There was a price the Guild paid for its licence. It saw to it that there were no careless, half-hearted or, in a manner of speaking, murderously inefficient assassins. You never met anyone who'd failed the test.
People did fail. You just never met them. Maybe there was one under there, maybe it was Chidder, even, or Snoxall or any one of the lads. They were all doing the run this evening. Maybe if he failed he'd be bundled under there.
Teppic tried to sight on the recumbent figure.
'Ahem,' coughed the examiner.
His throat was dry. Panic rose like a drunkard's supper.
His teeth wanted to chatter. His spine was freezing, his clothes a collection of damp rags. The world slowed down. No. He wasn't going to. The sudden decision hit him like a brick in a dark alley, and was nearly as surprising. It wasn't that he hated the Guild, or even particularly disliked Mericet, but this wasn't the way to test anyone. It was just wrong.
He decided to fail. Exactly what could the old man do about it, here?
And he'd fail with flair.
He turned to face Mericet, looked peacefully into the examiner's eyes, extended his crossbow hand in some vague direction to his right, and pulled the trigger.
There was a metallic twang.
There was a click as the bolt ricocheted off a nail in the window sill. Mericet ducked as it whirred over his head. It hit a torch bracket on the wall, and went past Teppic's white face purring like a maddened cat.
There was a thud as it hit the blanket, and then silence.
'Thank you, Mr Teppic. If you could bear with me just one moment.'
The old assassin pored over his clipboard, his lips moving. He took the pencil, which dangled from it by a bit of frayed string, and made a few marks on a piece of pink paper.
'I will not ask you to take it from my hands,' he said, 'what with one thing and another. I shall leave it on the table by the door.'
It wasn't a particularly pleasant smile: it was thin and dried-up, a smile with all the warmth long ago boiled out of it; people normally smiled like that when they had been dead for about two years under the broiling desert sun. But at least you felt he was making the effort.
Teppic hadn't moved. 'I've passed?' he said.
'That would appear to be the case.'
'But-'
'I am sure you know that we are not allowed to discuss the test with pupils. However, I can tell you that I personally do not approve of these modern flashy techniques. Good morning to you.' And Mericet stalked out.
Teppic tottered over to the dusty table by the door and looked down, horrified, at the paper. Sheer habit made him extract a pair of tweezers from his pouch in order to pick it up.
It was genuine enough. There was the seal of the Guild on it, and the crabbed squiggle that was undoubtedly Mericet's signature; he'd seen it often enough, generally at the bottom of test papers alongside comments like 3/10. See me.
He padded over to the figure on the bed and pulled back the blanket.
It was nearly one in the morning. Ankh-Morpork was just beginning to make a night of it.
It had been dark up above the rooftops, in the aerial world of thieves and assassins. But down below the life of the city flowed through the streets like a tide.
Teppic walked through the throng in a daze. Anyone else who tried that in the city was asking for a guided tour of the bottom of the river, but he was wearing assassin's black and the crowd just automatically opened in front of him and closed behind. Even the pickpockets kept away. You never knew what you might find. He wandered aimlessly through the gates of the Guild House and sat down on a black marble seat, with his chin on his knuckles.
The fact was that his life had come to an end. He hadn't thought about what was going to happen next. He hadn't dared to think that there was going to be a next.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned, Chidder sat down beside him and wordlessly produced a slip of pink paper.
'Snap,' he said.
'You passed too?' said Teppic.