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always thought it was.”
    P EOPLE THINK IT’S IMPORTANT ONLY BECAUSE THEY INVENTED IT , said Death somberly. Mort considered this rather trite, but decided not to argue.
    “What are we going to do now?” he said.
    T HERE’S A PROMISING WAR IN K LATCHISTAN , said Death. S EVERAL PLAGUE OUTBREAKS . O NE RATHER IMPORTANT ASSASSINATION, IF YOU’D PREFER .
    “What, a murder?”
    A YE, A KING.
    “Oh, kings,” said Mort dismissively. He knew aboutkings. Once a year a band of strolling players, or at any rate ambling ones, came to Sheepridge and the plays, they performed were invariably about kings. Kings were always killing one another, or being killed. The plots were quite complicated, involving mistaken identity, poisons, battles, long-lost sons, ghosts, witches and, usually, lots of daggers. Since it was clear that being a king was no picnic it was amazing that half the cast were apparently trying to become one. Mort’s idea of palace life was a little hazy, but he imagined that no one got much sleep.
    “I’d quite like to see a real king,” he said. “They wear crowns all the time, my granny said. Even when they go to the lavatory.”
    Death considered this carefully.
    T HERE’S NO TECHNICAL REASON WHY NOT , he conceded. I N MY EXPERIENCE, HOWEVER, IT IS GENERALLY NOT THE CASE .
    The horse wheeled, and the vast flat checkerboard of the Sto plain sped underneath them at lightning speed. This was rich country, full of silt and rolling cabbage fields and neat little kingdoms whose boundaries wriggled like snakes as small, formal wars, marriage pacts, complex alliances and the occasional bit of sloppy cartography changed the political shape of the land.
    “This king,” said Mort, as a forest zipped beneath them, “is he good or bad?”
    I NEVER CONCERN MYSELF WITH SUCH THINGS , Said Death. H E’S NO WORSE THAN ANY OTHER KING , I IMAGINE .
    “Does he have people put to death?” said Mort, and remembering who he was talking to added, “Saving y’honor’s presence, of course.”
    S OMETIMES . T HERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU HAVE TO DO, WHEN YOU’RE A KING .
    A city slid below them, clustered around a castle built on a rock outcrop that poked up out of the plain like a geological pimple. It was one huge rock from the distant Ramtops,Death said, left there by the retreating ice in the legendary days when the Ice Giants waged war on the gods and rode their glaciers across the land in an attempt to freeze the whole world. They’d given up in the end, however, and driven their great glittering flocks back to their hidden lands among the razor-backed mountains near the Hub. No one on the plains knew why they had done this; it was generally considered by the younger generation in the city of Sto Lat, the city around the rock, that it was because the place was dead boring.
    Binky trotted down over nothingness and touched down on the flagstones of the castle’s topmost tower. Death dismounted and told Mort to sort out the nosebag.
    “Won’t people notice there’s a horse up here?” he said, as they strolled to a stairwell.
    Death shook his head.
    W OULD YOU BELIEVE THERE COULD BE A HORSE AT THE TOP OF THIS TOWER ? he said.
    “No. You couldn’t get one up these stairs,” said Mort.
    W ELL, THEN ?
    “Oh. I see. People don’t want to see what can’t possibly exist.”
    W ELL DONE .
    Now they were walking along a wide corridor hung with tapestries. Death reached into his robe and pulled out an hourglass, peering closely at it in the dim light.
    It was a particularly fine one, its glass cut into intricate facets and imprisoned in an ornate framework of wood and brass. The words “King Olerve the Bastard” were engraved deeply into it.
    The sand inside sparkled oddly. There wasn’t a lot left.
    Death hummed to himself and stowed the glass away in whatever mysterious recess it had occupied.
    They turned a corner and hit a wall of sound. There was a hall full of people there, under a cloud of smoke and chatterthat rose