wait whut is that discworld fic I spy with my little eye
"That makes ten words," said Grace Speaker, pressing her thumb to the last letter of gaskin. "Drink."
Vetinari drank, and tried not to think about what the scumble undoubtedly was doing to the inside of his mouth(1). His thoughts, by way of revenge, immediately turned to what the scumble was doing to the inside-- and outside, and everything in-between-- of his liver. He carefully failed to wince, but he did glance up from the mess of hints to the woman across from him, who was wearing a long-toothed smile that went rather well with her necklace of bottle caps and her short, fraying salt-and-pepper hair, much of which was sticking straight up from her skull thanks to, he presumed, the... ah... excitement of... of crosswording. Or maybe it was the alcohol; or the air, dry and crackling. It wasn't the right time of year for lightening storms, but then Ankh-Morpork wasn't the right kind of city for seasonable weather.
She'd filled in two words while he'd been staring blankly, he realized. It was possible his faith in his own iron self control was not as well-placed as it could be. Especially considering he hadn't had anything stronger than sherry in the last twenty years. But what was done was done. And so on.
He shrugged and leaned in until their shadows bled into each other. What was probably tomorrow's hangover gave a little wave of pre-introduction, as it were, somewhere just behind his left temple. Outside, thunder rolled.
It occured to the Patrician that if he'd known the extent to which his association with Miss Speaker was going to affect his health and his sobriety, it was possible that he would never have sought out her acquaintance at all. He gave her another slanting look as he filled in number eighteen across (caducity: hint: Grandma's due for an upgrade to the status of 'fertilizer'). "Derived from the Latatian perishable," she said, and: "of course." She sounded annoyed.
He thought: possible, but unlikely in the extreme. Pet store owner. Ahaha.
That said, his original plan to drink her under the table before checking under the, er, other table for the unlicensed history work he knew(2) was there somewhere was looking increasingly ill-advised...
(1) Put it this way: his taste buds had no similar luxury.
(2) The word 'knew', set in indignant italics to boot, means a lot more coming from someone with an army of clerks whose sole task it is to make sure they, ahem, knew everything there was to know. Also, a self-animated filing system(3).
(3) Courtesy of Leonard of Quirm, and officially called 'Cabinets That Sort Themselves Out And Have Exciting Metal Arms'.
Vetinari drank, and tried not to think about what the scumble undoubtedly was doing to the inside of his mouth(1). His thoughts, by way of revenge, immediately turned to what the scumble was doing to the inside-- and outside, and everything in-between-- of his liver. He carefully failed to wince, but he did glance up from the mess of hints to the woman across from him, who was wearing a long-toothed smile that went rather well with her necklace of bottle caps and her short, fraying salt-and-pepper hair, much of which was sticking straight up from her skull thanks to, he presumed, the... ah... excitement of... of crosswording. Or maybe it was the alcohol; or the air, dry and crackling. It wasn't the right time of year for lightening storms, but then Ankh-Morpork wasn't the right kind of city for seasonable weather.
She'd filled in two words while he'd been staring blankly, he realized. It was possible his faith in his own iron self control was not as well-placed as it could be. Especially considering he hadn't had anything stronger than sherry in the last twenty years. But what was done was done. And so on.
He shrugged and leaned in until their shadows bled into each other. What was probably tomorrow's hangover gave a little wave of pre-introduction, as it were, somewhere just behind his left temple. Outside, thunder rolled.
It occured to the Patrician that if he'd known the extent to which his association with Miss Speaker was going to affect his health and his sobriety, it was possible that he would never have sought out her acquaintance at all. He gave her another slanting look as he filled in number eighteen across (caducity: hint: Grandma's due for an upgrade to the status of 'fertilizer'). "Derived from the Latatian perishable," she said, and: "of course." She sounded annoyed.
He thought: possible, but unlikely in the extreme. Pet store owner. Ahaha.
That said, his original plan to drink her under the table before checking under the, er, other table for the unlicensed history work he knew(2) was there somewhere was looking increasingly ill-advised...
(1) Put it this way: his taste buds had no similar luxury.
(2) The word 'knew', set in indignant italics to boot, means a lot more coming from someone with an army of clerks whose sole task it is to make sure they, ahem, knew everything there was to know. Also, a self-animated filing system(3).
(3) Courtesy of Leonard of Quirm, and officially called 'Cabinets That Sort Themselves Out And Have Exciting Metal Arms'.