides, who would believe you could measure time with crystals? Only in the workshop did it all come together.
    Igor bustled around, polishing things, listening carefully as Jeremy showed off his creation.
    “—no need for any metal parts,” he was saying. “We’ve