Chapter Text
He was going to disappear. This had been the plan from the beginning.
The Hogswatch he was fifteen he had covered his aunt’s dining table in butcher paper and bits of parchment taped together covered in writing.
She had watched him writing, filling the paper with tiny words and diagrams until the individual pen marks were almost indiscernible.
“Can you read that, Havelock?” she had asked.
“Just getting my thoughts down, Madam.”
Aunt Bobbi had put on her reading glasses and peered close to the paper. She made out the words “with great power comes great responsibility” and “yet what force on Disc is weaker than the feeble strength of one?” and a drawing of a black cat with an arched back and claws and teeth bared.
“What’s all this about?”
“It’s doesn’t work, a city being ruled by one person. Or an inherited aristocracy. Mostly because they don’t actually rule they just sort of... impose.”
Aunt Bobbi had smiled and said “And what do you propose to do about it?”
That was how it went. It was always what are you going to do to about it.
He couldn’t do anything about Lily here in Genua. Lily was a Weatherwax and One Does Not Simply Meddle In The Affairs of Weatherwaxes.
So he’d drafted his plan to become Patrician of Ankh-Morpork and create more Guilds. Guilds that incorporated those that had fallen through the cracks of the Feudal-Mercantile system or been denied protection by the law. And then he planned how the city would run. He’d inherit a delicate balance of power and he would make it strong. Like replacing copper with bronze and iron with steel. Alloys were stronger. Then they wouldn’t need him any more. They wouldn’t need a Patrician at all.
He hadn’t anticipated replacing copper with things like paper, gold and carrot, but that’s the future for you.
Now he was going to vanish. He’d told Commander Vimes because otherwise there would be an army on his tail and he’d told Drumknott because Drumknott was part of it and he’d told Adora Dearheart because she was to step in if they demanded a replacement but he didn’t want to tell EVERYONE because otherwise what would be the point.
They were having a party for the thirty-fifth anniversary of his ascension as Patrician.
He was going to give a speech, one he had started writing a very long time ago.
The week previously he had invited Adora Belle Dearheart into the Oblong office and given her a Stygium signet ring that had a new line engraved on it, changing the V to an Ephebian Delta when it was turned the other way around.
“Is that the ring that took off Cosmo Lavish’s finger? That’s disgusting.”
Vetinari looked affronted. “That was a replica. This one was mine. The last thing I sealed with it was this.” He held up a scroll sealed with black wax. “My vote of succession. If they demand a replacement. I’m hoping they won’t.”
Adora was suddenly frightened of the bright eagerness in Vetinari’s eyes. “There’s nothing happening that would endanger your life. There hasn’t been for years.”
“I probably waited longer than I had to, I wanted to make sure.”
Adora froze, cigarette holder halfway to her lips. Vetinari must know how this sounded to someone who didn’t always trust her husband by himself with a straight razor. Or at least he did now.
His eyes went wide. “Oh, no! I’m... I’m... I’ll be around. I’ll send you my address.”
“Moist says you don’t take a salary,” she said suspiciously.
“I’ve got a bit saved. I’ll find something to do.”
Adora gave him a look that said ‘if you’re lying to me, I’ll Clacks every medium on the Unnamed Continent and haunt you from the near side of the veil.’
“It’s a nice ring. Have you told Vimes yet?”
“I think I did a better job of it, leading with the exposition and so forth,” Vetinari sighed. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I appreciate the concern.”
“You think I’m the one who should take over as Patrician?” Adora said, trying the ring on various fingers—Vetinari’s hands were such that the ring size was almost exclusively determined by knobbly bones. She finally settled on the middle finger of her right hand.
“You’re used to being in charge and getting people out of tight spots. You wrested the clacks out of the hands of Reacher Gilt, you prevented the rise of another Morporkian empire and all the bloodshed that would entail. I didn’t want the job either, not in the way that people mean. You steer toward justice, and I know no one can ever make a puppet of you.”
“That does rule out a lot of people.”
“Quite. I’ll see you at the party. Any menu requests?”
-
There is a popular song in Ankh-Morpork entitled “The Patrician Doesn’t Have Any Balls.” Both Glenda Sugarbean and Tears of the Mushroom decided against pointing this out as Havelock Vetinari led them through the main hall of the palace, eyes shining.
He was, in a word, a fan. He asked for Glenda’s cooking whenever he ate at the University and attended as many of Tears of the Mushroom’s concerts as he could make time for. The goblin virtuosa had written something scored for kavalierbariton a couple of years ago and Havelock had allegedly locked himself in his room for three hours. And you couldn’t actually count his ribs through his robes these days.
Now Vetinari was waxing poetic about pastry and preludes. He was evidently commissioning some kind of intersensory experience. Lord Vetinari experienced fairly strong taste-sound synesthesia, but he was thinking of bringing a werewolf on board to sort out the color scheme. At least there were words like light and rich and warm that were as expected in a kitchen as an opera house.
Tears of the Mushroom, through a mouthful of bubblegum—a habit to which she had unusually, but perhaps not unsurprisingly, dedicated a new kind of Unggue pot—asked “Do you intend this as piece of long-form performance art? Designed from the first moment to the last?”
Vetinari frowned. “Perhaps not. I may be getting carried away. Do what feels right.” Vetinari smiled. ‘Do what feels right’ is what directors, conductors and chefs de cuisine say after giving extremely detailed and specific notes. In the case of such great artists as those before him, Vetinari giving these notes was probably analogous to the famous scene of Duke Felmet lecturing the professional actors in Hwel’s play.
He was excited, really properly excited, in a way that he could only remember having felt by accident. It was all coming together.
Tears of the Mushroom remembered when the goblins had first started calling Havelock, Lord Vetinari by the name “Useful Mystery of the Dog Leech.” She was perhaps the only person on the Disc whose first impression of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork was... weepy. He had been sitting on a chair at the edge of the stage between the governess of Überwald and Lady Sybil during her first concert. She’d been able to see the whole audience, despite Sybil telling the stagehands to keep the lights dim. Of course she hadn’t known who he was, but what she noticed about Vetinari, besides that he was the only one near the stage who was wearing old clothes that had been repaired, was how relieved he seemed to be to be crying, like he hadn’t cried in years.
Glenda’s tendency to eavesdrop had been enthusiastically encouraged over the years. While she may not have ended up as the palace cook, she now had considerably stronger ties to the dark clerks than Mr A. E. Pessimal, of whom the Patrician and Commander’s joint custody had worn away.
It was somewhat odd to step into a place that wasn’t occupied. The clerks were expected to fix their own meals and, in a de facto way, so was the Patrician.
The decorations, an inventive mix of velvet drapes and fairy lights ended up being the orange and purple of a sunset. Captain Angua had commented that Vetinari was taking a “rather odd” approach to party planning and that she didn’t understand why he was “focusing on coherence.” This won her the bright and brittle smile of someone with something up his sleeve.
Fully four times as many people had RSVPed than had attended the party for the tenth anniversary of his ascension. This meant the party had to take over, not only the entire palace gardens, but much of the street beyond. There were tents and tarpaulins set up for shade in the afternoon. What had been an excuse for drinking and dancing twenty-five years ago was now a celebration of an era, a career, a man.
There would have been fireworks, but the wizards remembered the day of Sir Samuel and Lady Sybil’s wedding. Ridcully had listened when Vetinari said the sound of explosions made him feel like he was back in the carriage again, in pain and terror and shock. Sometimes he stared at open carriages in the street and Drumknott had to drag him back to the present.
It was a good night. Vetinari briefly reconsidered his exit plan when he thought Of The Twilight The Darkness might actually accept a knighthood this time. But he didn’t, so he wandered over to talk to Ponder Stibbons about the finer points of turning 57 jobs into one.
Willikins, the butler of the Vimes household, had assigned himself the job of creating creative alcoholic drinks and even more creative nonalcoholic drinks.
Sam Vimes, who knew the whole plan, and Lady Sybil, who also knew everything unless Vetinari had gravely miscalculated, were in no great hurry to hover around congratulating him. There would be time enough for that after night had turned into morning. They were, however, interested in the Patrician’s terrifying secretary muttering about the disappointing lack of revenge in tyrannical schemes these days. Most people didn’t notice Drumknott enough to be afraid of him, but Vimes knew that if Drumknott wasn’t the hammer in mousetrap of punishment, he was at least the spring.
“If Havelock has forgiven people, shouldn’t that—“ Sybil began.
“He doesn’t forgive, he calculates. It’s about results, not justice. I just want to see some fear and contrition before it’s all over.”
“You’ll still be head of the dark clerks, won’t you?” Sybil was unfazed by Drumknott’s longing to witness terror and dread.
Drumknott raised his glass of wine. “Now, we all know the dark clerks don’t exist.”
Otto von Chriek had been told not to take photographs at the party, but he had been told politely so he figured it was okay as long as he didn’t have them printed in the newspaper.
Sacharissa and William de Worde would have been suspicious that something was afoot if every aspect of the party hadn’t been so obviously a labor of love.
Although Agnes Nitt singing Beatrix’s aria “He Is Leaving, I Am Staying” from Much Ado About Everybody ought to have been a hint.
Adora Belle Dearheart had agreed to attend after some internal conflict. Moist was home with pneumonia that he blamed on the railway coal smoke but she felt terrible about. She had been promised pie with extra pickled onions, which was out-and-out bribery, but she understood how difficult things could get if she wasn’t there. So she had left Moist at home with lemon-ginger tea and the fruit basket Vetinari had sent in the mail which seemed to be part of some kind of running joke.
The city Lord Vetinari was leaving behind was one where truth was true until morning, justice was firmly tethered to due process, there was freedom to take consequences, reasonably priced love was protected by hundreds of pages of Guild codes, guidelines and rules and you could get a hard-boiled egg from three countries in under two hours. Power had been spread out and there was no need for one person to be formally in charge. People had actually organized themselves. Without ideology, without dogma, just with enough pressure applied at the right time. It shouldn’t have worked. There were many reasons it shouldn’t be possible. But we know what magicians say about million-to-one chances.
Shortly before midnight Lord Vetinari stepped onto the dais that had been set up opposite the throne and wooden-chair-in-front-of-the-throne in the great hall of the palace. Silence fell across the crowd. He didn’t have to do anything, just step onto the stage and the whole room was at attention.
“I know many of you are younger than my time as Patrician and others remember the previous four,” he began. This got a laugh because a) he was a politician and b) he was frightening. It was almost disappointing. He continued, “When I first came to this city I knew I was walking into a death trap that wanted to use me as the poison or deadfall. I was armed with the immortal confidence of eleven years and an ill advised attempt at ‘iding my ac-cent. I noticed the women on the bridge and the people sleeping under it and I remembered how my family had lost control of Brindisi and then lost their lives and how my aunt stood against Lily Weatherwax’s moralizing and determinism. If Ankh-Morpork was going to be my home I had to learn from it. I studied the intricate webs of conflict that kept the city from falling apart and I thought, how can I make this move? What forces should be kept from canceling each other out? Eventually I was able to ask how to preserve life and then how to preserve freedom. Freedom is not a glittering generality to be waved around with bombast, but rather the terrifying consequence of free will. It means you carry the full burden of your actions. The world is changing at an accelerating rate I like to think that I have come to terms with that. I have discovered over the years, somewhat to my surprise, that I am as good at delegating as my principles demand—“
Around this point Ms Dearheart whispered to Drumknott, “Is he drunk?”
“Only slightly,” was the reply.
“I do not take issue with democracy so much as representative democracy. Power corrupts and no one holding executive power should believe they have a mandate, popular or divine. They should know that they are where they are through luck and dissembling skill.
I believe in solidarity, direct action and self-management in some not inconsiderable part due to not being able to be everywhere at once.” This got a few titters, but that was probably cued by the italics. He losing the audience and he hadn’t even made any jokes about killing people. It was time to stop bloviating and get to the point. “I believe, or rather know through careful calculation, that Ankh-Morpork as it currently stands is capable of functioning without a Patrician or, indeed, any centralized government.” The silence got silenter. The crowd was listening now, the calm before a hubbub. “As you know, Guilds in this city occupy the roles often taken by government agencies and our nationalized entities are more than capable of self-sustaining. The city backs itself and it can run itself. You may have heard that the Patrician does not have balls. I would like to you to look around and recognize that Havelock Vetinari, Citizen of Ankh-Morpork, at least tonight, does so. Should you disagree with me on the obsolescence of the Patricianship—“ here he produced the scroll sealed with black wax, “my vote of succession goes to Ms Adora Belle Dearheart, CEO of the Clacks Network.” Adora stepped onto the stage and took the scroll, Stygium ring glittering under the fairy lights.
“And now,” Vetinari said quietly, “Do not let me detain you.” He stepped off of the stage and vanished.
There were gasps. There was even a scream somewhere in the crowd. In a fraction of a second wrapt silence turned into an argument. Where had he gone? Was this his plan or someone else’s? Had Lord Vetinari been magicked away? Vaporized? Was he dead? Had he been a ghost? Was he ever even human to begin with? What did “obsolescence of the Patricianship” even mean? Every previous Patrician in living memory had only made things worse. Clearly he just wanted to go down in history as the last one. The complicating factor was that he had actually disappeared a few seconds after stepping off the stage.