Chapter Text
It was a quiet afternoon of early spring; the air was still chill, and the birds sang from behind the leaves of the crab apple trees in the campus’ cloister. He enjoyed studying. Learning new skills was always an interesting challenge, it made him feel right, and the effort it took was quite satisfying. So he sat in the stone warmed by the morning sun and read his book on poisons. He had always found any kind of knowledge to be worth the time it took to learn it, he was a curious young man, as he had been a curious child not so long ago. He had seldom encountered adults willing to deal with his enquiries, but his aunt had, in her own way, done her best to encourage his natural curiosity and took the effort to direct it in her interest; he was aware of that.
From the upper edge of his book he saw some of the older boys bickering with each other. The morning air brought their laughter to him, it floated around with the singing of the birds and died away. They were leaving for the mid-term holidays, to their fancy country houses.
It was unfair. Those boys, with fancy families, studied in the Guild just for the elegance of it all, because it was what youngsters of their social position did. He despised them, their coldness, their superfluousness. A faint needle in his heart betrayed his envy. They did have a family that made their lives easier than his ever was, or would be. Ah, but envy is a hollow feeling, a void that can only burrow the heart that lets it nest on it.
Young Havelock closed his mind to that feeling and focused on the book. He had discovered in the past years that he was capable of an exceptional focus, which allowed him to see all the sides of a subject that usually avoided the general observer, and, at the same time, allowed him to escape and ignore the burdens of the heart. And so learning became his refuge, his solace from all that loneliness, all that envy he felt for the other boys, for the sons and daughters, nephews and nieces. He was no one’s. His parents died long ago, his aunt had to abandon him for his own wellbeing, and the Vetinari’s were kind enough, but way too old and tired to deal with the torments of a youth like him. He only had himself, his ever wily mind and his rotten little heart.
People usually felt sorrow for him, from the comfortable position of their well-settled families. His parents’ death had left him with a title and an inheritance he was too young to understand, and his aunt, who had become his legal tutor, had a social position that, he had been forced to learn, made his own position weaker, and, to a certain extent, uncomfortable in public spaces. His aunt was what in Ankh-Morpork would be called a seamstress. But a fancy one, of course, as she had managed to pull every string and manipulate every social current back in Brindisi. Brindisi was always conspiring behind the most endearing and silky curtains, and his aunt was involved in every single one of those intrigues. But a cortegiana onesta was rather burdened with a child under her care, as she somewhat lost her status. Nonetheless, his aunt had loved him and cared for him, and he was grateful for that.
He missed Brindisi sometimes. He missed the flocks of cooing pigeons that crowded its vast squares, the magnificent fountains with their endless gurgling water, the ominous chime of the bells crawling through the insides of the city. He was just nine years old when he left, covertly, at night. His mother had died way before, she never quite recovered from giving birth to him and her health was in shambles, so she passed away when he was three. His father, on the other hand, had been murdered by a member of the rival family: in Brindisi, power was a savage battlefield, preyed on by the richest and most ancient families, and his family was at the top. So, he had to take cover before they could get him too. Her aunt was a resourceful woman, but after two years of a rather fragile safety, they had to flee. She managed to get them both out of the city incognito, and took them to the safest place they could travel to, which happened to be Ankh-Morpork.
A woman alone with a child that was not hers and without a respectable job, no fortune or name of significance for the city, didn’t have many chances in Winder’s Anhk-Morpork. So she did what she thought best: she managed to settle him with a noble family, an old and childless marriage very willing to take care of a young orphaned boy; and as for her, she worked as a seamstress, a regular, low-class seamstress, a cortegiana di lume. That would have to do until things got better.
And so young Havelock had to take many responsibilities beyond his age. It had been quite the struggle at first, he had to pretend to be someone else, as it was too dangerous to disclose their identities. That night his life had changed dramatically, never to be the same. He had to learn a new language, he had to bury his past, to build his future on a lie. And he was only nine.
The presence of his past never left him, no matter how hard he tried to keep it locked away, it was like these ancient rocks he was sitting on, full of the warmth of the day. It was always inside of his porous heart; but lately it kept coming in waves in moments like this, when he was alone and his mind would drift away. Why this constant remembrance? Why did it keep coming back, at this time and place?
His old name; his self that could not be. He couldn’t allow himself that weakness now. He had a propose, and he had to keep going, no looking back, no divertissements.
A book on poisoning on his hand, a test in two days, stealth class tomorrow. That’s all there is. A good mark, a way out, a useful training.
“Ma non dimenticare mai che hai un cuore, Dante mio.”
Book. Test. Class. Training.
He woke up to the chill air of the night. Well, waking up was decidedly an euphemism. He opened his eyes to bring his train of thought to the present. Fifteen years ago, that day, he remembered; and tonight, another beginning, a new self to compose. He stared at the ceiling for a while, his mind completely blank, Finally, he got up.
Out of bed, he felt the cold air pierce his skin while he got dressed. He liked to sleep with an open window to hear the city and its rumble. He feared the nightmares a deep sleep always brought him, and the dissonant symphony of the city’s nightlife helped him keep his mind half awake. It had its fluctuations, a crescendo in the deepest darkness of the hours; a prolonged diminuendo with the sunrise. Now the city was unusually quiet, for the time being, with a persistent freshness in the air, a messenger for the rain. A moonless night, a barren sky, all stars departed.
Taking refuge in its darkness, he had spent the early hours of that night climbing amongst the rooftops of this city, soon to be his, to deliver some letters he had carefully written, in the codes he had used through the years with each correspondent. Codes, whispers, secrets, disguises had always been a part of his life, a vast tangle of threaded lies and deceit.
To disappear completely behind the mask without a valediction had been tempting, but in his cruel heart he found, to his surprise, a fondness that refused to die under his stern fist. And so that morning had been dedicated to the farewell to his… friends.
Ah, friendship… love…? What was it all for anyway… The cruelty within would have bled through again and again, soaking them in its cold embrace. To put an end to it was, after all, for the better. Enough had they endured him.
He had decided long ago that he was not one for tenderness and affection, as it turns one unreliable and prone to miscalculation. Friendship and love led to treachery of the mind and corruption. For the years to come, he would need, most of all, to be thoroughly incorruptible; or else it all would have been in vain. The city did not allow for such things as fondness and devotion to anything other than herself. So loneliness again it must be, a whole life led through loneliness, with a brief trompe-l’oeil of companionship that, alas, had to reach its end. It was for the better. And such lies he kept telling himself. Enough of this.
Walking down the stairs, quite surely for the last time, he felt his life ripe with meaning. Like a peach in its prime, so full of sweet nectar that the skin begins to tear right before falling, he felt the stretch of his thirty years of life reach closure: the legacy of hundred of years of family tradition, his fathers work in Brindisi, his aunt’s straining effords, his upbringing, his training at the guild. It all conjuncted in this moment, to culminate his purpouse.
The discipline it took was not the hardest part, he was one to love order and consistency; but the unavoidable human feelings were quite annoying, and in this place, at this time, were, indeed, the hardest part of all. His tortured, rotten, little heart.
Outside, on the wet cobbles of the street, a carefully choreographed revolution was silently unfolding. The People would take him: no criminal murderer, no paid assassin: a work from the People, for the People. Who leads the People, who traces their path, who plans their actions? The People themselves. And he was, undoubtedly, one of the People, wasn’t he? At least for now.
He had navigated the flow of the river as one of the People, and he had helped anchor the ship when the harbour was near. And he would already be stirring the wheel, before anyone else could notice that it had been left empty.
Snapcase’s reign of terror had been so much so that he did not need to do other than whisper some ideas to the gusts of air in the streets, to set some engines in motion. He had seen how a furious crowd must be handled, that enlightening night years ago, on a 25th of May.
And then, he would just wait, rapaciously, until the city’s ruler’s chair was emptied. The crowd would come back from the hanging to find him in the office, already working on the paperwork as if he had been there all the time. And since no one wants to acknowledge being manipulated or misled, they would all pretend he was always the one they chose to take new office. After all, They had used him, years ago, when no one else would dare challenge Lord Winder. They owed him a favour. And he knew how to handle them to his best interest, didn’t he?
Once in the hall, he reached for his coat and opened the front door, to join the crowd and, unseen, take hold of the Palace.
But once he set foot outside, he bumped into a face drenched in water and anger. It was Downey’s.
— Are you out of your mind?! What on the Disc does all this bullshit mean? — he spit out every word while tightly holding Vetinari’s letter in his fist —And why did you have to leave this stupid letter in my bedside table, you freak, that’s trespassing! You melodramatic bastard! I am not letting you commit a public suicide. —his eyes were raging, his face dripping from the rain. He pushed Vetinari back inside and, grabbing him from the lapels of his coat, pinned him to the wall. — This city doesn’t need to be saved by a martyr! Keep your sacrificial tendencies to yourself, and leave the rest of us alone. — he was so close he could feel his breathing on his skin.
— My mind is set, and anyway, there is no way to stop this now. Snapcase is dying tonight, whatever I do, and if I don’t take the Palace, someone else will, and they won’t be a nice ruler, Downey. I must do it. I know myself, I know my cruel heart, I know how to make it useful to the people. Let me go. — his voice sounded calm and as cold as the rain outside; but, against his will, it was slightly infused with a concealed warmth he would never acknowledge to be capable of feeling. Downey’s heart plummeted to the floor, drenched with the rain and with Havelock’s words.
He stared directly at his eyes, while outside screams and chants began to flood the street. The rain fell with rabid fierceness. In a shared silence, through their gaze passed recollections of their youth, and of more recent times. A nasty fight in the gardens of the Guild’s Academy, blood on his lips; a game of cricket in the gardens of the Downey’s summer house in Quirm; Vetinari’s bedroom in the empty manor, an unmade bed after a night together. And it all ended here. The letter was quite mysterious all over, but that statement was unambiguous: that was that, and for good this time.
Downey’s grip on the lapels relaxed. He would never admit it, but he understood; deep down, he always knew it would happen, eventually. Havelock had too much sense of responsibility, too much affection for political affairs, too much appetite for control. What a bastard.
Vetinari, staring at him one last time, graciously escaped from his grip.
— I will take any chance I can to take you out of office, you know that, right? That is, if no one gets the upper hand and inhumes you before I manage to plot any intrigue.
Havelock stared at him, standing by the open door.
— It will be my pleasure, William — he gave him a faint smile that did not reach his eyes, and left.
Downey stood in the hall of the empty house for a while, listening to the rain pouring endlessly, chanting with the People, for the liberation of Ankh-Morpork.
Vetinari headed to the Palace, walking amongst the crowd. It worked as planned. A furious, bloodthirsty mob fuelled by years of cruel ruling, and he had managed to conduct it. He had been everywhere, he had been the adviser of every revolutionary that had sparked a little above the rest in the span of those thirteen years since Winder’s deposition. He had metamorphosed into the most needed man in every conspiracy. He had become the People, he had let the city possess him, so he could become its defender.
The city needed no martyr, Downey said. Well, maybe not the image of a martyr, but it needed a ruler, and to rule the city was to become a martyr. That’s where all the previous patricians had failed. They thought it all was about power and money. So they tried to rule the city through domination and violence, and that only leads to deposition. If you crush the people, grind them to feed yourself, they will eventually be the ones to hang you. There’s always more of them than there is of you. A proper ruler had to become a servant for the city. Devoid of anything personal, they had to let the city flood them, fill them, drown them in her machinery. That was the real martyrdom of the proper ruler: to lose yourself in the engines of the city.
He finally reached the palace, following the crowd, and discreetly settled himself in the dark, waiting. He saw the people storm the government of their city, defending themselves from the swords of the guards with whichever tools they had in hand: hoes, picks, hammers, butcher knifes. The tools of working people. Being completely outnumbered, the guards finally decided that His Lordship was not reason enough to lose their lives and ended up joining the mob.
From his hiding spot, Vetinari saw the patrician trying to escape through one of the secret entrances to the palace. Invisible in the shadows, he sneaked behind the man and grabbed him tightly. Then, he said to his ear:
— I could murder you swiftly, but then the People would not have their vengeance. You do not deserve this, you know? You deserve to be a reminder to the future ruler that the city is its people, and that to rule is to serve her. So you will serve as an example to the new ruler, and he will never forget, if he values his life even a little. Now, when the crowd notices you are nowhere in the palace, they will look for you in the surroundings. I’m retaining you until then, and don’t even try to run away. I am going to end you if you do; and trust me, you wouldn’t be my first.
After a while of waiting in the dark, the shouting began to get louder, nearer. When the lights of the heading torches were visible, Vetinari released his grip on Snapcase and disappeared again.
— There he is! — someone shouted from the shadows.
— Get him! He can’t escape! — a voice from the mob responded.
And hundreds of hands, axes, clubs, torches, fell on the patrician, who was beginning to experience a historical event.
His own weapon had been his words, he always liked to think of his speech as sharper than any blade, more deathly than any poison. He had carefully braided sentences into the People of the City, dripping poison that travelled through its veins at a mercurial speed, and now they were letting it reach its destination.
While the crowd, that now included every guard from the palace, was making history, Vetinari climbed the walls of the palace and entered the Oblong Office through the window. Once there, he sat on the chair and started organising the paperwork. At the end of it all, they would find him already working, and since this is something not many people in Ankh-Morpork actually want to do, they might let him keep doing it.