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There was another table near the stage. He nearly didn’t notice it, and then his gaze swivelled back to it of its own accord.

There was a young woman sitting there, all by herself. Of course, it wasn’t unusual to see young women in the Drum. Even unaccompanied young women. They were generally there in order to become accompanied.

The odd thing was that, although people were jammed along the benches, she had space all around her. She was quite attractive in a skinny way, Ridcully thought. What was the tomboy word? Gammon, or something. She was wearing a black lace dress of the sort worn by healthy young women who want to look consumptive, and had a raven sitting on her shoulder.

She turned her head, saw Ridcully looking at her, and vanished.

More or less.

He was a wizard, after all. He felt his eyes watering as she flickered in and out of vision.

Ah. Well, he’d heard the Tooth Fairy girls were in the city these days. It’d be one of the night people. They probably had a day off, just like everyone else.

A movement on the table made him look down. The Death of Rats scrittered past, carrying a bowl of peanuts.

He turned back to the wizards. The Dean was still wearing his pointy hat. There was also something slightly shiny about his face.

“You look hot, Dean,” said Ridcully.

“Oh, I’m lovely and cool, Archchancellor, I assure you,” said the Dean. Something runny oozed past his nose.

The Lecturer in Recent Runes sniffed suspiciously.

“Is someone cooking bacon?” he said.

“Take it off, Dean,” said Ridcully. “You’ll feel a lot better.”

“Smells more like Mrs Palm’s House of Negotiable Affection to me,” said the Senior Wrangler.

They looked at him in surprise.

“I just happened to walk past once,” he said quickly.

“Runes, please take the Dean’s hat off for him, will you?” said Ridcully.

“I assure you—”

The hat came off. Something long and greasy and very nearly the same pointy shape flopped forward.

“Dean,” said Ridcully eventually, “what have you done to your hair? It looks like a spike at the front and a duck’s arse, excuse my Klatchian, at the back. And it’s all shiny.”

“Lard. That’d be the bacon smell,” said the Lecturer.

“That’s true,” said Ridcully, “but what about the floral smell?”

“ mumblemumblemumblelavendermumble,” said the Dean sullenly.

“Pardon, Dean?”

“I said it’s because I added lavender oil,” said the Dean loudly. “And some of us happen to think it’s a nifty hairstyle, thank you so very much. Your trouble, Archchancellor, is that you don’t understand people of our age!”

“What... you mean seven months older than me?” said Ridcully.

This time the Dean hesitated.

“What did I just say?” he said.

“Have you been taking dried frog pills, old chap?” said Ridcully.

“Of course not, they’re for the mentally unstable!” said the Dean.

“Ah. There’s the trouble, then.”

The curtain went up or, rather, was jerkily pulled aside.

The Band With Rocks In blinked in the torchlight.

No-one clapped. On the other hand, no-one threw anything, either. By Drum standards, this was a hearty welcome.

Ridcully saw a tall, curly-headed young man clutching what looked like an undernourished guitar or possibly a banjo that had been used in a fight. Beside him was a dwarf, holding a battle horn. At the rear was a troll, hammer in each paw, seated behind a pile of rocks. And to one side was the Librarian, standing in front of... Ridcully leaned forward... what appeared to be the skeleton of a piano, balanced on some beer-kegs.

The boy looked paralysed by the attention.

He said: “Hello... er... Ankh-Morpork.

And, this amount of conversation apparently having exhausted him, he started to play.

It was a simple little rhythm, one that you might easily have ignored if you’d met it in the street. It was followed by a sequence of crashing chords and then, Ridcully realized, it hadn’t been followed by the chords, because the rhythm was there all the time. Which was impossible. No guitar could be played like that.

The dwarf blew a sequence of notes on the horn. The troll picked up the beat. The Librarian brought both hands down upon the piano keyboard, apparently at random.

Ridcully had never heard such a din.

And then... and then... it wasn’t a din any more.

It was like that nonsense about white light that the young wizards in the High Energy Magic Building went on about. They said that all the colours together made up white, which was bloody nonsense as far as Ridcully was concerned, because everyone knew that if you mixed up all the colours you could get your hands on, you got a sort of greeny-brown mess which certainly wasn’t any kind of white. But now he had a vague idea what they meant.

All this noise, this mess of music, suddenly came together and there was a new music inside it.

The Dean’s quiff was quivering.

The whole crowd was moving.

Ridcully realized his foot was tapping. He stamped on it with his other foot.

Then he watched the troll carry the beat and hammer the rocks until the walls shook. The Librarian’s fingers swooped along the keyboard. Then his toes did the same. And all the time the guitar hooted and screamed and sang out the melody.

The wizards were bouncing in their seats and twirling their fingers in the air.

Ridcully leaned over to the Bursar and screamed at him.

“What?” shouted the Bursar.

“I said, they’ve all gone mad except me and you!”

“What?”

“It’s the music!”

“Yes! It’s great!” said the Bursar, waving his skinny hands in the air.

“And I’m not too certain about you!”

Ridcully sat down again and pulled out the thaumometer. It was vibrating crazily, which was no help at all. It didn’t seem to be able to decide if this was magic or not.

He nudged the Bursar sharply.

“This ain’t magic! This is something else!”

“You’re exactly right!”

Ridcully had the feeling that he suddenly wasn’t speaking the right language.

“I mean it’s too much!”

“Yes!”

Ridcully sighed.

“Is it time for your dried frog pill?”

Smoke was coming out of the stricken piano. The Librarian’s hands were walking through the keys like Casanunda in a nunnery.

Ridcully looked around. He felt all alone.

Someone else hadn’t been overcome by the music. Satchelmouth had stood up. So had his two associates.

They had drawn some knobbly clubs. Ridcully knew the Guild laws. Of course, they had to be enforced. You couldn’t run a city without them. This certainly wasn’t licensed music—if ever there was unlicensed music, this was it. Nevertheless... he rolled up his sleeve and prepared a quick fireball, just in case.

One of the men dropped his club and clutched his foot. The other one spun around as if something had slapped his ear. Satchelmouth’s hat dented, as if someone had just hit him on the head.

Ridcully, one eye watering terribly, thought he made out the Tooth Fairy girl bringing the handle of a scythe down on Satchelmouth’s head.

The Archchancellor was quite a bright man but often had trouble in forcing his train of thought to change tracks. He was having difficulty with the idea of a scythe, after all, grass didn’t have teeth—and then the fireball burned his fingers, and then, as he sucked frantically at them, he realized that there was something in the sound. Something extra.

“Oh, no,” he said, as the fireball floated to the floor and set fire to the Bursar’s boot, “it’s alive. ”

He grabbed the beer mug, finished the contents hurriedly, and rammed it upside down on the tabletop.

The moon shone over the Klatchian desert, in the vicinity of the dotted line. Both sides of it got exactly the same amount of moonlight, although minds like Mr Clete’s deplored this state of affairs.

The sergeant strolled across the packed sand of the parade ground. He stopped, sat down, and produced a cheroot. Then he pulled out a match, reached down and struck it on something sticking out of the sand, which said:

GOOD EVENING.

“I expect you’ve had enough, eh, soldier?” said the sergeant.

ENOUGH WHAT, SERGEANT?

“Two days in the sun, no food, no water... I expect you’re delirious with thirst and are just begging to be dug out, eh?”

YES. IT IS CERTAINLY VERY DULL.

“Dull?”

I AM AFRAID SO.

“Dull? It’s not meant to be dull! It’s the Pit! It’s meant to be a horrible physical and mental torture! After one day of it you’re supposed to by a...” The sergeant glanced surreptitiously at some writing on his wrist, “... a raving madman! I’ve been watching you all day! You haven’t even groaned! I can’t sit in my... thing, you sit in it, there’s papers and things...”

OFFICE.

“... working, with you outside like this! I can’t bear it!”

Beau Nidle glanced upwards. He felt it was time for a kindly gesture.

HELP, HELP. HELP, HELP, he said.

The sergeant sagged with relief.

THIS ASSISTS PEOPLE TO FORGET, DOES IT?

“Forget? People forget everything when they’re given...er...”

THE PIT.

“Yes! That’s it!”

AH. DO YOU MIND IF I ASK A QUESTION?

“What?.

DO YOU MIND IF PERHAPS I HAVE ANOTHER DAY?

The sergeant opened his mouth to reply, and the D’regs attacked over the nearest sand-dune.

“Music?” said the Patrician. “Ah. Tell me more.”

He leaned back in an attitude that suggested attentive listening. He was extremely good at listening. He created a kind of mental suction. People told him things just to avoid the silence.

Besides, Lord Vetinari, the supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, rather liked music.

People wondered what sort of music would appeal to such a man.

Highly formalized chamber music, possibly, or thunder-andlightning opera scores.

In fact the kind of music he really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skins, bits of dead cat and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets, all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure. It was when people started doing things with it that the rot set in. Much better to sit quietly in a room and read the sheets, with nothing between yourself and the mind of the composer but a scribble of ink. Having it played by sweaty fat men and people with hair in their ears and spit dribbling out of the end of their oboe... well, the idea made him shudder. Although not much, because he never did anything to extremes.

So...

“And then what happened?” he said.

“An' then he started singin”, yerronner,” said Cumbling Michael, licensed beggar and informal informant. “A song about Great Fiery Balls.”

The Patrician raised an eyebrow.

“Pardon?”

“Somethin' like that. Couldn’t really make out the words, the reason bein”, the piano exploded.”

“Ah? I imagine this interrupted the proceedings somewhat.”

“Nah, the monkey went on playin' what was left,” said Cumbling Michael. “And people got up and started cheerin' and dancin and stampin' their feet like there was a plague of cockroaches.”

“And you say the men from the Musicians’ Guild were hurt?”

“It was dead strange. They were white as a sheet afterwards. At least,” Cumbling Michael thought about the state of his own bedding, “white as some sheets—”

The Patrician glanced at his reports while the beggar talked. It had certainly been a strange evening. A riot at the Drum... well, that was normal, although it didn’t sound exactly like a typical riot and he’d never heard of wizards dancing. He rather felt he recognized the signs... There was only one thing that could make it worse.

“Tell me,” he said. “What was Mr Dibbler’s reaction to all this?”

“What, yerronner?”

“A simple enough question, I should have thought.”

Cumbling Michael found the words “ But how did you know ole Dibbler was there? I never said' arranging themselves for the attention of his larynx, and then had second, third and fourth thoughts about saying them.

“He just sat and stared, yerronner. With his mouth open. And then he rushed right out.”

“I see. Oh, dear. Thank you, Cumbling Michael. Feel free to leave.”

The beggar hesitated.

“Foul Ole Ron said as yerronner sometimes pays for information,” he said.

“Did he? Really? He said that, did he? Well, that is interesting.” Vetinari scribbled a note in the margin of a report. “Thank you.”

“Er—”

“Don’t let me detain you.”

“Er. No. Gods bless yerronner,” said Cumbling Michael, and ran for it.

When the sound of the beggar’s boots had died away the Patrician strolled over to the window, stood with his hands clasped behind his back, and sighed.

There were probably city states, he reasoned, where the rulers only had to worry about the little things... barbarian invasions, the balance of payments, assassination, the local volcano erupting. There weren’t people busily opening the door of reality and metaphorically saying, “Hi, come on in, pleased to see you, what a nice axe you have there, incidentally, can I make some money out of you since you’re here?”

Sometimes Lord Vetinari wondered what had happened to Mr Hong. Everyone knew, of course. In general terms. But not exactly what.

What a city. In the spring, the river caught fire. About once a month, the Alchemists’ Guild exploded.

He walked back to his desk and made another brief note. He was rather afraid that he was going to have to have someone killed.

Then he picked up the third movement of Fondel’s Prelude in G Major and settled back to read.

Susan walked back to the alley where she’d left Binky. There were half a dozen men lying around on the cobbles, clutching parts of themselves and moaning. Susan ignored them. Anyone trying to steal Death’s horse soon understood the expression “a world of hurts”. Binky had a good aim. It would be a very small, very private world.

“The music was playing him, not the other way round,” she said. “You could see. I’m not sure his fingers even touched the strings.”

SQUEAK.

Susan rubbed her hand. Satchelmouth had turned out to have quite a hard head.

“Can I kill it without killing him?”

SQUEAK.

“Not a hope,” the raven translated. “It’s all that’s keeping him alive.”

“But Granda... but he said it’ll end up killing him anyway!”

“It’s a big wide wonderful universe all right,” said the raven.

SQUEAK.

“But... look, if it’s a... a parasite, or something like that,” said Susan, as Binky trotted skywards, “what’s the good of it killing its host?”

SQUEAK.

“He says you’ve got him there,” said the raven. “Drop me off over Quirm, will you?”

“What does it want him for?” said Susan. “It’s using him, but what for?”

“Twenty-seven dollars!” said Ridcully. “Twenty-seven dollars.to get you out! And the sergeant kept grinning all the time! Wizards arrested! ”

He walked along the row of crestfallen figures.

“I mean, how often does the Watch get called in to the Drum?” said Ridcully. “I mean, what did you think you were doing?”

“mumblemumblemumble,” said the Dean, looking at the floor.

“I’m sorry?”

“mumblemumbledancingmumble.”

“Dancing,” said Ridcully levelly, walking back along the row. “That’s dancing, is it? Banging into people? Throwin' one another over yer shoulders? Twirling around all over the place? Not even trolls act like that (not that I’ve got anything against trolls mind you marvellous people marvellous people) and you’re supposed to be wizards. People are supposed to look up to you and that’s not because you’re somersaulting over their heads, Runes, don’t think I didn’t notice that little display, I was frankly disgusted. The poor Bursar has had to have a lie down. Dancing is... round in circles, don’tcherknow, Maypoles and suchlike, healthy reels, perhaps a little light ballroom... not swinging people round like a dwarf with a battleaxe (mind you salt of the earth dwarfs I’ve always said so). Do I make myself clear?”

“mumblemumblemumbleeveryonewasdoingitmumble,” said the Dean, still looking at the floor.

“I never thought I’d say this to any wizard over the age of eighteen, but you’re all gated until further notice!” shouted Ridcully.

Being confined to the campus was not much of a punishment. The wizards usually distrusted any air that hadn’t hung around indoors for a while, and mostly lived in a kind of groove between their rooms and the dining table. But they were feeling strange.

“mumblemumbledon’tseewhymumble,” mumbled the Dean.

He said, much later on, on the day when the music died, that it must have been because he’d never been really young, or at least young while just being old enough to know he was young. Like most wizards, he’d begun his training while still so small that the official pointy hat came down over his ears. And after that he’d just been, well, a wizard.

He had the feeling, once again, that he’d missed out on something somewhere. He’d never really realized it until the last couple of days. He didn’t know what it was. He just wanted to do things. He didn’t know what they were. But he wanted to do them soon. He wanted... he felt like a lifelong tundra dweller when he wakes up one morning with a deep urge to go water-skiing. He certainly wasn’t going to stay indoors when there was music in the air...

“mumblemumblemumblenotgonnastayindoorsmumble.”

Unaccustomed feelings surged through him. He wanted to disobey! Disobey everything! Including the law of gravity. He was definitely not going to fold his clothes before going to bed! Ridcully was going to say, oh, you’re a rebel, are you, what are you rebelling against, and he’d say... he’d say something pretty damn memorable, that’s what he’d do! He was

But the Archchancellor had stalked off.

“mumblemumblemumble,” said the Dean defiantly, a rebel without a pause.

There was a knock at the door, barely audible above the din. Cliff opened it a cautious fraction.

“It’s me, Hibiscus. Here’s your beers. Drink “em up and get out!”

“How can we get out?” said Glod. “Every time they see us they force us to play some more!”

Hibiscus shrugged. “I don’t care,” he said. “But you owe me a dollar for the beer and twenty-five dollars for the broken furniture—”

Cliff shut the door.

“I could negotiate with him,” said Glod.

“No, we can’t afford it,” said Buddy.

They looked at one another.

“Well, the crowd loved us,” said Buddy. “I think we were a big success. Er.”

In the silence Cliff bit the end off a beer bottle and poured the contents over his head.[18]

“What we all want to know is,” said Glod, “what you thought you were doing out there?”

“Gook.”

“And how come,” said Cliff, crunching up the rest of the bottle, “we all knew what to play?”

“Gook.”

“And also,” said Glod, “what you were singing.”

“Er...

“"Don’t Tread On My New Blue Boots"?” said Cliff. “Gook.”

“"Good Gracious Miss Polly"?” said Glod.

“Er...”

“"Sto Helit Lace"?” said Cliff.

“Gook?”

“It’s a kind of very fine lace they make iii the city of Sto Helit,” said Glod.

Glod gave Buddy a lopsided look.

“That bit where you said “hello, baby",” he said. “Why’d you do that?”

“Er...”

“I mean, it’s not as if they even allow small children into the Drum.”

“I don’t know. The words were just there,” said Buddy. “They were sort of part of the music...”

“And you were... moving about in a funny way. Like you were having trouble with your trousers,” said Glod. “I’m not expert on humans, of course, but I saw some ladies in the audience looking at you like a dwarf looks at a girl when he knows her father’s got a big shaft and several rich seams.”

“Yeah,” said Cliff, “and like when a troll is thinking: hey, will you look at der strata on dat one...”

“You’re certain you’ve got no elvish in you, are you?” said Glod. “Once or twice I thought you were acting a bit... elvish.”

“ I don’t know what’s happening!” said Buddy.

The guitar whined.

They looked at it.

“What we do is,” said Cliff, “we take dat and throw it in de river. All those in favour say “Aye". Or Oook, as the case may be.”

There was another silence. No-one rushed to pick up the instrument.

“But the thing is,” said Glod, “the thing is... they did love us out there.”

They thought about this.

“It didn’t actually feel... bad,” said Buddy.

“Got to admit... I never had an audience like dat in my whole life,” said Cliff.

“Oook.”

“If we’re so good,” said Glod, “why ain’t we rich?”

“Cos you do the negotiatin',” said Cliff. “If we’ve got to pay for der furniture, I’m soon goin' to have to eat my dinner through a straw.”

“You saying I’m no good?” said Glod, getting angrily to his feet.

“You blow good horn. But you ain’t no financial wizard.”

“Hah, I’d just like to see”

There was a knock on the door.

Cliff sighed. “Dat’ll be Hibiscus again,” he said. “Pass me dat mirror. I’ll try to hit one out on de other side.”

Buddy opened the door. Hibiscus was there, but behind a smaller man wearing a long coat and a wide, friendly grin.

“Ah,” said the grin. “You’d be Buddy, right?”

“Er, yes.”

And then the man was inside, without actually appearing to have moved, and kicking the door shut in the landlord’s face.

“Dibbler’s the name,” the grin went on. “C. M. O. T. Dibbler. I dare say you’ve heard of me?”

“Gook!”

“I ain’t talking to you! I’m talking to you other guys.”

“No,” said Buddy, “I don’t think we have.”

The grin appeared to widen.

“I hear you boys are in a bit of trouble,” said Dibbler. “Broken furniture and whatnot.”

“We’re not even going to get paid,” said Cliff, glaring at Glod.

“Well now,” said Dibbler, “it could just be that I could help you there. I’m a businessman. I do business. I can see you boys are musicians. You play music. You don’t want to worry your heads about money stuff, right? Gets in the way of the creative processes, am I right? How about if you leave that to me?”

“Huh,” said Glod, still smarting from the insult to his financial acumen. “And what can you do?”

“Well,” said Dibbler, “I can get you paid for tonight, for a start.”

“What about the furniture?” said Buddy.

“Oh, stuff gets busted here every night,” said Dibbler expansively. “Hibiscus was just having you on. I’ll square it with him. Confidentially, you want to watch out for people like him.”

He leaned forward. If his grin had been any wider the top of his head would have fallen off.

“This city, boys,” he said, “is a jungle.”

“If he can get us paid, I trust him,” said Glod.

“As simple as dat?” said Cliff.

“I trust anyone who gives me money.”

Buddy glanced at the table. He didn’t know why, but he had a feeling that if something was wrong the guitar would do something—play a discord, maybe. But it just purred gently to itself.

“Oh, all right. If it means I get to keep my teef, I’m all for it,” said Cliff.

“OK,” said Buddy.

“Great! Great! We can make beautiful music together! At least -you boys can, eh?”

He pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil. In Dibbler’s eyes, the lion roared.

Somewhere high in the Ramtops, Susan rode Binky over a cloudbank.

“How could he talk like that?” she said. “Play around with people’s lives, and then talk about duty?”

All the lights were on in the Musicians’ Guild.

A gin bottle played a tattoo on the edge of a glass. Then it rattled briefly on the desktop as Satchelmouth put it down.

“Doesn’t anyone know who the hells they are?” Mr Clete said, as Satchelmouth managed to grip the glass on the second try. “ Someone must know who they are!”

“Dunno about the boy,” said Satchelmouth. “No-one’s ever seen him before. An'... an'... well, you know trolls... could’ve been anyone...”

“One of them was definitely the Librarian from the University,” said Herbert “Mr Harpsichord' Shuffle, the Guild’s own librarian.

“We can leave him for now,” said Clete.

The others nodded. No-one really wanted to attempt to beat up the Librarian if there was anyone smaller available.

“What about the dwarf?”

“Ah.”

“Someone said they thought he was Glod Glodsson. Lives in Phedre Road somewhere—”

Clete growled. “Get some of the lads over there right now. I want the position of musicians in this city explained to them right now. Hat. Hat. Hat.”

The musicians hurried through the night, the din of the Mended Drum behind them.

“Wasn’t he nice,” said Glod. “I mean, we haven’t just got our pay, but he was so interested he gave us twenty dollars of his own money!”

“I tink what he said,” said Cliff, “was dat he’d give us twenty dollars with interest.”

“Same thing, isn’t it? And he said he could get us more jobs. Did you read the contract?”

“Did you?”

“It was very small writing,” said Glod. He brightened up. “But there was a lot of it,” he added. “Bound to be a good contract, with that much writing on it.”

“The Librarian ran away,” said Buddy. “Oooked a lot, and ran away.”

“Hah! Well, he’ll be sorry later on,” said Glod. “Later on, people’ll talk to him and he’ll say: I left, you know, before they became famous.”

“He’ll say ook.”

“Anyway, that piano’s going to need some work.”

“Yeah,” said Cliff. “Like, I saw once where dis guy made stuff out of matches. He could repair it.”

A couple of dollars became two lamb kormas and pitchblende vindaloo at the Curry Gardens, along with a bottle of wine so chemical that even trolls could drink it.

“And after this,” said Glod, as they sat down to wait for the food, “we’ll find somewhere else to stay.”

“What wrong with your place?” said Cliff.

“It’s too draughty. It’s got a piano-shaped hole in the door.”

“Yes, but you put it there.”

“So what?”

“Won’t the landlord object?”

“Of course he’ll object. That’s what landlords are for. Anyway, we’re on the up and up, lads. I can feel it in my water.”

“I thought you were just happy to get paid,” said Buddy.

“Right. Right. But I’m even happier to get paid a lot.”

The guitar hummed. Buddy picked it up, and plucked a string.

Glod dropped his knife.

“That sounded like a piano!” he said.

“I think it can sound like anything,” said Buddy. “And now it knows about pianos.”

“Magic,” said Cliff.

“Of course magic,” said Glod. “That’s what I keep saying. A strange old thing found in a dusty old shop one stormy night—”

“It wasn’t stormy,” said Cliff.

“—it’s bound to... yes, all right, but it was raining a bit... it’s bound to be a bit special. I bet if we was to go back now the shop wouldn’t be there. And that’d prove it. Everyone knows things bought from shops which aren’t there next day are dead mysterious and items of Fate. Fate’s smiling on us, could be.”

“Doing something on us,” said Cliff. “I hope it’s smiling.”

“And Mr Dibbler said he’d find us somewhere really special to play tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Buddy. “We must play.”

“Right,” said Cliff. “We play all right. It’s our job.”

“People should hear our music.”

“Sure.” Cliff looked puzzled. “Right. Of course. Dat’s what we want. And some pay, too.”

“Mr Dibbler’ll help us,” said Glod, who was too preoccupied to notice the edge in Buddy’s voice. “He must be very successful. He’s got an office in Sator Square. Only very posh businesses can afford that.”

A new day dawned.

It had hardly finished doing so before Ridcully hurried through the dewy grass of the University gardens and hammered on the door of the High Energy Magic Building.

Generally he never went near the place. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand what it was the young wizards in there were actually doing, but because he strongly suspected that they didn’t, either. They seemed to positively enjoy becoming less and less certain about everything and would come in to dinner saying things like “Wow, we’ve just overturned Marrowleaf’s Theory of Thaumic Imponderability! Amazing!” as if it was something to be proud of, instead of gross discourtesy.

And they were always talking about splitting the thaum, the smallest unit of magic. The Archchancellor couldn’t see the point. So you had bits all over the place. What good would that do? The universe