This is a straight-up little bit of historical vignettism that, for
once, has pretty much no spoilers in it. I'm not sure how I managed
that, but there you are. There's no Vimes in it, either, which for
me is well nigh unprecedented.

I hope you enjoy. In the kind-of series I've written, which is mostly
shorts like this one (well, all shorts like this one), this comes
after The Birthday Present, and some length of time before the actual
real novel /Guards! Guards!/

And once again, thank you to all the kind people who reviewed my
other work. Hey, is it possible to reply to those? Someone tell me how?
Half the fun of fanfic is in the back-and-forth...

As an aside, being an artist and a student of the arts, I have to say
that the attic workshop of Leonard of Quirm is what I will build for
myself if I ever manage a disposable income.

Glue and Balsa
Set somewhere between Equal Rites and Guards! Guards! but having
very little to do with either, really.

'Ah,' said Cuddy. 'Er. This is just off of the top of my head, you
understand, but I suppose he couldn't . . . just have gone somewhere
where you couldn't see him?'
'Nah, that wouldn't be like old Leonard. He wouldn't disappear. But he
might vanish.'
- Men At Arms

Lord Vetinari, Patrician of the city of Ankh-Morpork, last remnant of a
great empire, was a man used to arranging things so that trouble was
prevented before it started. Or, since even a Vetinari is not
omnipotent*, he arranged other things so that trouble, when it came,
faced several whirring blades, a small contingent of deadly assassins,
and a scorpion pit, before it was allowed to do any real harm.

He did not consider himself a man with blind spots**. He had to admit
he hadn't seen this one coming.

Leonard! They'd been in school together! Very briefly, true, because
Leonard had been thrown out of the Assassins' guild after two weeks for
being too bloody clever by half, but still. As young men in
Ankh-Morpork, Havelock and Leonard had got on fairly well. Leonard's
workshop in the Street of Cunning Artificers was quite restful, except
for the occasional necessity to leap through windows when one of his
experiments went terminal. Leonard's outlook on the world was something
that the Patrician sometimes wished he could share, because it would
make life so much easier. Visiting him always put things in perspective.

He wrapped his long coat tighter around himself. It was raining, which
was pleasantly dramatic in theory and bloody annoying in practice.

He knocked on the door of Leonard's workshop, where a light was still
burning. He was already slightly nervous, an unusual state for the
Patrician, and stifled a yell when a gigantic nose answered the door.

Leonard pushed the Makes-Things-Bigger lens up and away from his face,
revealing a normal-sized nose. Normal for Leonard, anyway.

"My lord," Leonard said brightly. He had never got the hang of
addressing Vetinari as anything else. "Come in, come in." He gestured
him inside. "I'm just having a bit of a brew up, but I'm afraid I got
rather distracted by the interesting shape of the teapot - "

"Leonard, I think we ought to talk," said Vetinari. Those who had
encountered him on a regular basis would be surprised at the gentleness
of his tone.

"Oh yes, but tea - " Leonard waved his hand at a large charcoal
sketch, which was mostly concealing a kettle of water that had boiled
almost dry. The stove, Vetinari noticed, had gone out.

"There will be tea at the palace," the Patrician said firmly. "I think
you had best pack some clothing, Leonard. And any books you require."

"Books I require for what, my Lord?" Leonard asked, his eyebrows
drawing together.

"The rest of your life," the Patrician answered.

Leonard gave him a measured looking, having momentarily been distracted
from the half-dozen things he was always thinking about.

"I see," he said slowly. "Are there armed guards?"

"No."

"Hired assassins?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Did you at least bring a few men for heavy lifting?"

"Anything heavy enough to require extra movers, Leonard, will be
provided."

Leonard nodded. "I appreciate that."

"I rather thought you might." The Patrician accepted a small pile of
books from the artist, who was packing clothing, neatly and sensibly,
into a suitcase. "There will be art supplies," he added helpfully.

"I should hope so!" Leonard said. "May we pause for a moment, my Lord,
while I redesign - "

"No, Leonard."

"Of course. Of course. Where are my manners." Leonard shut the suitcase
and picked up two long sticks, wrapped in fabric. For a second, the
Patrician thought he was going to attack, but he merely handed one of
them to him.

"What are they?" Vetinari asked.

"They're a derivation of an Agatean device. I invented this particular
design while studying skeletal structures of birds and their
application towards flying machines." Leonard stepped outside and
twiddled a ring on the base of his. The fabric unfurled into a dome
over Leonard's head. "I call them the Keep-Me-Dry Sticks. I believe the
Agatean word is Boom-per-chut."

Vetinari gave his own Boom-per-chut an experimental twirl. He smiled,
vaguely.

"Come along, Leonard. I have a carriage waiting. And I shall take
this," he added. He picked up the object by the door, which looked like
a long tube on a crossbow stock, and had a quite complicated mechanism
on one end, for firing lead pellets - bullettes, Leonard called them,
with unusual poetry. It was the reason...well not /the/ reason, but the
final straw, really...why Leonard was being vanished.

***

"Oh, oh /my/."

Leonard turned around and around, his eyes taking in every inch of the
wide, airy room. His old workshop, which was all he could afford on an
income that varied wildly from day to day, had been a dark barnlike
construction with smoke-stained walls and a leaky pump at one end.
Whereas /this/...

"Look at the skylights!" Leonard shouted, listening to the echo of his
voice. The Patrician, standing in the doorway and shaking the excess
water from his boom-per-chut, set Leonard's suitcase down smoothly.

The loft was large and open, with a scaffolding along one wall that
contained a bed, dresser, and drafting desk. A considerably larger
drafting desk, work table, and several metallurgy tools were spread
about the floor, amid easels of every size and shape.

And Leonard, with all the simplicity of a child, was staring at the
many skylights in the ceiling.

"I shall be able to watch the birds all day long," he said, his voice
full of awe. "The natural light will be marvelous for painting. Are
there paints?" he asked, eagerly. The Patrician waved a hand at the
workbench. Ten or twelve pots of unopened paint stood next to a
veritable forest of paintbrushes.

"An embarrassment of riches," Leonard exclaimed. "But I'm afraid some
of this will have to be re-designed."

"Yes, I thought that might be the case," the Patrician commented. "And
of course, there is the Labyrinth..."

"The Labyrinth?"

"Oh yes. Can't have you escaping. I need you to design a series of
booby traps to prevent yourself from breaking out. And other people
from breaking in - with the exception of myself, of course."

But Leonard hadn't heard more than the first half of the sentence. He
was already sketching something involving swinging pendulums and
various other examples of Physics As A Destructive Force.

Vetinari nodded to himself, shouldered the boom-per-chut, and felt the
weight of the well-wrapped gonne under his arm. "Is there anything
else you require, Leonard?"

"Glue," the genius muttered, pencil moving madly. "And perhaps some
balsa wood."

"Very well. Until tomorrow." Vetinari shut the door behind him, and
turned the key in the lock.

***

Thomas Bleedwell had remained head of the Assassins' Guild for several
years by never eating anything a subordinate offered him***, never
sitting with his back to a doorway, and never ignoring a summons from
the Patrician. The fact that the summons had been to meet the Patrician
at the archery butts at sunrise was worrying, but not unduly. Vetinari
had his own reasons for everything he did.

He was waiting for Thomas, tall and composed, with an awkward-shaped
object leaning against one leg. It looked like a tube, mounted on a
crossbow stock. It looked, in fact, like a one-shot.

Doubly worrying.

"Good morning, Havelock," The Hon. Lord Bleedwell said, hurrying up to
the Patrician in the slowly brightening gloom.

"Good morning, Thomas," Vetinari said gravely. "I appreciate your
attendance."

"Always ready to make sacrifices for the good of the city - "

"Quite." The remark shut him off like a steel wall. "I would like to
show you something."

Thomas watched as Vetinari shouldered the weapon. "The Assassins have
outlawed the use of one-shots in the city - " he began, but a sharp
crack, like a fireworks rocket, interrupted. He stared as an
evil-looking seagull tumbled to earth, sans head. The bird had been
circling high above the city - far too high for a crossbow, even a
one-shot, to hit. Then he looked back to Vetinari, who was standing in
a small cloud of smoke. A second crack put a fine, circular hole in the
center of a target. A third blew a dangling, rotten fruit off of a tree
branch in a shower of pulp and peel. There had been no pause. It didn't
need re-loading.

Oh, ye gods.

"Yes," Vetinari said, as he looked at Bleedwell's face. "Quite
dangerous, isn't it?"

"What is it?"

"It is called a gonne. It is the only one extant," the Patrician said
softly. "It is not a weapon which the Guild would look on with a
friendly eye, I should think."

"Of course not," Thomas stammered. "An abomination!"

"Precisely." Vetinari slid the weapon into a leather sheath. He held it
out. "Destroy it. Do /not/ touch it. Melt it down and burn the wood."

"Certainly..." the head of the Assassins felt the hard metal tube
through the leather. "We'll make sure there's no trace left."

"Yes, you will." Vetinari's boots crunched on the frosty ground as he
began the walk back towards his coach. "Good day, Thomas."

Tom Bleedwell stood there, tempted to unwrap the sheath and try firing
the thing himself. Then he saw Vetinari, standing in front of the
coach, watching him. With a sigh, he put the strap over his shoulder,
and walked towards his own coach. The Patrician was still watching as
it pulled away from the butts, and rattled back towards the Guild.

Of course the Assassins could destroy it, Vetinari thought, in the
silence of his own head. He had been able to pick up the gonne and fire
it and still give up that immense power, but only just. He'd only meant
to fire once, but the gonne had the disturbing habit of tempting its
victims to do more.

He had not been able to destroy it. But Thomas Bleedwell had called it
an abomination - he would certainly be able to do away with the
weapon. Of course.

/I hope./

END

* If you asked them, they'd never admit it.

** Though several people who'd encountered his pet terrier thought
otherwise.

*** Although this was probably a ridiculous paranoia. It was
dishonourable to kill a superior if you hadn't been paid to do it.