A second later the arrow thudded into it.
Then he tested the weight on his feet and did a small calculation which revealed that two people had been subtracted from his back. Further summation indicated that they had been added to the dune.
c stared at the line in the rock. Geometry. That was it. 'We'll go to Ephebe,' he said. 'They know all about geometry and they have some very unsound ideas. Unsound ideas are what I could do with right now.'
'Why do you carry all these knives and things? I mean, really?'
'Hmm? Sorry?'
'All these knives. Why?'
Teppic thought about it. 'I suppose I don't feel properly dressed without them,' he said.
'Oh.'
Ptraci dutifully cast around for a new topic of conversation. Introducing Topics of Amusing Discourse was also part of a handmaiden's duties. She'd never been particularly good at it. The other girls had come up with an astonishing assortment: everything from the mating habits of crocodiles to speculation about life in the netherworld. She'd found it heavy going after talking about the weather.
'So,' she said. 'You've killed a lot of people, I expect?'
'Mm?'
'As an assassin, I mean. You get paid to kill people. Have you killed lots? Do you know you tense your back muscles a lot?'
'I don't think I ought to talk about it,' he said.
'I ought to know. If we've got to cross the desert together and everything. More than a hundred?'
'Good heavens, no.,
'Well, less than fifty?'
Teppic rolled over.
'Look, even the most famous assassins never killed more than thirty people in all their lives,' he said.
'Less than twenty, then?'
'Yes.'
'Less than ten?'
'I think,' said Teppic, 'it would be best to say a number between zero and ten.'
'Just so long as I know. These things are important.' They strolled back to You Bastard. But now it was Teppic who seemed to have something on his mind.
'All this senate . . .' he said.
'Congress,' corrected Ptraci.
'You . . . er . . . more than fifty people?'
'There's a different name for that sort of woman,' said Ptraci, but without much rancour.
'Sorry. Less than ten?'
'Let's say,' said Ptraci, 'a number between zero and ten.' You Bastard spat. Twenty feet away the blowfly was picked cleanly out of the air and glued to the rock behind it.
'Amazing how they do it, isn't it,' said Teppic. 'Animal instinct, I suppose.'