Moist, for whom it was second nature to watch and listen carefully – most particularly to what was not said – now felt he knew another secret, a secret as yet unacknowledged. The Queen and her secretary were, without doubt, lovers. Possibly you had to be married to notice this fact, but their body language shone through.

A meaning cough from Aeron recalled his attention. The secretary was holding the door open for him, in a clear signal that the audience was over. As Moist stepped out past him Aeron said, ‘Thank you, Mister Lipwig … From both of us.’

Before he set off back to the guard’s van, Moist stood for a while letting the revelations settle. The King being a Queen was looming in his mind. Oh yes, everybody knew that dwarf women looked very much like the dwarf men, beards and all, even Cheery Littlebottom – an Ankh-Morpork dwarf if ever there was one and a strict feminist; although she was adamant that beyond the beards dwarf females were not the same as dwarf men. And since she was now very big, as it were, in the Watch, her insistence on chainmail skirts and subtly altered breastplates didn’t matter too much, but the Queen—? What would happen if the Queen declared it! It would be iacta alea est in spades! And there would be no going back from that.

Aeron had now disappeared back into the Queen’s armoured coach, and Moist was left listening to the rattling of the train. The future, he thought, was going to be … incredibly interesting.

The everlasting fog that filled the vertiginous gorge created deep swirling shadows in the fading light as they approached the final bridge before the Wilinus Pass. And the fog itself seemed to be alive as it moved and twisted, leaving the watchers with the feeling that they were teetering at the edge of the world.

The far side of the bridge was barely visible as Simnel stood in earnest conversation with the head engineer in charge of the bridge works. A bit of darkness in the fog near Moist turned out to be Commander Vimes, grinning.

‘A rickety bridge, a heavy train, a terrifying drop to certain death below, with a pressing deadline and no back-up plan?’ said Vimes. ‘You must be in your element, Mister Lipwig. I’m told the engineers say it can’t be done. Are you really planning to risk the Low King and the future peace of this region on one throw of the dice?’

Behind them an engineer said, ‘I wouldn’t travel over that for a pension.’

As Rhys and Aeron joined them, the creaks and groans of the ancient bridge structure intensified, and seemed almost alive, like some demon daring them to chance their fate. The less fanciful of the engineers might talk of natural movement caused by the drop in temperature as night approached, but it was hard to ignore the ominous atmosphere of the place which was almost … eldritch.