Feet of Clay

  “I poked my head in as soon as I came on shift and he was out like a light, sir!”

  “How did you know he wasn’t asleep?”

  “On the floor, sir, with all his clothes on?”

  A couple of Watchmen had put the Patrician on his bed by the time Vimes arrived, slightly out of breath and with his knees aching. Gods, he thought as he struggled up the stairs, it’s not like the old truncheon-and-bell days. You wouldn’ think twice about running half-way across the city, coppers and criminals locked in hot pursuit.

  With a mixture of pride and shame he added: And none of the buggers ever caught me, either.

  The Patrician was still breathing, but his face was waxy and he looked as though death might be an improvement.

  Vimes’s gaze roamed the room. There was a familiar haze in the air.

  “Who opened the window?” he demanded.

  “I did, sir,” said Visit. “Just before I went to get you. He looked as though he needed some fresh air…”

  “It’d be fresher if you left the window shut,” said Vimes. “OK, I want everyone, I mean everyone, who was in this place overnight rounded up and down in the hall in two minutes. And someone fetch Corporal Littlebottom. And tell Captain Carrot.”

  I’m worried and confused, he thought. So the first rule in the book is to spread it around.

  He prowled about the room. It didn’t take much intelligence to see that Vetinari had got up and moved over to his writing-desk, where by the look of it he had worked for some time. The candle had burned right down. An inkwell had been overturned, presumably when he’d slipped off the chair.

  Vimes dipped a finger in the ink and sniffed it. Then he reached for the quill pen beside it, hesitated, took out his dagger, and lifted the long feather gingerly. There seemed to be no cunning little barbs on it, but he put it carefully on one side for Littlebottom to examine later.

  He glanced down at the paper Vetinari had been working on.

  To his surprise it wasn’t writing at all, but a careful drawing. It showed a striding figure, except that the figure was not one person at all but made up of hundreds or thousands of smaller figures. The effect was like one of the wicker men built by some of the more outlandish tribes near the Hub, when they annually celebrated the great cycle of Nature and their reverence for life by piling as much of it as possible in a great heap and setting fire to it.

  The composite man was wearing a crown.

  Vimes pushed the sheet of paper aside and returned his attention to the desk. He brushed the surface carefully for any suspicious splinters. He crouched down and examined the underside.

  The light was growing outside. Vimes went into both the rooms alongside and made sure their drapes were open, then went back into Vetinari’s room, closed the curtains and the doors, and sidled along the walls looking for any tell-tale speck of light that might indicate a small hole.

  Where could you stop? Splinters in the floor? Blowpipes through the keyhole?

  He opened the curtains again.

  Vetinari had been on the mend yesterday. And now he looked worse. Someone had got to him in the night. How? Slow poison was the devil of a thing. You had to find a way of giving it to the victim every day.

  No, you didn’t…What was elegant was finding a way of getting him to administer it to himself every day.

  Vimes rummaged through the paperwork. Vetinari had obviously felt well enough to get up and walk over here, but here was where he had collapsed.

  You couldn’t poison a splinter or a nail because he wouldn’t keep on nicking himself…

  There was a book half-buried in the papers, but it had a lot of bookmarks in it, mostly torn bits of old letters.

  What did he do every day?

  Vimes opened the book. Every page was covered with handwritten symbols.

  You have to get a poison like arsenic into the body. It isn’t enough to touch it. Or is it? Is there a kind of arsenic you can pick up through the skin?

  No one was getting in. Vimes was almost certain of that.

  The food and drink were probably all right, but he’d get Detritus to go and have another one of his little talks with the cooks in any case.

  Something he breathed? How could you keep that up day after day without arousing suspicion somewhere? Anyway! you’d have to get your poison into the room.

  Something already in the room? Cheery had a different carpet put down and replaced the bed. What else could you do? Strip the paint from the ceiling?

  What had Vetinari told Cheery about poisoning? “You put it where no one will look at all…”

  Vimes realized he was still staring at the book. There wasn’t anything there that he could recognize. It must be a code of some sort. Knowing Vetinari, it wouldn’t be crackable by anyone in a normal frame of mind.

  Could you poison a book? But…so what? There were other books. You’d have to know he’d look at this one, continuously. And even then you’d have to get the poison into him. A man might prick his finger once, and after that he’d take care.

  It sometimes worried Vimes, the way he suspected everything. If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad. Mind you, that horrible green color would drive anyone insane…

  “Bingely beepy bleep!”

  “Oh, no…”

  “This is your six ay-emm wake-up call! Good morning!! Here are your appointments for today, Insert Name Here!! Ten ay-emm…”

  “Shut up! Listen, whatever’s in my diary for today is definitely not—”

  Vimes stopped. He lowered the box.

  He went back to the desk. If you assumed one page per day…

  Lord Vetinari had a very good memory. But everyone wrote things down, didn’t they? You couldn’t remember every little thing. Wednesday: 3 P.M., reign of terror; 3:15 P.M., clean out scorpion pit…

  He held the organizer up to his lips. “Take a memo,” he said.

  “Hooray! Go right ahead. Don’t forget to say ‘memo’ first!!”

  “Speak to…blast…Memo: What about Vetinari’s journal?”

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  Someone knocked politely at the door. Vimes opened it carefully. “Oh, it’s you, Littlebottom.”

  Vimes blinked. Something wasn’t right about the dwarf.

  “I’ll mix up some of Mr. Doughnut’s jollop right away, sir.” The dwarf looked past Vimes to the bed. “Ooo…he doesn’t look good, does he…?”

  “Get someone to move him into a different bedroom,” said Vimes. “Get the servants to prepare a new room, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, after they’ve done it, pick a different room at random and move him into it. And change everything, understand? Every stick of furniture, every vase, every rug—”

  “Er…yes, sir.”

  Vimes hesitated. Now he could put his finger on what had been bothering him for the last twenty seconds.

  “Littlebottom…”

  “Sir?”

  “You…er…you…On your ears?”

  “Earrings, sir,” said Cheery nervously. “Constable Angua gave them to me.”

  “Really? Er…right…I didn’t think dwarfs wore jewelry, that’s all.”

  “We’re known for rings, sir.”

  “Yes, of course.” Rings, yes. No one quite like a dwarf for forging a magical ring. But…magical earrings? Oh, well. There were some waters too deep to wade.

  Sergeant Detritus’s approach to these matters was almost instinctively correct. He had the palace staff lined up in front of him and was shouting at them at the top of his voice.

  Look at old Detritus, Vimes thought as he went down the stairs. Just your basic thick troll a few years ago, now a valuable member of the Watch provided you get him to repeat his orders back to you to make sure he understands you. His armor gleams even brighter than Carrot’s because he doesn’t get bored with polishing. And he’s mastered policing as it i
s practiced by the majority of forces in the universe, which is, basically, screaming angrily at people until they give in. The only reason that he’s not a one-troll reign of terror is the ease with which his thought processes can be derailed by anyone who tries something fiendishly cunning, like an outright denial.

  “I know you all done it!” he was shouting. “If the person wot done it does not own up der whole staff, an’ I means this, der whole staff will be locked up in der Tanty also we throws der key away!” He pointed a finger at a stout scullery maid. “It was you wot done it, own up!”

  “No.”

  Detritus paused. Then: “Where was you last night? Own up!”

  “In bed, of course!”

  “Aha, dat a likely story, own up, dat where you always is at night?”

  “Of course.”

  “Aha, own up, you got witnesses?”

  “Sauce!”

  “Ah, so you got no witnesses, you done it then, own up!”

  “No!”

  “Oh…”

  “All right, all right. Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all for now,” said Vimes, patting him on the shoulder. “Are all the staff here?”

  He glared at the line-up. “Well? Are you all here?”

  There was a certain amount of reluctant shuffling among the ranks, and then someone cautiously put up a hand. “Mildred Easy hasn’t been seen since yesterday,” said its owner. “She’s the upstairs maid. A boy came with a message. She had to go off to see her family.”

  Vimes felt the faintest of prickles on the back of his neck. “Anyone know why?” he said.

  “Dunno, sir. She left all her stuff.”

  “All right. Sergeant, before you go off-shift, get someone to find her. Then go and get some sleep. The rest of you, go and get on with whatever it is you do. Ah…Mr. Drumknott?”

  The Patrician’s personal clerk, who’d been watching Detritus’s technique with a horrified expression, looked up. “Yes, Commander?”

  “What’s this book? Is it his lordship’s diary?”

  Drumknott took the book. “It looks like it, certainly.”

  “Have you been able to crack the code?”

  “I didn’t know it was in code, Commander.”

  “What? You’ve never looked at it?”

  “Why should I, sir? It’s not mine.”

  “You do know his last secretary tried to kill him?”

  “Yes, sir, I ought to say, sir, that I have already been exhaustively interrogated by your men.” Drumknott opened the book and raised his eyebrows.

  “What did they say?” said Vimes.

  Drumknott looked up thoughtfully. “Let me see, now…‘It was you wot done it, own up, everybody seen you, we got lots of people say you done it, you done it all right didn’t you, own up.’ That was, I think, the general approach. And then, like the scullery maid just now, I said it wasn’t me and that seemed to puzzle the officer concerned.”

  Drumknott delicately licked his finger and turned a page.

  Vimes stared at him.

  The sound of saws was brisk on the morning air. Captain Carrot knocked against the timber-yard door, which was eventually opened.

  “Good morning, sir!” he said. “I understand you have a golem here?”

  “Had,” said the timber merchant.

  “Oh dear, another one,” said Angua.

  That made four so far. The one in the foundry had knelt under a hammer, the one in the stonemason’s yard was now ten clay toes sticking out from under a two-ton block of limestone, one working in the docks had last been seen in the river, striding towards the sea, and now this one…

  “It was weird,” said the merchant, thumping the golem’s chest. “Sidney said it went on sawing all the way up to the moment it sawed its head right off. I’ve got a load of ash planking got to go out this afternoon. Who’s going to saw it up, may I ask?”

  Angua picked up the golem’s head. Insofar as it had any expression at all, it was one of intense concentration.

  “’Ere,” said the merchant, “Alf told me he heard in the Drum last night that golems have been murderin’ people…”

  “Enquiries are continuing,” said Carrot. “Now then, Mr…. it’s Preble Skink, isn’t it? Your brother runs the lamp-oil shop in Cable Street? And your daughter is a maid at the university?”

  The man looked astonished. But Carrot knew everyone. “Yeah…”

  “Did your golem leave the yard yesterday evening?”

  “Well, yeah, early on…Something about a holy day.” He looked nervously from one to the other. “You got to let them go, otherwise the words in their heads—”

  “And then it came back and worked all night?”

  “Yeah. What else would it do? And then Alf came in on early turn and he said it came up outa the saw pit, stood there for a moment, and then…”

  “Was it sawing pine logs yesterday?” said Angua.

  “That’s right. Where’m I going to get another golem at short notice, may I ask?”

  “What’s this?” said Angua. She picked up a wood-framed square from a heap of sawdust. “This was its slate, was it?” She handed it to Carrot.

  “‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’” Carrot read slowly. “‘Clay of My Clay. Ashamed.’ Do you have any idea why it’d write that?”

  “Search me,” said Skink. “They’re always doing dumb things.” He brightened up a bit. “Hey, perhaps it went potty? Get it? Clay…pot…potty?”

  “Extremely funny,” said Carrot gravely. “I will take this as evidence. Good morning.”

  “Why did you ask about pine logs?” he said to Angua as they stepped outside.

  “I smelled the same pine resin in the cellar.”

  “Pine resin’s just pine resin, isn’t it?”

  “No. Not to me. That golem was in there.”

  “They all were,” sighed Carrot. “And now they’re committing suicide.”

  “You can’t take life you haven’t got,” said Angua.

  “What shall we call it, then? “‘Destruction of property’?” said Carrot. “Anyway, we can’t ask them now…” He tapped the slate. “They’ve given us the answers,” he said. “Perhaps we can find out what the questions should have been.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?” said Vimes. “It’s got to be the book! He licks his fingers to turn a page, and every day he gets a little dose of arsenic! Fiendishly clever!”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Cheery, backing away. “I can’t find a trace. I’ve used all the tests I know.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I could send it up to the Unseen University. They’ve built a new morphic resonator in the High Energy Magic Building. Magic would easily—”

  “Don’t do that,” said Vimes. “We’ll keep the wizards out of this. Damn! For half an hour there I really thought I’d got it…”

  He sat down at his desk. Something new was odd about the dwarf, but again he couldn’t quite work out what it was.

  “We’re missing something here, Littlebottom,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s look at the facts. If you want to poison someone slowly you’ve either got to give them small doses all the time—or, at least, every day. We’re covered everything the Patrician does. It can’t be the air in the room—you and I have been in there every day. It’s not the food, we’re pretty sure of that. Is something stinging him? Can you poison a wasp? What we need—”

  “’Scuse me, sir.”

  Vimes turned.

  “Detritus? I thought you were off-duty?”

  “I got dem to give me der address of dat maid called Easy like you said,” said Detritus, stoically. “I went up dere and dere was people all lookin’ in.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Neighbors and dat. Cryin’ women all round’ der door. An’ I remember what you said about dat dipplo word—”

  “Diplomacy,” said Vimes.

  “Yeah. Not shoutin’ at people an’ dat. I fought, dis look a
delicate situation. Also, dey was throwin’ stuff at me. So I came back here. I writ down der address. An’ now I’m goin’ home.” He saluted, rocked slightly from the force of the blow to the side of his head, and departed.

  “Thanks, Detritus,” said Vimes. He looked at the paper written in the troll’s big round hand.

  “1st Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street,” he said. “Good grief!”

  “You know it, sir?”

  “Should. I was born in that street,” said Vimes. “It’s down below the Shades. Easy…Easy…Yes…Now I remember. There was a Mrs. Easy down the road. Skinny woman. Did a lot of sewing. Big family. Well, we were all big families—it was the only way to keep warm…”

  He frowned at the paper. It wasn’t as if it were any particular lead. Maidservants were always going off to see their mothers, every time there was the least little family upset. What was it his granny had used to say? “Yer son’s yer son till he takes a wife, but yer daughter’s yer daughter all yer life.” Sending a Watchman around would almost certainly be a waste of everyone’s time…

  “Well, well…Cockbill Street,” he said. He stared at the paper again. You might as well rename the place Memory Lane. No, you couldn’t waste Watch resources on a wild-goose chase like that. But he might look in. On his way past. Some time today.

  “Er…Littlebottom?”

  “Sir?”

  “On your…your lips. Red. Er. On your lips…”

  “Lipstick, sir.”

  “Oh…er. Lipstick? Fine. Lipstick.”

  “Constable Angua gave it to me, sir.”

  “That was kind of her,” said Vimes. “I expect.”

  It was called the Rats Chamber. In theory this was because of the decoration; some former resident of the palace had thought that a fresco of dancing rats would be a real decorative coup. There was a pattern of rats woven in the carpet. On the ceiling rats danced in a circle, their tails intertwining at the centre. After half an hour in that room, most people wanted a wash.

  Soon, then, there would be a big rush on the hot water. The room was filling up fast.

  By common consent the chair was taken and amply filled by Mrs. Rosemary Palm, head of the Guild of Seamstresses,* as one of the most senior guild leaders.