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Granny said, in a piercing voice that made one actor drop his wooden sword, ‘There’s a man over on the side there whispering to them!’
    â€˜He’s a prompter,’ said Magrat. ‘He tells them what to say.’
    â€˜Don’t they know?’
    â€˜I think they’re forgetting,’ said Magrat sourly. ‘For some reason.’
    Granny nudged Nanny Ogg.
    â€˜What’s going on now?’ she said. ‘Why’re all them kings and people up there?’
    â€˜It’s a banquet, see,’ said Nanny Ogg authoritatively. ‘Because of the dead king, him in the boots, as was, only now if you look, you’ll see he’s pretending to be a soldier, and everyone’s making speeches about how good he was and wondering who killed him.’
    â€˜Are they?’ said Granny, grimly. She cast her eyes along the cast, looking for the murderer.
    She was making up her mind.
    Then she stood up.
    Her black shawl billowed around her like the wings of an avenging angel, come to rid the world of all that was foolishness and pretence and artifice and sham. She seemed somehow a lot bigger than normal. She pointed an angry finger at the guilty party.
    â€˜He done it!’ she shouted triumphantly. ‘We all
seed
‘im! He done it with a dagger!’
    * * *
    The audience filed out, contented. It had been a good play on the whole, they decided, although not very easy to follow. But it had been a jolly good laugh when all the kings had run off, and the woman in black had jumped up and did all the shouting. That alone had been well worth the ha’penny admission.
    The three witches sat alone on the edge of the stage.
    â€˜I wonder how they get all them kings and lords to come here and do this?’ said Granny, totally unabashed. ‘I’d have thought they’d been too busy. Ruling and similar.’
    â€˜No,’ said Magrat, wearily. ‘I still don’t think you quite understand.’
    â€˜Well, I’m going to get to the bottom of it,’ snapped Granny. She got back on to the stage and pulled aside the sacking curtains.
    â€˜You!’ she shouted. ‘You’re dead!’
    The luckless former corpse, who was eating a ham sandwich to calm his nerves, fell backwards off his stool.
    Granny kicked a bush. Her boot went right through it.
    â€˜See?’ she said to the world in general in a strangely satisfied voice. ‘Nothing’s real! It’s all just paint, and sticks and paper at the back.’
    â€˜May I assist you, good ladies?’
    It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn’t a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds.
    It apparently belonged to a large fat man who had been badly savaged by a moustache. Pink veins made a map of quite a large city on his cheeks; his nose could have hidden successfully in a bowl of strawberries. He wore a ragged jerkin and holey tights with an aplomb that nearly convinced you that his velvet-and-vermine robes were in the wash just at the moment. In one hand he held a towel, with which he had clearly been removing the make-up that still greased his features.
    â€˜I know you,’ said Granny. ‘You done the murder.’ She looked sideways at Magrat, and admitted, grudgingly, ‘Leastways, it looked like it.’
    â€˜
So
glad. It is always a pleasure to meet a true connoisseur. Olwyn Vitoller,
at
your service. Manager of this band of vagabonds,’ said the man and, removing his moth-eaten hat, he treated her to a low bow. It was less an obeisance than an exercise in advanced topology.
    The hat swerved and jerked through a series of complex arcs, ending up at the end of an arm which was now pointing in the direction of the