Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight

I SHALL WEAR

MIDNIGHT

Terry Pratchett

DOUBLEDAY

Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

By Terry Pratchett

Chapter 1: A Fine Big Wee Laddie

Chapter 2: Rough Music

Chapter 3: Those Who Stir In Their Sleep

Chapter 4: The Real Shilling

Chapter 5: The Mother Of Tongues

Chapter 6: The Coming Of The Cunning Man

Chapter 7: Songs In The Night

Chapter 8: The King’s Neck

Chapter 9: The Duchess And The Cook

Chapter 10: The Melting Girl

Chapter 11: The Bonfire Of The Witches

Chapter 12: The Sin O’ Sins

Chapter 13: The Shaking Of The Sheets

Chapter 14: Burning The King

Chapter 15: A Shadow And A Whisper

Epilogue: Midnight By Day

Glossary

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Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781409096306

www.randomhouse.co.uk

I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT

A DOUBLEDAY BOOK 978 0 385 61107 7

TRADE PAPERBACK 978 0 385 61796 3

Published in Great Britain by Doubleday,

an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

A Random House Group Company

This edition published 2010

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 2010

Illustrations copyright © Paul Kidby, 2010

Discworld® is a trademark registered by Terry Pratchett

Chapters 13 and 14 include lyrics from two songs – ‘ The Larks They Sing Melodious ’ and ‘ The Shaking of the Sheets ’ – both traditional folksongs where the lyrics are now, to the best of our knowledge, out of copyright. The publishers would be grateful to be notified if this is erroneous and will be happy to make good any errors in future printings.

The right of Terry Pratchett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

BY TERRY PRATCHETT, FOR YOUNG READERS

THE CARPET PEOPLE

THE CARPET PEOPLE Illustrated edition

TRUCKERS

DIGGERS

WINGS

THE BROMELIAD omnibus edition

(contains Truckers , Diggers , Wings )

ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND*

(*www.ifnotyouthenwho.com)

JOHNNY AND THE DEAD

JOHNNY AND THE BOMB

THE JOHNNY MAXWELL OMNIBUS EDITION

(contains Only You Can Save Mankind , Johnny and the Dead , Johnny and the Bomb )

Discworld novels

THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS

THE WEE FREE MEN

A HAT FULL OF SKY

WINTERSMITH

I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT

THE ILLUSTRATED WEE FREE MEN

The Discworld series: have you read them all?

1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC

2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

3. EQUAL RITES

4. MORT

5. SOURCERY

6. WYRD SISTERS

7. PYRAMIDS

8. GUARDS! GUARDS!

9. ERIC

(illustrated by Josh Kirby)

10. MOVING PICTURES

11. REAPER MAN

12. WITCHES ABROAD

13. SMALL GODS

14. LORDS AND LADIES

15. MEN AT ARMS

16. SOUL MUSIC

17. INTERESTING TIMES

18. MASKERADE

19. FEET OF CLAY

20. HOGFATHER

21. JINGO

22. THE LAST CONTINENT

23. CARPE JUGULUM

24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT

25. THE TRUTH

26. THIEF OF TIME

27. THE LAST HERO

(illustrated by Paul Kidby)

28. THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS

(for young readers)

29. NIGHT WATCH

30. THE WEE FREE MEN

(for young readers)

31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT

32. A HAT FULL OF SKY

(for young readers)

33. GOING POSTAL

34. THUD!

35. WINTERSMITH

(for young readers)

36. MAKING MONEY

37. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS

38. I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT

(for young readers)

Other books about Discworld

THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD

(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE

(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III: DARWIN’S WATCH

(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

THE NEW DISCWORLD COMPANION

(with Stephen Briggs)

NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK

(with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby)

THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO

(with Paul Kidby)

THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK

(with Bernard Pearson)

THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK

(with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson)

WHERE’S MY COW?

(illustrated by Melvyn Grant)

THE ART OF DISCWORLD

(with Paul Kidby)

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD

(compiled by Stephen Briggs)

THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD

(with Jacqueline Simpson)

Discworld maps

THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK

(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)

THE DISCWORLD MAPP

(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)

A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP

(with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby)

DEATH’S DOMAIN

(with Paul Kidby)

A complete list of other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays,

graphic novels, comics and plays, can be found on

www.terry pratchett.co.uk.

Non-Discworld titles

GOOD OMENS

(with Neil Gaiman)

STRATA

THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN

THE UNADULTERATED CAT

(illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)

Chapter 1

A FINE BIG WEE LADDIE

WHY WAS IT, Tiffany Aching wondered, that people liked noise so much? Why was noise so important?

Something quite close sounded like a cow giving birth. It turned out to be an old hurdy-gurdy organ, hand-cranked by a raggedy man in a battered top hat. She sidled away as politely as she could, but as noise went, it was sticky; you got the feeling that if you let it, it would try to follow you home.

But that was only one sound in the great cauldron of noise around her, all of it made by people and all of it made by people trying to make noise louder than the other people making noise. Arguing at the makeshift stalls, bobbing for apples or frogs, 1cheering the prize fighters and a spangled lady on the high wire, selling candyfloss at the tops of their voices and, not to put too fine a point on it, boozing quite considerably.

The air above the green downland was thick with noise. It was as if the populations of two or three towns had all come up to the top of the hills. And so here, where all you generally heard was the occasional scream of a buzzard, you heard the permanent scream of, well, everyone. It was called having fun . The only people not making any noise were the thieves and pickpockets, who went about their business with commendable silence, and they didn’t come near Tiffany; who would pick a witch’s pocket? You would be lucky to get all your fingers back. At least, that was what they feared, and a sensible witch would encourage them in this fear.

When you were a witch, you were all witches, thought Tiffany Aching as she walked through the crowds, pulling her broomstick after her on the end of a length of string. It floated a few feet above the ground. She was getting a bit bothered about that. It seemed to work quite well, but nevertheless, since all around the fair were small children dragging balloons, also on the end of a piece of string, she couldn’t help thinking that it made her look more than a little bit silly, and something that made one witch look silly made all witches look silly.

On the other hand, if you tied it to a hedge somewhere, there was bound to be some kid who would untie the string and get on the stick for a dare, in which case most likely he would go straight up all the way to the top of the atmosphere where the air froze, and while she could in theory call the stick back, mothers got very touchy about having to thaw out their children on a bright late-summer day. That would not look good. People would talk. People always talked about witches.

She resigned herself to dragging it again. With luck, people would think she was joining in with the spirit of the thing in a humorous way.

There was a lot of etiquette involved, even at something so deceptively cheerful as a fair. She was the witch; who knows what would happen if she forgot someone’s name or, worse still, got it wrong? What would happen if you forgot all the little feuds and factions, the people who weren’t talking to their neighbours and so on and so on and a lot more so and even further on? Tiffany had no understanding at all of the word ‘minefield’, but if she had, it would have seemed kind of familiar.

She was the witch. For all the villages along the Chalk she was the witch. Not just her own village any more, but for all the other ones as far away as Ham-on-Rye, which was a pretty good day’s walk from here. The area that a witch thought of as her own, and for whose people she did what was needful, was called a steading, and as steadings went, this one was pretty good. Not many witches got a whole geological outcrop to themselves, even if this one was mostly covered in grass, and the grass was mostly covered in sheep. And today the sheep on the downs were left by themselves to do whatever it was that they did when they were by themselves, which would presumably be pretty much the same as they did if you were watching them. And the sheep, usually fussed and herded and generally watched over, were now of no interest whatsoever, because right here the most wonderful attraction in the world was taking place.

Admittedly, the scouring fair was only one of the world’s most wonderful attractions if you didn’t usually ever travel more than about four miles from home. If you lived around the Chalk you were bound to meet everyone that you knew 2at the fair. It was quite often where you met the person you were likely to marry. The girls certainly all wore their best dresses, while the boys wore expressions of hopefulness and their hair smoothed down with cheap hair pomade or, more usually, spit. Those who had opted for spit generally came off better since the cheap pomade was very cheap indeed and would often melt and run in the hot weather, causing the young men not to be of interest to the young women, as they had fervently hoped, but to the flies, who would make their lunch off their scalps.