'I suppose he wanted somewhere where he could feel at home.'
'Are you dead, Albert?'
'Me? Do I look dead?' The old man snorted when Mort started to give him a slow, critical look, 'and you can stop that. I'm as alive as you are. Probably more.'
'Sorry.'
'Right.' Albert pushed open the back door, and turned to regard Mort as kindly as he could manage.
'It's best not to ask all these questions,' he said, 'it upsets people. Now, how about a nice fry-up?'
The bell rang while they were playing dominoes. Mort sat to attention.
'He'll want the horse made ready,' said Albert. 'Come on.'
They went out to the stable in the gathering dusk, and Mort watched the old man saddle up Death's horse.
'His name's Binky,' said Albert, fastening the girth. 'It just goes to show, you never can tell.'
Bulky tried to eat his scarf in an affectionate way.
Mort remembered the woodcut in his grandmother's almanack, between the page on planting times and the phases of the moon section, showing Dethe thee Great Levyller Comes To Alle Menne. He'd stared at it hundreds of times when learning his letters. It wouldn't have been half so impressive if it had been generally known that the flame-breathing horse the spectre rode was called Binky.
'I would have thought something like Fang or Sabre or Ebony,' Albert continued, 'but the master will have his little fancies, you know. Looking forward to it, are you?'
'I think so,' said Mort uncertainly. 'I've never seen Death actually at work.'
'Not many have,' said Albert. 'Not twice, at any rate.'
Mort took a deep breath.
'About this daughter of his —' he began.
AH. GOOD EVENING, ALBERT, BOY.
'Mort,' said Mort automatically.
Death strode into the stable, stooping a little to clear the ceiling. Albert nodded, not in any subservient way, Mort noticed, but simply out of form. Mort had met one or two servants, on the rare occasions he'd been taken into town, and Albert wasn't like any of them. He seemed to act as though the house really belonged to him and its owner was just a passing guest, something to be tolerated like peeling paintwork or spiders in the lavatory. Death put up with it too, as though he and Albert had said everything that needed to be said a long time ago and were simply content, now, to get on with their jobs with the minimum of inconvenience all round. To Mort it was rather like going for a walk after a really bad thunderstorm – everything was quite fresh, nothing was particularly unpleasant, but there was the sense of vast energies just expended.
Finding out about Albert tagged itself on to the end of his list of things to do.
HOLD THIS, said Death, and pushed a scythe into his hand while he swung himself up on to Binky. The scythe looked normal enough, except for the blade: it was so thin that Mort could see through it, a pale blue shimmer in the air that could slice flame and chop sound. He held it very carefully.
RIGHT, BOY, said Death. COME ON UP. ALBERT. DON'T WAIT UP.
The horse trotted out of the courtyard and into the sky.
There should have been a flash or rush of stars. The air should have spiralled and turned into speeding sparks such as normally happens in the common, everyday trans-dimensional hyper-jumps. But this was Death, who has mastered the art of going everywhere without ostentation and could slide between dimensions as easily as he could slip through a locked door, and they moved at an easy gallop through cloud canyons, past great billowing mountains of cumulus, until the wisps parted in front of them and the Disc lay below, basking in sunlight.
THAT'S BECAUSE TIME IS ADJUSTABLE, said Death, hen Mort pointed this out. IT'S NOT REALLY IMPORTANT.
'I always thought it was.'
PEOPLE THINK IT'S IMPORTANT ONLY BECAUSE THEY INVENTED IT, said Death sombrely. Mort considered this rather trite, but decided not to argue.
a while he became aware that someone else was watching him. The girl Ysabell was lean-big on the half-door, her chin in her hands.
'Are you a servant?' she said.