* * *

Coup d'oeil
by afrai

* * *

Susan got Rukia on alternate weekends, partly because Death couldn't spare her any more often, partly because no amount of attachment to any kid could induce Susan to give up every weekend. A young lady needed time to herself.

Usually they went somewhere educational, if only because hope sprung eternal. Susan was uncomfortably conscious that she and Rukia had more traits in common than she would have liked, but education didn't seem to be one of them. Rukia had no interest in being educated. Lessons slid off her like drunk tobogganers off a snowbank, despite Susan's efforts. Genua bored Rukia, Ephebe made her eyes glaze over, and she spent most of their visit to the Counterweight Continent trying to catch the koi in the Emperor's ornamental fish pond for dinner.

There seemed to be a decided vagabond streak in her, though Susan couldn't make out where it had come from. It worried Susan. Things didn't seem to fit when she was with Rukia. It was a feeling that didn't make sense, and Susan liked things to make sense.

Rukia's favourite place on the Disc -- which, by and large, she viewed with a kind of haughty boredom -- was Ankh-Morpork. This worried Susan even more -- not so much for what it said about Rukia's inclinations, as discouraging as that was when you really thought about it, as for what tended to happen when you let Rukia loose amongst normal people. Well . . . normaler people, anyway. Take that incident in Biers, for instance.

She hadn't meant to bring her underage aunt into a bar. It had just sort of happened. After that incident at the shopping centre, and that thing with the Watch, and the whole string of events following Rukia's getting lost in the Shades, Susan had needed a drink, and she figured Biers was as safe a place as anywhere else. At least everybody there would know better than to bother them.

She really should have thought about it more, she reflected later. For one thing, she should have realised the kind of effect the sight of a little girl in a frilly blue frock with ribbons and bunny hair clips would have on an unprepared bogeyman. She could scarcely blame it for following its instincts.

That hadn't been the problem. Susan could deal with bogeymen in her sleep (this was, in fact, the best position in which to deal with a bogeyman, since it meant you were equipped with the necessary weaponry). No, what had happened next had been the problem.

"Susan," said Rukia, in the penetrating voice of the displeased eight-year-old, "there is a man under the table."

"Hmm?" said Susan. "Oh. Right. Don't worry about it. It's just a bogeyman."

Rukia looked interested.

"Is it an Ethnic Folkway to hide under tables in Bogey?" she said. They had been doing Ethnic Folkways as part of Geography.

"Well -- yes, sort of," said Susan. "But there's no such place as Bogey. Bogeymen are . . . it's more of a job description. They hide so they can jump out and frighten children."

"I don't see what's so scary about being able to hide under a table," said Rukia, a child who called with the local embodiment of entropy 'Dad'. "I could do that."

"It's not as easy as it looks," said a muffled voice from under the table. "There's a technique to it."

Rukia peered under the table. The bogeyman waved at her.

"How are you going to frighten me?" she said.

"Can't tell you," said the bogeyman. "'S a wossname. Trade secret."

"You're just saying that because you don't know," said Rukia, old in the ways and makeshifts of the adult world.

"Hold on, that's a pretty big assumption to make, missy -- "

"Don't make conversation with the nasty bogeyman, Rukia," said Susan absently. "Remember what I said about talking to strangers."

"It's not a stranger, it's sitting under our table," Rukia pointed out.

"Wait a minute," said the bogeyman. "Shouldn't you be screaming your little head off right now?"

"Should I?" said Rukia, genuinely interested.

"Well . . . " The bogeyman seemed stumped. "That's usually the way it goes, you know. I leap out of a closet or something, you kids do the screaming, we've both done our part of the job, yeah?"

Rukia thought about this. "But why do you want to scare me?"

"Well, 's my job," said the bogeyman. "You know, bein' a monster -- "

"You're not a monster," said Rukia.

Susan looked up.

"Yes, I am," said the bogeyman.

"Huh," said Rukia. "No, you're not. There's no such thing as monsters."

"Rukia," said Susan.

"But I . . . " The bogeyman paled, as impossible as that might seem in a creature consisting mostly of hair and halitosis. "Here, what's going on?"

Or maybe paled wasn't the word for it. The bogeyman wasn't going pale so much as thin, transparent, so that you could see the floor under it. You could see the floor right through it . . .

"Rukia!" shouted Susan, pushing off the table. She looked around and snatched up her purse, cursing. The other customers were watching, the unspoken agreement that nothing unusual ever happened in Biers broken for once. Even in Biers, it wasn't common for patrons to fade out of existence.

"No! No, stop!" The bogeyman's voice had become high and shrill, wavering like the rest of it on the brink of nothingness.

I DON'T BELIEVE IN MONSTERS, said Rukia.

Susan found what she had been rummaging for and yanked it out of the purse, kicking the table over at the same time.

The blanket fluttered down on the bogeyman's head. It had rabbits on it. Some of them wore waistcoats.

"Aargh," said the bogeyman, and then silence descended on the room.

"There," said Susan. "Now it doesn't believe it exists either. Is that enough for you?"

"But -- "

"Come on, Rukia," said Susan. "We're going home."

"But Susan, we haven't even -- "

WE'RE -- Susan cut herself off.

"We're going home," she said. "Now."

She snatched Rukia up, tucking her neatly under an arm over her protests. She would be sorry the day Rukia grew too big to manhandle -- and that, thought Susan grimly, was something else she needed to find out about, as soon as possible.

"Put the bill for everything on my tab," she said to Igor. "And remove the blanket after we're gone. Tell it it can keep the blanket, if it wants."

"Right you are," said Igor, expressionless. "We won't be seeing you for a while, then."

"No. You won't," said Susan. Damn, it would take ages for this to blow over, and it wasn't as if she even liked Biers, but it had been a place to go to, at least . . . "Sorry about the fuss."

She strode out while the going was good, keeping a dignified front -- or rather, back. It was only when they had got some way down the street outside that she broke into a run.

"Susan," said Rukia.

"Yes?"

"Am I in trouble?"

"Oh, yes," said Susan. "And I'm going to have a lot of fun figuring out exactly what kind of punishment you've brought on yourself this time. But first, I've got to get some things cleared up."

"What things?"

"Nothing to do with you," lied Susan. "Don't worry about it. Trust me, you've got more than enough to worry about as it is."

Unfortunately, she thought, it looked like that last part was true.

* * *

Despite what she'd told Rukia, Susan decided to mete out punishment first when they were both safely in Death's domain again. Rukia took it with surprising docility; none of her other trespasses had been of quite this magnitude, Susan supposed. Accidentally dropping Death's sword in the pond hardly approached the level of almost opinionating another living being out of existence.

Susan set her to peeling cucumbers.

"That's what we call justice tempered with mercy," she told Rukia.

"Not when Albert's doing the cooking," grumbled Rukia.

"Count your blessings," said Susan. She watched the mutilation of a few cucumbers, calming herself down in preparation for the coming interview, before turning to leave. She had opened the kitchen door when Rukia's voice stopped her.

"Susan?"

"Yes?"

Rukia sat hunched on the stool, her head drooping.

"I'm sorry," she said, in a small voice. "I shamed you."

And there was that feeling again, thought Susan. It was a sensory experience, though it had nothing to do with the ordinary five senses. But it was bone-deep knowledge. A feeling that things weren't -- weren't going wrong, exactly, but weren't going quite right either. As if -- Susan groped for a way to describe it -- as if some other story had barged into their own, and was warping the way things were supposed to go. As if mysterious outside forces were at work, and they were going off-course . . .

She shook herself. This was nonsense. It was the kind of thing a wizard might say, and you couldn't say worse of any line of reasoning than that.

"No. You behaved abominably, but you didn't shame me," she said. "You surprised me. There's a difference."

Rukia looked up hesitantly. "Really?"

"Yes. I'll never be ashamed of you, all right?" said Susan, wondering why she had to say it. She'd never worried about honour and shame in her life. Had Albert been feeding Rukia some line about what was owed to Death? Surely Death had nothing to do with this quirk of thinking; she knew he believed in doing his duty, insofar as Death believed in anything, but he generally stayed away from the human intricacies of principle and reputation. After all, being Death was reputation enough.

"You could never do anything to shame any of us. Embarrass us, yes," she amended. "You could do that easily. Granddad does it all the -- well, never mind about that. But shame us, no."

Yet another thing they'd have to discuss, Susan thought as she walked down the passage to Death's study. The list kept getting longer.

She really wasn't looking forward to this at all.

But it's my responsibility, thought Susan. I'm her au -- no, all right, she's my aunt. Anyway, I'm her niece. That makes her my responsibility, in a way.

And Death was Susan's grandfather, after all. She'd inherited more than a talent for swinging stick-shaped things and a really convincing speaking voice when she chose. Looking after the harvest ran in the family.

She knocked on the door.

ENTER.

"Granddad," said Susan, closing the door behind her. "We need to talk."

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