The tincture of night began to diffuse the soup of the afternoon.Lord Vetinari considered the sentence, and found it good. He liked 'tincture' particularly. Tincture. Tincture. It was a distinguished word, and pleasantly countered by the flatness of 'soup'. Yes. In which may well be found the croutons of teatime.

Seniors get to do all the jolly things," Owen complained as they walked to archery practice that first day.Neal glared at the chubby second-year with all the royal disdain of a vexed lion. He was limping from a staff blow to the knee. "You are a bloody minded-savage," he informed Owen sternly. "I hope you are kidnapped by centaurs.

You haven't heard of him? And he is a D'reg!" Mrs Goriff pulled at her husband's arm."D'reg?" said Angua."A warlike desert tribe," said Carrot. "Very fierce. Honourable, though. They say that if a D'reg is your friend he's your friend for life.""And if he's not your friend?""That's about five seconds.

We did Rat Surprise last night for the Sons of Bloodaxe annual dinner," he said. There was a general groan. "And it was rat." He raised his voice against the complaining. "You can't use anything else - listen - you've got to have the noses poking through the pastry, all right? Some of the best rat we've had in a long time!

The city wasa, wasa, wasa wossname. Thing. Woman. Thass what it was. Woman. Roaring, ancient, centuries old. Strung you along, let you fall in thingy, love, with her, then kicked you inna, inna, thingy. Thingy, in your mouth. Tongue. Tonsils. Teeth. That's what it, she, did. She wasa...thing, you know, lady dog. Puppy. Hen. Bitch.

He felt singularly light-hearted, and the immediate cause was his safety razor. A week ago he had bought the thing in a sudden fit of enterprise, and now he shaved in five minutes, where before he had taken twenty, and no longer confronted his fellows, at least one day in three, with a countenance ludicrously mottled by sticking-plaster.

This is nothing personal, you understand," said Charley to Nobby. "It's just a wossname. Had a wizard in here the other night talking about it. Sort of bendy educational thing, you know?" He appeared to think for a moment. "Learning curve. That was it. It's a learning curve. Detritus, get your big stony arse over here for a moment.

I'm not bloody well going to have it, understand?" Vimes shouted, shaking the ape back and forth."Oook," the Librarian pointed out, patiently."What? Oh. Sorry." Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn't make an issue out of it because a man angry enough to lift 300 pounds of orangutan without noticing is a man with too much on his mind.

Is that the drink with the vodka? Because- ""No," said Lady Margolotta quietly. "This, I am afraid, is the other kind. Still, ve have that in common, don't ve? Neither of us drinks...alcohol. I believe you vere an alcoholic, Sir Samuel.""No," said Vimes, completely taken aback. "I was a drunk. You have to be richer than I was to be an alcoholic.

The two guys who ran the place, always in Williamsburg hipster uniforms of short-sleeved shirts and neatly trimmed beards that looked stuck on with spirit gum, paid, as ever, no attention to anything but the food and the money. Tallow imagined that every night they counted their money and prided themselves on having not made eye contact with anything human.

Vimes stuck his helmet under his arm, smoothed back his hair, and knocked. He'd considered asking Sargent Colon to accompany him, but had brushed the idea aside quickly. He couldn't have tolerated the sniggering. Anyway, what was there to be afraid of? He'd stared into the jaws of death three times; four, if you included telling Vetinari to shut up.

Her books on alchemy were marvellous objects, every page a work of the engraver's art, but they nowhere contained instructions like "Be sure to open a window". They did have instructions like "Adde Aqua Quirmis to the Zinc untile Rising Gas Yse Vigorousky Evolved", but never added "Don't Doe Thys Atte Home" or even "And Say Fare-Thee-Welle to Thy Eyebrows.

Tallow walked into Bat and Scarly's office to find Bat slumped on a chair with his head on the workbench, turned away from the door, while Scarly softly sharpened on old straight razor on a worn strop, watching her partner intently. "I don't think he needs his eyebrows, do you? I mean, they don't serve an immediate function or anything," she whispered.

How do you manage for money?’ I asked.I was given two simultaneous replies of ‘We get by’ from Ian and ‘Don’t ask’ from Neil. I favoured Ian’s reply because it had less-sinister connotations. ‘Don’t ask’ left open the possibility that they raised funds by selling hitch-hikers into slavery. I changed the subject.

And then there was the much spoken of lock-up. It looked like a giant pepperpot built of stone. A flowering creeper grew up it, and, next to the door and restrained by a chain, there was an enormous pig. When it saw their approach it got on its hind legs, and, tottering somewhat, begged."This is Masher," said Feeney. "His father was a wild boar, his mother was surprised.