The previous governess had taught them a prayer which included the hope that some god or other  would take their soul if they died  while they  were asleep and, if  Susan was any judge,  had the underlying message  that  this would be a good thing.

     One day, Susan averred, she'd hunt that woman down.

     'Susan,' said Twyla, from somewhere under the blankets.

     'Yes?'

     'You know last week we wrote letters to the Hogfather?'

     'Yes?'

     'Only ... in the park Rachel says he doesn't exist and it's your father really. And everyone else said she was right.'

     There  was a rustle from the other bed. Twyla's brother had turned over and was listening surreptitiously.

     Oh  dear, thought Susan. She  had hoped she  could avoid this.  It  was going to be like that business with the Soul Cake Duck all over again.

     'Does  it matter  if you get the  presents anyway?' she said, making  a direct appeal to greed.

     ' ' es.'

     Oh dear, oh  dear. Susan sat down on the bed, wondering how the hell to get through this. She patted the one visible hand.

     'Look  at it  this way, then,' she said, and took a deep mental breath. 'Wherever people are  obtuse and absurd ... and wherever they have,  by even the  most  generous standards, the attention  span of a  small  chicken in a hurricane and  the investigative  ability of a  one-legged cockroach ... and wherever  people  are  inanely  credulous,  Pathetically   attached  to  the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the  realities  of  the   physical  universe  as  an   oyster   has  of mountaineering ... yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.'

     There was silence from  under the  bedclothes,  but she sensed that the tone  of  voice had  worked.  The  words had  meant nothing.  That,  as  her grandfather might have said, was humanity all over.

     'G' night.'

     'Good night,' said Susan.

     It wasn't even a bar. It was just a  room where people drank while they waited for  other people with whom they  had  business. The business usually involved the transfer of ownership of  something from one person to another, but then, what business doesn't?

     Five businessmen sat round a table, lit by  a candle stuck in a saucer. There was an open bottle between them. They were taking some care to keep it away from the candle flame.

     ' ' s gone six,' said  one, a  huge man with dreadlocks and a beard you could keep goats in. 'The clocks struck ages ago. He ain't coming. Let's go.

     'Sit down, will you? Assassins are always late. 'cos of style, right?'

     'This one's mental.'

     'Eccentric.'

     'What's the difference?'

     'A bag of cash.'

     The three that hadn't spoken yet looked at one another.

     'What's this? You never said he was an Assassin,' said Chickenwire. 'He never said the guy was an Assassin, did he, Banjo?'

     There was a sound like distant thunder. It was Banjo Lilywhite clearing his throat.

     'Dat's right,' said a voice from the upper slopes. 'Youse never said.'

     The  others  waited until  the rumble  died away.  Even  Banjo's  voice hulked.

     'He's'  - the first  speaker  waved  his  hands vaguely,  trying to get across the point that someone was a  hamper of food, several folding chairs, a  tablecloth, an  assortment of cooking  gear  and an entire colony of ants short of a picnic -'mental. And he's got a funny eye.'

     'It's just glass, all right?' said the one known as Catseye, signalling a waiter for  four beers and a glass  of milk. 'And he's paying ten thousand dollars each. I don't care what kind of eye he's got.'

     'I heard  it was made of the same stuff they  make them fortune-telling crystals out of. You  can't tell me that's  right. And he looks at  you with it,'  said the first  speaker.  He was known as Peachy,  although no one had ever found out why[4].

     Catseye sighed. Certainly there was something odd about Mister Teatime, there  was no  doubt  about  that. But there  was something weird  about all Assassins. And  the man  paid  well.  Lots of  Assassins  used informers and locksmiths.  It was against the rules, technically, but standards were going down everywhere, weren't they?  Usually they paid you late  and sparsely, as if they were doing the favour. But Teatime was OK. True, after a few minutes talking  to him your  eyes began to water  and you felt  you needed to scrub your skin even on the inside, but no one was perfect, were they?

     Peachy leaned forward.  'You know what?' he said. 'I reckon he could be here already. In disguise! Laughing at us! Well, if he's in here laughing at us-' He cracked his knuckles.

     Medium Dave Lilywhite, the last of the  five, looked around. There were indeed a number of solitary figures in the low, dark room. Most of them wore cloaks with big hoods. They sat alone, in corners, hidden by the hoods. None of them looked very friendly.

     'Don't be daft, Peachy,' Catseye murmured.

     'That's the sort of thing they do,'  Peachy insisted.  'They're masters of disguise!'

     'With that eye of his?'

     'That guy sitting  by the fire has got an eye patch,' said Medium Dave. Medium Dave didn't speak much. He watched a lot.

     The others turned to stare.

     'He'll wait till we're off our guard then go ahahaha,' said Peachy.

     'They can't kill  you unless it's for  money,'  said  Catseye.  But now there was a soupcon of doubt in his voice.

     They kept their eyes on the hooded man. He kept his eye on them.

     If asked  to describe  what they did for a  living, the five men around the  table  would have  said something like 'This  and that' or 'The  best I can', although in Banjo's case he'd have probably said 'Dur?'  They were, by the standards of an uncaring society, criminals, although they wouldn't have thought  of  themselves   as  such  and  couldn't  even  spell  words   like 'nefarious'. What  they generally did was  move things around. Sometimes the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, say,  or in the wrong  house. Sometimes the things  were  in  fact people who were far too unimportant  to trouble  the Assassins' Guild with, but who were nevertheless inconveniently positioned where they were and could much better be located on, for example, a sea bed somewhere[5].  None of the  five belonged to any  formal guild and they  generally found their clients among those people  who, for  their  own dark  reasons,  didn't  want to put  the  guilds to  any  trouble, sometimes because  they were guild  members themselves. They had plenty of work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B or,  of course, to the bottom of the C.

     'Any minute now,' said Peachy, as the waiter brought their beers.

     Banjo  cleared his throat. This  was a  sign that another  thought  had arrived.

     'What I don' unnerstan,' he said, 'is:'

     'Yes?' said his brother.[6]

     'What I don' unnerstan is, how longaz diz place had waiters?'

     'Good evening,' said Teatime, putting down the tray.

     They stared at him in silence.

     He gave them a friendly smile.

     Peachy's huge hand slapped the table.

     'You crept up on us, you little- he began.

     Men in their line of business develop a certain prescience. Medium Dave and  Catseye, who  were  sitting  on  either side  of  Peachy,  leaned  away nonchalantly.

     'Hi!' said Teatime. There  was  a  blur, and a knife  shuddered  in the table between Peachy's thumb and index finger.