Her last thought as she plummeted into sleep was: Don’t goblins steal chickens?Funny, he doesn’t look the type…

At half past eight, a neighbour woke her up by throwing gravel at her window.He wanted her to come and look at his father, described as ‘poorly’, and theday began. She had never needed to buy an alarm clock.

Why did other people need so much sleep? It was a permanent puzzle for Nutt. Itgot boring by himself.

Back in the castle in Uberwald there had always been someone around to talk to.Ladyship liked the night-time and wouldn’t go out in bright sunshine at all, soa lot of visitors came then. He had to stay out of sight, of course, but heknew all the passages in the walls and all the secret spy-holes. He saw thefine gentlemen, always in black, and the dwarfs with iron armour that gleamedlike gold (later, down in his cellar that smelled of salt and thunderstorms,Igor showed him how it was made). There were trolls, too, looking a bit morepolished than the ones he’d learned to run away from in the forests. Heespecially remembered the troll that shone like a jewel (Igor said his skin wasmade of living diamond). That alone would have been enough to glue him intoNutt’s memory, but there had been that moment, one day when the diamond trollwas seated at the big table with other trolls and dwarfs, when the diamond eyeshad looked up and had seen Nutt, looking through a tiny, hidden spy-hole at theother end of the room. Nutt was convinced of it. He’d jerked away from the holeso quickly that he’d banged his head on the wall opposite.

He’d grown to know his way around all the cellars and workshops in Ladyship’scastle. Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will begiven answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library.Open any book.

Those had been good days. Everywhere he went, men stopped work to show him howto plane and carve and mould and fettle and smelt iron and make horseshoes–butnot how to fit them, because any horse went mad when he entered the stables.One once kicked the boards out of the rear wall.

That particular afternoon he went up to the library, where Miss Healstetherfound him a book on scent. He read it so fast that his eyes should have lefttrails on the paper. He certainly left a trail in the library: the twenty-twovolumes of Brakefast’s Compendium of Odours were soon stacked on the longlectern, followed by Spout’s Trumpet of Equestrianism, and then, via a detourthrough the history section, Nutt plunged into the folklore section, with MissHealstether pedalling after him on the mobile library steps.

She watched him with a kind of gratified awe. He’d been barely able to readwhen he’d arrived, but the goblin boy had set out to improve his reading as aboxer trains for a fight. And he was fighting something, but she wasn’t sure inher own mind what it was and, of course, Ladyship never explained. He would sitall night under the lamp, book of the moment in front of him, dictionary andthesaurus on either side, wringing the meaning out of every word, punchingceaselessly at his own ignorance.

When she came in the next morning there was a dictionary of Dwarfish and a copyof Postalume’s The Speech of Trolls on the lectern too.

Surely it’s not right to learn like this, she told herself. It can’t besettling properly. You can’t just fork it into your head. Learning has to bedigested. You don’t just have to know, you have to comprehend.

She mentioned this to Fassel, the smith, who said, ‘Look, miss, he came up tome the other day and said he’d watched a smith before, and could he have a go?Well, you know her ladyship’s orders, so I gave him a bit of bar stock andshowed him the hammer and tongs and next minute he was going at it like–well,hammer and tongs! Turned out a nice little knife, very nice indeed. He thinksabout things. You can see his ugly little mush working it all out. Have youever met a goblin before?’

‘Strange you should ask,’ she told him. ‘Our catalogue says we’ve got one ofthe very few copies of J. P. Bunderbell’s Five Hours and Sixteen Minutes Amongthe Goblins of Far Uberwald, but I can’t find it anywhere. It’s priceless.’

‘Five hours and sixteen minutes doesn’t sound very long,’ said the smith.

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But according to a lecture Mr Blunderbell gaveto the Ankh-Morpork Trespassers’ Society,’[6] said MissHealstether, ‘it was about five hours too long. He said they ranged in sizefrom unpleasantly large to disgustingly small, had about the same level ofculture as yogurt and spent their time picking their own noses and missing. Acomplete waste of space, he said. It caused quite a stir. Anthropologists arenot supposed to write that sort of thing.’

‘And young Nutt is one of them?’

‘Yes, that puzzled me, too. Did you see him yesterday? There’s something abouthim that frightens horses, so he came to the library and found some old bookabout the Horseman’s Word. They were a kind of secret society, which knew howto make special oils that would make horses obey them. Then he spent theafternoon down in Igor’s crypt, brewing up gods know what, and this morning hewas riding a horse around the yard! It wasn’t happy, mind you, but he waswinning.’

‘I’m surprised his ugly little head doesn’t explode,’ said Fassel.

‘Ha!’ Miss Healstether sounded bitter. ‘Stand by, then, because he’s discoveredthe Bonk School.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Not that, them. Philosophers. Well, I say philosophers, but, well… ’

‘Oh, the mucky ones,’ said Fassel cheerfully.

‘I wouldn’t say mucky,’ said Miss Healstether, and this was true. A ladylikelibrarian would not employ that word in the presence of a smith, especially onewho was grinning. ‘Let’s say “indelicate”, shall we?’

There is not a lot of call for delicacy on an anvil, so the smith continuedunabashed: ‘They are the ones who go on about what happens if ladies don’t getenough mutton, and they say cigars are—’

‘That is a fallacy!’

‘That’s right, that’s what I read.’ The smith was clearly enjoying this. ‘AndLadyship lets him read this stuff?’

‘Indeed, she very nearly insists. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking.’ Or him,come to that, she thought to herself.

There was a limit to how many candles he should make, Trev had told Nutt. Itlooked bad if he made too many, Trev explained. The pointy hats might decidethat they didn’t need all the people. That made sense to Nutt. What would NoFace and Concrete and Weepy Mukko do? They would have nowhere else to go. Theyhad to live in a simple world; they too easily got knocked down by life in thisone.

He’d tried wandering around the other cellars, but there was nothing muchhappening at night, and people gave him funny looks. Ladyship did not rulehere. But wizards are a messy lot and nobody tidied up much and lived to tellthe tale, so all sorts of old storerooms and junk-filled workshops became hisfor the use of. And there was so much for a lad with keen night vision to find.He had already seen some luminous spoon ants carrying a fork, and, to hissurprise, the forgotten mazes were home to that very rare indoorovore, theUncommon Sock Eater. There were some things living up in the pipes, too, whichperiodically murmured, ‘Awk! Awk!’ Who knew what strange monsters made theirhome here?

He cleaned the pie plates very carefully indeed. Glenda had been kind to him.He must show that he was kind, too. It was important to be kind. And he knewwhere to find some acid.

Lord Vetinari’s personal secretary stepped into the Oblong Office with barely adisturbance in the air. His lordship glanced up. ‘Ah, Drumknott. I think Ishall have to write to the Times again. I am certain that one down, six acrossand nine down appeared in that same combination three months ago. On a Friday,I believe.’ He dropped the crossword page on to the desk with a look ofdisdain. ‘So much for a Free Press.’