Thud!

day. She tried to make distressed pudding like my ol’ mum used to make.”
    Plink!
    Fred Colon smiled all the way from his stomach. “Ah, yes. No one could distress a pudding like your ol’ mum, Nobby.”
    “It was awful, Fred,” said Nobby, hanging his head. “As for her slumpie, well, I do not wish to go there. She is not a girl who knows her way around a stove.”
    “She’s more of a pole person, Nobby, that is true.”
    “Exactly. An’ I thought, ol’ Hammerhead, well, you might never be sure which way she was lookin,’ but her buttered clams, well—” he sighed.
    “There’s a thought to keep a man warm on a cold night,” Fred agreed.
    “An,’ y’know, these days, when she hits me with a wet fish, it doesn’t sting like it used to,” Nobby went on. “I think we were reaching an understanding.”
    Plink!
    “She can crack a lobster with her fist,” Colon observed. “That’s a very portable talent.”
    “So I was thinking of speaking to Angua,” said Nobby. “She might give me a few hints on how to let Tawneee down gently.”
    “That’s a good idea, Nobby,” said Fred. “No touchin,’ sir, otherwise I shall have to cut yer fingers orf.” This was said, in a friendly tone of voice, to a dwarf who had been reaching in awe toward the board.
    “But we’ll still be friends, of course,” said Nobby as the dwarf backed away. “So long as I can get into the PussyCat Club for free, anyway, I’ll always be there if she needs a helmet to cry on.”
    “That’s very modern of you, Nobby,” said Fred. He smiled in the gloom. Somehow, the world was back on course.
    Plink!

T rolls and dwarfs had raised a huge roundhouse in Koom Valley, using giant boulders for the walls and half a fallen forest for the roof. A fire thirty yards long crackled inside. Ranged around it on long benches were the kings of more than a hundred dwarf mines, and the leaders of eighty troll clans, with their followers and servants and bodyguards. The noise was intense, the smoke was thick, the heat was a wall.
    It had been a good day. Progress had been made. The guests were not mixing, that was true, but neither were they trying to kill one another. This was a promising development. The truce was holding.
    At the high table, King Rhys leaned back in his makeshift throne and said: “One does not make demands of kings. One makes requests, which are graciously granted. Does he not understand?”
    “I don’t think he gives a tra’ka, sir, if I may be coarse,” said Grag Bashfullsson, who was standing respectfully beside him. “And the senior dwarfs in the city will be right behind him on this. It’s not my place, sir, but I advise acquiescence.”
    “And that’s all he wants? No gold, no silver, no concessions?”
    “That’s all he wants, sire. But I suspect you will be hearing from Lord Vetinari before long.”
    “Oh, you may be sure of that!” said the king. He sighed. “It’s a new world, Grag, but some things don’t change. Er…that…thing has left him, has it?”
    “I believe so, sire.”
    “You are not certain?”
    The grag smiled a faint, inward smile. “Let’s just say that his reasonable request is best granted, shall we, sire?”
    “Your point is taken, Grag. Thank you.”
    King Rhys turned in his seat, leaned across the two empty places, and said to the Diamond King: “Do you think something has happened to them? It’s past six o’clock!”
    Shine smiled, filling the hall with light. “I suspect they’ve been delayed by matters of great importance.”
    “More important than this ?” said the dwarf king.…and, because some things are important, the coach stood outside the magistrate’s house, down in the town. The horses stamped impatiently. The coachman waited. Inside, Lady Sybil darned a sock, because some things are important, with a faint smile on her face.
    And floating out of an open upstairs window was the voice of Sam Vimes:
“It goes HRUUUGH! It is a hippopotamus!
That is not my cow!”
    Nevertheless, it was close enough for now.

About the Author
    Terry Pratchett’s novels have sold more than forty million (give or take a few million) copies worldwide. He lives in England.

    www.terrypratchettbooks.com

    Also available for HarperAudio.

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Also by Terry Pratchett
    The Carpet People
    The Dark Side of the Sun
    Strata
    The Bromeliad Trilogy*: Truckers • Diggers •