Pyramids (Discworld, #7)

by Terry Pratchett

(Priests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.)

There was always someone back home who wanted to be certain that deposed monarchs stayed that way. It was usually a case of heir today, gone tomorrow.

Dil coughed. It was the ominous cough. The Spanish use an upside-down question mark to tell you what you’re about to hear is a question; this was the kind of cough that tells you what you’re about to hear is a dirge.

Someone was just putting a torch to the lighthouse, which was one of the More Than Seven Wonders of the World and had been built to a design by Pthagonal using the Golden Rule and the Five Aesthetic Principles. Unfortunately it had then been built in the wrong place because putting it in the right place would have spoiled the look of the harbor, but it was generally agreed by mariners to be a very beautiful lighthouse and something to look at while they were waiting to be towed off the rocks.