His newly deceased eyes surveyed the landscape.

There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now you realise you're going to have to look a lot of people in the eye today and you're sober now and so are they but you can both remember.

"Oh," he said.

The landscape flowed around the stones. It was all so obvious now, when you saw it from the outside. . .

Obvious. No walls, only doors. No edges, only comers–

WILLIAM SCROPE.

"Yes?"

IF YOU WOULD PLEASE STEP THIS WAY.

"Are you a hunter?"

I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES.

Death grinned hopefully. Scrope's post-physical brow furrowed.

"What? Like . . . sherry, custard . . . that sort of thing?"

Death sighed. Metaphors were wasted on people. Sometimes he felt that no one took him seriously enough.

I TAKE AWAY PEOPLE'S LIVES IS WHAT I MEAN, he said testily.

"Where to?"

WE SHALL HAVE TO SEE, WON'T WE?

William Scrope was already fading into the mist.

"That thing that got me-"

YES?

"I thought they were extinct!"

"NO. THEY JUST WENT AWAY.

"Where to?"

Death extended a bony digit.

OVER THERE.

Magrat hadn't originally intended to move into the palace before the wedding, because people would talk. Admittedly a dozen people lived in the palace, which had a huge number of rooms, but she'd still be under the same roof, and that was good enough. Or bad enough.