Jingo Read Free Page A

that they hoped he didn’t know and didn’t want him to find out.
    Currently he was paying attention to the things that Lord Downey of the Assassins’ Guild was failing to say in a lengthy exposition of the Guild’s high level of training and value to the city. The voice, eventually, came to a stop in the face of Vetinari’s aggressive listening.
    “Thank you, Lord Downey,” he said. “I’m sure we shall all be able to sleep a lot more uneasily for knowing all that. Just one minor point…I believe the word ‘assassin’ actually comes from Klatch?”
    “Well…indeed…”
    “And I believe also that many of your students are, as it turns out, from Klatch and its neighboring countries?”
    “The unrivaled quality of our education…”
    “Quite so. What you are telling me, in point of fact, is that their assassins have been doing it longer, know their way around our city and have had their traditional skills honed by you?”
    “Er…”
    The Patrician turned to Mr. Burleigh.
    “We surely have superiority in weapons, Mr. Burleigh?”
    “Oh, yes. Say what you like about dwarfs, but we’ve been turning out some superb stuff lately,” said the President of the Guild of Armorers.
    “Ah. That at least is some comfort.”
    “Yes,” said Burleigh. He looked wretched. “However, the thing about weapons manufacture…the important thing…”
    “I believe you are about to say that the important thing about the business of weaponry is that it is a business,” said the Patrician.
    Burleigh looked as though he’d been let off the hook on to a bigger hook.
    “Er…yes.”
    “That, in fact, the weapons are for selling.”
    “Er…exactly.”
    “To anyone who wishes to buy them.”
    “Er…yes.”
    “Regardless of the use to which they are going to be put?”
    The armaments manufacturer looked affronted.
    “Pardon me? Of course . They’re weapons .”
    “And I suspect that in recent years a very lucrative market has been Klatch?”
    “Well, yes…the Seriph needs them to pacify the outlying regions…”
    The Patrician held up his hand. Drumknott, his clerk, gave him a piece of paper.
    “The ‘Great Leveller’ Cart-Mounted Ten-Bank 500-pound Crossbow?” he said. “And, let me see…the ‘Meteor’ Automated Throwing Star Hurler, Decapitates at Twenty Paces, Money Back If Not Completely Decapitated?”
    “Have you ever heard of the D’regs, my lord?” said Burleigh. “They say the only way to pacify one of them is to hit him repeatedly with an axe and bury what’s left under a rock. And even then, choose a heavy rock.”
    The Patrician seemed to be staring at a large drawing of the “Dervish” Mk III Razor-Wire Bolas. There was a painful silence. Burleigh tried to fill it up, always a bad mistake.
    “Besides, we provide much-needed jobs in Ankh-Morpork,” he murmured.
    “Exporting these weapons to other countries,” said Lord Vetinari. He handed the paper back and fixed Burleigh with a friendly smile.
    “I’m very pleased to see that the industry has done so well,” he said. “I will bear this particularly in mind.”
    He placed his hands together carefully. “The situation is grave, gentlemen.”
    “Whose?” said Mr. Burleigh.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “What? Oh…I was thinking about something else, my lord…”
    “I was referring to the fact that a number of our citizens have gone out to this wretched island. As have, I understand, a number of Klatchians.”
    “Why are our people going out there?” said Mr. Boggis of the Thieves’ Guild.
    “Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and…additionalwealth in a new land,” said Lord Vetinari.
    “What’s in it for the Klatchians?” said Lord Downey.
    “Oh, they’ve gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for nothing,” said Lord Vetinari.
    “A masterly summation, if I may say so, my lord,” said Mr. Burleigh, who felt he had some ground