"Sargeant!"

Colon froze. Then he looked down. A face was starring up at him from ground level. When he'd got a grip on himself, he made out the sharp features of his old friend Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, the Discworld's Ruling talking argument in favour of the theory that mankind had descended from a species of rodent.

C.M.O.T. Dibbler liked to describe himself as a merchant adventurer; everyone else liked to describe him as an itinerant pedlar whose money-making shemes were always let down by some small but vital flaw, such as trying to sell things he didn't own or which didn't work or, sometimes, didn't even exist.

Fairy gold is well known to evaporate by morning, but it was a reinforced concrete slab by comparison to some of Throat's merchandise.

He was standing at the bottom of some steps that led down to one of Ankh-Morpork's countless cellars.

"Hallo, Throat."

"Would you step down here a minute, Fred? I could use a bit of legal aid."

"Got a problem, Throat?"

Dibbler scratched his nose.

"Well, Fred... Is it a crime to be given something? I mean, without you knowing it?"

"Someone been giving you things, Throat?"

Throat nodded. "Dunno. You know I keep merchandise down here?" he said.

"Yeah."

"You see, I just come down to do a bit of stock-taking, and... " He waved a hand helplessly. "Well... take a look..."

He opened the cellar door.

In the darkness something went plop.

Windle Poons lurched aimlessly along a dark alley in the Shades, arms extended in front of him, hands hanging down at the wrists. He didn't know why. It just seemed the right way to go about it.

Jumping off a building? No, that wouldn't work, either. It was hard enough to walk as it was, and two broken legs wouldn't help. Poison? He imagined it would be like having a very bad stomach ache. Noose? Hanging around would probably be more boring than sitting on the bottom of the river.

He reached a noisome courtyard where several alleys met. Rats scampered away from him. A cat screeched and scurried off over the rooftops.

As he stood wondering where he was, why he was, and what ought to happen next, he felt the point of a knife against his backbone.

"OK, grandad," said a voice behind him, "it's your money or your life."

In the darkness Windle Poons' mouth formed a horrible grin.

"I‘m not playing about, old man, " said the voice.

"Are you Thieves' Guild?" said Windle, without turning around.

"No, we're... freelances. Come on, let's see the colour of your money."

"Haven't got any," said Windle. He turned around. There were two more muggers behind him.

"Ye gods, look at his eyes," said one of them.

Windle raised his arms above his head.

"Ooooooooh," he moaned.

The muggers backed away. Unfortunately, there was a wall behind them. They flattened themselves against it.

"OoooOOOOoooobuggeroffoooOOOooo, " said Windle, who hadn't realised that the only way of escape lay through him. He rolled his eyes for better effect.

Maddened by terror, the would-be attackers dived under his arms, but not before one of them had sunk his knife up to the hilt in Windle's pigeon chest.

He looked down at it.

"Hey! That was my best robe!" he said. "I wanted to be buried in - will you look at it? You know how difficult it is to darn silk? Come back here this - Look at it, right where it shows -"

He listened. There was no sound but the distant and retreating scurry of footsteps.

Windle Poons removed the knife.

"Could have killed me," he muttered, tossing it away.

In the cellar, Sergeant Colon picked up one of the objects that lay in huge drifts on the floor.

"There must be thousands of ‘em," said Throat, behind him. "What I want to know is, who put them there?"

Sergeant Colon turned the object round and round in his hands.

"Never seen one of these before, " he said. He gave a shake. His face lit up. "Pretty, ain't they?"

"The door was locked and everything," said Throat ‘And I‘m paid up with the Thieves' Guild."

Colon shook the thing again.

" Nice," he said.

"Fred?"

Colon, fascinated, watched the little snowflakes far inside the tiny glass globe. "Hmm?"

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Dunno. I suppose they're yours, Throat. Can imagine why anyone'd want to get rid of ‘em, though.

He turned towards the door. Throat stepped into his path.

"Then that'll be twelve pence, " he said smoothly.

"What for?

"For the one you just put in your pocket, Fred."

Colon fished the globe out of his pocket.

"Come on!" he protested. "You just found them, heh. They didn't cost you a penny!"

"Yes, but there's storage... packing... handling . .

"Tuppence, " said Colon desperately.

"Tenpence."

"Threepence."

"Sevenpence - and that's cutting my own throat, mark you."

"Done," said the sergeant, reluctantly. He gave the globe another shake.

"Nice, ain't they?" he said.

"Worth every penny," said Dibbler. He rubbed his hands together hopefully. "Should sell like hot cake's," he said, picking up a handful and shoving them into box.

He locked the door behind them when they left.

In the darkness something went plop.

Ankh-Morpork has always had a fine tradition of welcoming people of all races, colours and shapes, if they have money to spend and a return ticket.

According to the Guild of Merchants‘ famous publication, Welkome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises, `you the visitor will be asurred of a Warm Wellcome in the countless Ins and hostelries of this Ancient Citie, where many specialise in catering for the taste of guest from distant part. So if you a Manne, Trolle, Dwarfe, Goblin or Gnomm, Ankh-Morpork will raise your Glass convivial and say: Cheer! Here looking, you Kid! Up, You Bottom!"

Windle Poons didn't know where undead went for a good time. All he knew, and he knew it for a certainty, was that if they could have a good time anywhere then they could probably have it in Ankh-Morpork.

His laboured footsteps led him deeper into the Shades. Only they weren't so laboured now.

For more than a century Windle Poons had lived inside the walls of Unseen University. In terms of accumulated years, he may have lived a long time. In terms of experience, he was about thirteen.

He was seeing, hearing and smelling things he'd never seen, heard or smelled before.

The Shades was the oldest part of the city. If you could do a sort of relief map of sinfulness, wickedness and all-round immorality, rather like those representations of the gravitational field around a Black Hole, then even in Ankh-Morpork the Shades would be represented by a shaft. In fact the Shades was remarkably like the aforesaid well-known astronomical phenomenon: it had a certain strong attraction, no light escaped from it, and it could indeed become a gateway to another world. The next one.

The Shades was a city within a city.

The streets were thronged. Muffled figures slunk past on errands of their own. Strange music wound up from sunken stairwells. So did sharp and exciting smells.

Poons passed goblin delicatessens and dwarf bars from which came the sounds of singing and fighting which dwarfs traditionally did at the same time. And there were trolls, moving through the crowds like... like big people moving among little people. They weren't shambling, either.

Windle had hitherto seen trolls only in the more select parts of the city, where they moved with exaggerated caution in case they accidentally clubbed someone to death and ate them. In the Shades they strode, unafraid, heads held so high they very nearly rose above their shoulder-blades.

Windle Poons wandered through the crowds like random shot on a pinball table. Here a blast of smoky sound from a bar spun him back into the street, there a discreet doorway promising unusual and forbidden delights attracted him like a magnet. Windle Poons' life hadn't included even very many usual an approved delights. He wasn't even certain what they were. Some sketches outside one pink-lit, inviting doorway left him even more mystified but incredible anxious to learn.