Maskerade recap

With Magrat now a queen and out of the coven, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg decide they need a third witch, and settle on Agnes Nitt, a Lancre girl with a remarkable voice who has run off to Ankh-Morpork and joined the Opera House under the name Perdita. Nanny's bawdy cookery book gives them an excuse to travel to the city and collect her royalties. At the Opera House, Agnes is used as the hidden singing voice behind Christine, a pretty soprano with no real talent, while a masked figure known as the Opera Ghost is blamed for a series of deaths. Granny and Nanny investigate, and Granny works out that the killings are not the Ghost's doing at all. The true culprit is the music director, Salzella, who has been exploiting the Ghost legend to cover murder for his own ends. The genuine masked figure is Walter Plinge, the overlooked odd-job man, secretly a musical prodigy. Salzella is unmasked and brought down, Walter is cleared and takes charge of the Opera House, and Agnes realizes the witches came partly for her, leaving her future with the coven open.

Previously, in earlier books: the small mountain kingdom of Lancre was watched over by a coven of three witches, the formidable Granny Weatherwax, the earthy Nanny Ogg, and the youngest, Magrat Garlick. Together they defended Lancre's throne and its people, once saving the kingdom from a usurper, once traveling abroad where Granny bested her own sister, and once driving back the elves who tried to break into the world. Over that last adventure Magrat married King Verence and became Queen of Lancre, which has taken her out of the coven and left Granny and Nanny as only two. Granny holds firmly to the belief that a proper coven needs three witches, and she is uneasy, and a little dangerous, with too little to do and no one to balance her. That is the gap the pair set out to fill when they hear of a talented young Lancre woman who has left the mountains for the big city, and go looking for her.

In Lancre, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are down to a coven of two, since Magrat became queen, and Granny is convinced they need a third. Their thoughts turn to Agnes Nitt, a sensible young local woman with a wonderful singing voice, who has recently left home for Ankh-Morpork to make a new life, taking the grander name Perdita. Meanwhile Nanny has written a scandalous cookery book and is owed royalties by a city publisher, which gives the two witches a perfect excuse to travel to Ankh-Morpork and see what Agnes is up to. Agnes, for her part, has joined the great Opera House, a place full of temperamental singers, strange traditions, and mounting dread, for a masked figure known as the Opera Ghost is said to stalk its corridors, and people connected to the building have begun to die.

As the deaths at the Opera House mount and are blamed on the masked Ghost, Granny Weatherwax pieces the mystery together and shows that the killer and the Ghost are two different people. The real murderer is Salzella, the cynical director of music, who has been using the building's Ghost legend as a mask for killings carried out for his own profit. The figure genuinely haunting the Opera House is Walter Plinge, the shabby odd-job man everyone dismissed as simple, who is in truth a gifted musician hiding behind the mask. In the confrontation Salzella is exposed and brought down, and Walter is cleared of the crimes laid at the Ghost's door. Recognized at last for his talent, Walter ends up running the Opera House. Agnes, who has spent the story as the powerful voice hidden behind the pretty but talentless Christine, learns that Granny and Nanny did not come to the city only for a cookery book: they came for her, to draw her back toward witchcraft and a place in their coven. Granny admits to having quietly steered events all along. Agnes stays in the city for now, still unwilling to be simply the sensible girl with the good voice, but the pull toward Lancre and the craft has been set, and the door to the coven is left standing open.