‘What’s this all about?’

‘I don’t know, Mister Stollop.’

He shifted his weight. ‘Er, would it be about that Dimmer boy that got himself hurt today, d’you think?’

Could be anyone, thought Glenda as cold dread blossomed. It’s not as though it doesn’t happen every week. It doesn’t have to be either of them. It will be, of course, I know it, but I don’t know it, can’t possibly know it, and if I repeat that long enough it might all never have happened.

Got himself hurt, thought Glenda in the roar of panic. That quite likely means he happened to be standing in the wrong place in the wrong strip, which is tantamount to a self-inflicted wound. He got himself killed.

‘My lads came in and said it was out in the street. That’s what they just heard. He got killed, that’s what they heard.’

‘They didn’t see anything?’

‘That’s right, they didn’t see a thing.’

‘But they were doing a lot of listening?’

That one went over Stollop’s head without even bothering to climb.

‘And it was a Dimmer boy?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They heard he died, but you know how those Dimwell buggers lie.’

‘Where are your boys now?’

For a moment the old man’s eyes blazed. ‘They’re stoppin’ indoors or I’ll thrash ’em. You get some nasty gangs out when something like that’s been happening.’

‘One less now, then,’ said Glenda.

Stollop’s face was painted in pigments of misery and dread. ‘They’re not bad boys, you know. Not at heart. People pick on them.’

Yes, down at the Watch House, she said to herself, where people say, ‘That’s them! The big ones! I’d know them anywhere!’

She left him shaking his head and ran down the road. The troll would never expect to get a fare up here and there was no sense in hanging around and getting covered in paint. She might just about be able to catch up with it on its way down town. After a minute or two she realized that someone was following her. Chasing her in the gloom. If only she’d remembered to bring the knife. She stepped into a patch of deeper shadow and, as the knife-wielding maniac drew level, stepped out and shouted, ‘Stop following me!’

Juliet gave a little scream. ‘They’ve got Trev,’ she sobbed, as Glenda held her. ‘I know they have!’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Glenda. ‘There’s fighting all the time after a big match. No sense in getting too worried.’

‘So why were you running?’ said Juliet sharply. And there was no answer to that.

The bledlow nodded him through the staff door with a grunt and he headed straight away for the vats. A couple of the lads were dribbling in their meticulous and very slow way, but there was no sign of Nutt until Trev risked his sanity and nasal passages by checking the communal sleeping area, where he found Nutt sleeping on his bedroll, clutching his stomach. It was an extremely large stomach. Given the usual neat shape of Nutt, it made him look a little like a snake that had swallowed an extremely large goat. The curious face of the Igor and his worried voice came back to him. He looked down beside the bedroll and saw a small piece of piecrust and some crumbs. It smelled like a very good pie. In fact, he could think of only one person who could ever make a pie quite so beguiling. Whatever it was that had been filling Trev, the invisible illumination that had made him almost dance here from the Watch House, drained out through his feet.

He headed through the stone corridors to the Night Kitchen. Any optimism he might have retained was dashed one hope at a time by the trail of pie crumbs, but the illumination rose again as he saw Juliet and, oh yes, Glenda, standing in what was left of the Night Kitchen, which was a mess of torn-open cupboards and pieces of piecrust.

‘Oh, Mister Trevor Likely,’ said Glenda, folding her arms. ‘Just one question: who ate all the pies?’

The illumination swelled until it filled Trev with a kind of silvery light. It had been three nights since he had slept in an actual bed and it had not been your normal sort of day. He smiled broadly at nothing at all and was caught by Juliet as he hit the ground.

Trev woke up half an hour later, when Glenda brought him a cup of tea. ‘I thought we’d better let you sleep,’ she said. ‘Juliet said you looked awful, so obviously she’s coming to her senses.’

‘He was dead,’ said Trev. ‘Dead as a doorknob, and then he wasn’t. What’s that all about?’ He levered himself up and realized that he had been put to bed on one of the grubby bedrolls in the vats. Nutt was lying on the roll next to him.

‘All right,’ said Glenda. ‘If you can do it without lying, tell me.’ She sat down and watched the sleeping Nutt for a while as Trev tried to make sense of the previous evening. ‘What was in the sandwich again? The one the Igor gave him?’

‘Tuna, spaghetti and jam. With sprinkles,’ said Trev, yawning.

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s not the kinda thing you forget.’

‘What kind of jam?’ Glenda insisted.

‘Why ask?’

‘I’m thinking it might work with quince. Or chilli. Can’t see any place for sprinkles, though. They don’t make any sense.’

‘What? He’s an Igor. It doesn’t have to make sense!’

‘But he warned you about Nutt?’

‘Yes, but I don’t think he meant “lock up your pies”, do you? Are you gonna get into trouble about the pies?’

‘No. I’ve got plenty more maturing in the cool room. They’re at their best when matured. You have to keep ahead of yourself, with pies.’

She looked down at Nutt and went on, ‘Are you really telling me he got all smashed up by the Stollop boys and then walked out of the Lady Sibyl?’

‘He was as dead as a doorknob. Even old ’addock could spot that.’

This time they both stared at Nutt.

‘He’s alive now,’ said Glenda, as if it was an accusation.

‘Look,’ said Trev, ‘all I know about people who come from Uberwald is that some of them are vampires and some are werewolves. Well, I don’t think vampires are much interested in pies. And it was a full moon last week and he didn’t act odd; well, odder than normal.’

Glenda lowered her voice. ‘Maybe he’s a zombie—No, they don’t eat pies either.’ She continued to stare at Nutt, but another part of her said, ‘There’s going to be a banquet on Wednesday night. Lord Vetinari’s up to something with the wizards. It’s about the football, I’m sure of it.’

‘Well?’

‘For some plan, I expect. Something nasty. The wizards were at the game today taking notes! Don’t tell me that’s healthy. They want to shut down football, that’s what it is!’

‘Good!’

‘Trevor Likely, how can you say that! Your dad—’

‘Died because he was dumb,’ said Trev. ‘And don’t tell me it was the way he would have wanted to go. No one would want to go like that.’

‘But he loved his football!’

‘So? What does that mean? The Stollop boys love their football. Andy Shank loves ’is football! And what does it mean? Not countin’ today, how often have you seen the ball in play? Hardly ever, I bet.’

‘Well, yes, but it’s not about the football.’

‘You’re saying that football is not about football?’

Glenda wished she’d had a proper education, or, failing that, any real education at all. But she was not going to back off now. ‘It’s the sharing,’ she said. ‘It’s being part of the crowd. It’s chanting together. It’s all of it. The whole thing.’

‘I believe, Miss Glenda,’ said Nutt from his mattress, ‘that the work you are looking for is Trousenblert’s Der Selbst uberschritten durch das Ganze.’

They looked down at Nutt again, mouths open. He had opened his eyes and appeared to be staring at the ceiling. ‘It is the lonely soul trying to reach out to the shared soul of all humanity, and possibly much further. W. E. G. Goodnight’s translation of In Search of The Whole is marred, while quite understandable, by the mistranslation of bewu?tseinsschwelle as “haircut” throughout.’