Lords And Ladies

She recognised the small dark girl that came in, barely visible behind a stack of linen. Most people in Lancre knew everyone else.

"Millie Chillum?"

The linen bobbed a curtsy.

"Yes'm?"

Magrat lifted up part of the stack.

"It's me, Magrat," she said. "Hello."

"Yes'm." Another bob.

"What's up with you, Millie?"

"Yes'm." Bob, bob.

"I said it's me. You don't have to look at me like that."

"Yes'm."

The nervous bobbing continued. Magrat found her own knees begi

"If you say 'yes'm' again, it will go very hard with you," she managed, as she went past.

"Y-right, your majesty, m'm."

Faint light began to dawn.

"I'm not queen yet, Millie. And you've known me for twenty years," panted Magrat, on the way up.

"Yes'm. But you're going to be queen. So me mam told me I was to be respectful," said Millie, still curtsying nervously

"Oh. Well. All right, then. Where are my clothes?"

"Got 'em here, your pre-majesty."

"They're not mine. And please stop going up and down all the time. I feel a bit sick."

"The king ordered 'em from Sto Helit special, m'm."

"Did he, eh? How long ago?"

"Du

He knew I was coming home, thought Magrat. How? What's going on here?

There was a good deal more lace than Magrat was used to, but that was, as it were, the icing on the cake. Magrat normally wore a simple dress with not much underneath it except Magrat. Ladies of quality couldn't get away with that kind of thing. Millie had been provided with a sort of technical diagram, but it wasn't much help.

They studied it for some time.

"This is a standard queen outfit, then?"

"Couldn't say, m'm. I think his majesty just sent 'em a lot of money and said to send you everything." They spread out the bits on the floor.

"Is this the pantoffle?"

Outside, on the battlements, the guard changed. In fact he changed into his gardening apron and went off to hoe the beans. Inside, there was considerable sartorial discussion.

"I think you've got it up the wrong way, m'm. Which bit's the farthingale?"

"Says here Insert Tabbe A into Slotte B. Can't find slotte B."

"These're like saddlebags. I'm not wearing these. And this thing?"

"A ruff, m'm. Um. They're all the rage in Sto Helit, my brother says."

"You mean they make people angry? And what's this?"

"Brocade, I think."

"It's like cardboard. Do I have to wear this sort of thing every day?"

"Don't know, I'm sure, m'm."

"But Verence just trots around in leather gaiters and an old jacket!"

"Ah, but you're queen. Queens can't do that sort of thing. Everyone knows that, m'm. It's all right for kings to go wandering around with their arse half out their trous-"

She rammed her hand over her mouth.

"It's all right," said Magrat. "I'm sure even kings have . . . tops to their legs just like everyone else. Just go on with what you were saying."

Millie had gone bright red.

"I mean, I mean, I mean, queens has got to be ladylike," she managed. "The king got books about it. Etti-quetty and stuff."

Magrat surveyed herself critically in the mirror.

"It really suits you, your soon-going-to-be-majesty," said Millie.

Magrat turned this way and that.

"My hair's a mess," she said, after a while.

"Please m'm, the king said he's having a hairdresser come all the way from Ankh-Morpork, m'm. For the wedding."

Magrat patted a tress into place. It was begi

"My word," she said. "And what happens now?"

"Du

"What's the king doing?"

"Oh, he had breakfast early and buggered off over to Slice to show old Muckloe how to breed his pigs out of a book."

"So what do I do? What's my job?"

Millie looked puzzled although this did not involve much of a change in her general expression.

"Du

"At the moment," said Magrat firmly, "we'll have a go at the tapestry."

Ridcully was having difficulty with the Librarian.

"I happen to be your Archchancellor, sir!"

"Oook."

"You'll like it up there! Fresh air! Bags of trees! More woods than you can shake a stick at!"

"Oook!"

"Come down this minute!"

"Oook!"

"The books'll be quite safe here during the holidays. Good grief, it's hard enough to get students to come in here at the best of times-"

"Oook!"

Ridcully glared at the Librarian, who was hanging by his toes from the top shelf of Parazoology Ba to Mn.

'Oh, well," he said, his voice suddenly low and cu

"Oook?"

"Thousands of books. Someone told me there's incunibles, too. Shame, really, you not wanting to see them." Ridcully's voice could have greased axles.

"Oook?"

"But I can see your mind is quite made up. So I shall be going. Farewell."

Ridcully paused outside the Library door, counting under his breath. He'd reached "three" when the Librarian knuckled through at high speed, caught by the incunibles.

"So that'll be four tickets, then?" said Ridcully.

Gra

People underestimate bees.

Gra

And then there are the big fat drones. People think all they do is hang around the hive all year, waiting for those few brief minutes when the queen even notices their existence, but that doesn't explain why they've got more sense organs than the roof of the CIA building.

Gra

For the first time since she'd returned home, she went to the hives.

And stared.

Bees were boiling out of the entrances. The thrum of wings filled the normally calm little patch behind the raspberry bushes. Brown bodies zipped through the air like horizontal hail.

She wished she knew why.

Bees were her one failure. There wasn't a mind in Lancre she couldn't Borrow. She could even see the world through the eyes of earthworms[9] But a swarm, a mind made up of thousands of mobile parts, was beyond her. It was the toughest test of all. She'd tried over and over again to ride on one, to see the world through ten thousand pairs of multifaceted eyes all at once, and all she'd ever got was a migraine and an inclination to make love to flowers.

9

It was largelydark.