Feet of Clay

  “King?” Nobby coughed, and then they had to slap him on the back until he got his breath again. “King?” he wheezed. “And have Mr. Vimes cut me head off?”

  “All the brandy you can drink, my lord,” said a wheedling voice.

  “’S no good if you ain’t got a throat for it to go down!”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Mr. Vimes’d go spare! He’d go spare!”

  “Good heavens, man—”

  “My lord,” someone corrected.

  “My lord, I mean—when you’re king you can tell that wretched Sir Samuel what to do. You’ll be, as you would call it, ‘the boss.’ You could—”

  “Tell ole Stoneface what to do?” said Nobby.

  “That’s right!”

  “I’d be a king and tell ole Stoneface what to do?” said Nobby.

  “Yes!”

  Nobby stared into the smoky gloom.

  “He’d go spare!”

  “Listen, you silly little man—”

  “My lord—”

  “You silly little lord, you’d be able to have him executed if you wished!”

  “I couldn’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “He’d go spare!”

  “The man calls himself an officer of the law, and whose law does he listen to, eh? Where does his law come from?”

  “I don’t know!” groaned Nobby. “He says it comes up through his boots!” He looked around. The shadows in the smoke seemed to be closing in.

  “I can’t be king! Ole Vimes’d go spare!”

  “Will you stop saying that!”

  Nobby pulled at his collar.

  “’S a bit hot and smoky in here,” he mumbled. “Which way’s the window?”

  “Over there—”

  The chair rocked. Nobby hit the glass helmet-first, landed on top of a waiting carriage, bounced off and ran into the night, trying to escape destiny in general and axes in particular.

  Cheri Littlebottom strode into the palace kitchens and fired her crossbow into the ceiling.

  “Don’t nobody move!” she yelled.

  The Patrician’s domestic staff looked up from their dinner.

  “When you say don’t nobody move,” said Drumknott carefully, fastidiously taking a piece of plaster off his plate, “do you in fact mean—?”

  “All right, Corporal, I’ll take over now,” said Vimes, patting Cheri on the shoulder. “Is Mildred Easy here?”

  All heads turned.

  Mildred’s spoon dropped into her soup.

  “It’s all right,” said Vimes. “I just need to ask you a few more questions—”

  “I’m…s-s-sorry, sir—”

  “You haven’t done anything wrong,” said Vimes, walking around the table. “But you didn’t just take food home for your family, did you?”

  “S-sir?”

  “What else did you take?”

  Mildred looked at the suddenly blank expressions on the faces of the other servants. “There was the old sheets but Mrs. Dipplock did s-say I could have—”

  “No, not that,” said Vimes.

  Mildred licked her dry lips. “Er, there was…there was some boot polish…”

  “Look,” said Vimes, as kindly as possible, “everyone takes small things from the place where they work. Small stuff that no one notices. No one thinks of it as stealing. It’s like…it’s like rights. Odds and ends. Ends, Miss Easy? I’m thinking about the word ‘ends’.”

  “Er…you mean…the candle ends, sir?”

  Vimes took a deep breath. It was such a relief to be right, even though you knew you’d only got there by trying every possible way to be wrong. “Ah.” he said.

  “B-but that’s not stealing, sir. I’ve never stolen nothing, s-sir!”

  “But you take home the candle stubs? Still half an hour of light in ’em, I expect, if you burn them in a saucer?” said Vimes gently.

  “But that’s not stealing, sir! That’s perks, sir.”

  Sam Vimes smacked his forehead. “Perks! Of course! That was the word I was looking for. Perks! Everyone’s got to have perks, aren’t I right? Well, that’s fine, then,” he said. “I expect you get the ones from the bedrooms, yes?”

  Even through her nervousness, Mildred Easy was able to grin the grin of someone with an Entitlement that lesser beings hadn’t got. “Yessir. I’m allowed, sir. They’re much better than the ole coarse ones we use in the main halls, sir.”

  “And you put in fresh candles when necessary, do you?”

  “Yessir.”

  Probably slightly more often than necessary, Vimes thought. No point in letting them burn down too much…

  “Perhaps you can show me where they’re kept, miss?”

  The maid looked along the table to the housekeeper, who glanced at Commander Vimes and then nodded. She was bright enough to know when something that sounded like a question really wasn’t one.

  “We keep them in the candle pantry next door, sir,” said Mildred.

  “Lead the way, please.”

  It wasn’t a big room, but its shelves were stacked floor to ceiling with candles. There were the yard-high ones used in the public halls and the small everyday ones used everywhere else, sorted according to quality.

  “These are what we uses in his Lordship’s rooms, sir.” She handed him twelve inches of white candle.

  “Oh, yes…very good quality. Number Fives. Nice white tallow,” said Vimes, tossing it up and down. “We burn these at home. The stuff we use at the Yard is damn’ near pork dripping. We get ours from Carry’s in the Shambles now. Very reasonable prices. We used to deal with Spadger and Williams but Mr. Carry’s really cornered the market these days, hasn’t he?”

  “Yessir. And he delivers ’em special, sir.”

  “And you put these candles in his lordship’s room every day?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  “Oh, no sir. His lordship’s particular about that! We just use Number Threes.”

  “And you take your, er, perks home?”

  “Yessir. Gran said they gave a lovely light, sir…”

  “I expect she sat up with your little brother, did she? Because I expect he got took sick first, so she sat up with him all night long, night after night and, hah, if I know old Mrs. Easy, she did her sewing…”

  “Yessir.”

  There was a pause.

  “Use my handkerchief,” said Vimes, after a while.

  “Am I going to lose my position, sir?”

  “No. That’s definite. No one involved deserves to lose their jobs,” said Vimes. He looked at the candle. “Except possibly me,” he added.

  He stopped at the doorway, and turned. “And if you ever want candle-ends, we’ve always got lots at the Watch House. Nobby’ll have to starting buying cooking fat like everyone else.”

  “What’s it doing now?” said Sergeant Colon.

  Wee Mad Arthur peered over the edge of the roof again. “It’s havin’ problems with its elbows,” he said conversationally. “It keeps lookin’ at one of ’em and tryin’ it all ways up and it’s not workin’.”

  “I had that trouble when I put up them kitchen units for Mrs. Colon,” said the sergeant. “The instructions on how to open the box were inside the box—”

  “Oh-oh, it’s worked it out,” said the rat-catcher. “Looks like it had it mixed up with its knees after all.”

  Colon heard a clank below him.

  “And now its gone round the corner”—there was a crash of splintering wood—” and now it’s got into the building. I expect it’ll come up the stairs, but it looks like yer’ll be OK.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cos all you gotta do is let go of the roof, see?”

  “I’ll drop to my death!”

  “Right! Nice clean way to go. None of that ‘arms-and-legs-bein’-ripped-off’ stuff first.”

  “I wanted to buy a farm!” moaned Colon.

  “Could be,” said Ar
thur. He looked over the roof again. “Or,” he said, as if this were hardly a better option, “yez could try to grab the drainpipe.”

  Colon looked sideways. There was a pipe a few feet away. If he swung his body and really made an effort, he might just miss it by inches and plunge to his death.

  “Does it look safe?” he said.

  “Compared with what, mister?”

  Colon tried to swing his legs like a pendulum. Every muscle in his arm screamed at him. He knew he was overweight. He’d always meant to take exercise one day. He just hadn’t been aware that it was going to be today.

  “I reckon I can hear it walking up the stairs,” said Wee Mad Arthur.

  Colon tried to swing faster.

  “What’re you going to do?” he said.

  “Oh, don’t yez worry about me,” said Wee Mad Arthur. “I’ll be fine. I’ll jump.”

  “Jump?”

  “Sure. I’ll be safe ’cos of being normal-sized, see.”

  “You think you’re normal-sized?”

  Wee Mad Arthur looked at Colon’s hands. “Are these yer fingers right here by my boots?” he said.

  “Right, right, you’re normal sized. ’S not your fault you’ve moved into a city full of giants,” said Colon.

  “Right. The smaller yez are the lighter yez fall. Well known fact. A spider’ll not even notice a drop like this, a mouse’d walk away, a horse’d break every bone in its body and a helephant would spla—”

  “Oh, gods,” muttered Colon. He could feel the drainpipe with his boot now. But getting a grip would mean there would have to be one long, bottomless moment when he was not exactly holding on to the roof and not exactly holding on to the drainpipe and in very serious peril of holding on to the ground.

  There was another crash from somewhere on the roof.

  “Right,” said Wee Mad Arthur. “See you at the bottom.”

  “Oh, gods…”

  The gnome stepped off the roof.

  “All OK so far,” he shouted, as he went past Colon.

  “Oh, gods…”

  Sergeant Colon looked up into two red glows.

  “Doing fine up to now,” said a dopplering voice from below.

  “Oh, gods…”

  Colon heaved his legs around, stood on fresh air for a moment, grabbed the top of the pipe, ducked his head as a pottery fist swung at him, heard the nasty little noise as the pipe’s rusty bolts said goodbye to the wall and, still clinging to a tilting length of cast-iron pipe as if it were going to help, disappeared backwards into the fog.

  Mr. Sock looked up at the sound of the door opening, and then cowered back against the sausage machine.

  “You?” he whispered. “Here, you can’t come back! I sold you!”

  Dorfl regarded him steadily for a few seconds, and then walked past him and took the largest cleaver from the blood-stained rack on the wall.

  Sock began to shake.

  “I-I-I was always g-g-good to you,” he said. “A-a-always let you h-have your h-holy d-d-days off—”

  Dorfl stared at him again. It’s only red light, Sock gibbered to himself…

  But it seemed more focused. He felt it entering his head though his own eyes and examining his soul.

  The golem pushed him aside and stepped out of the slaughter-house and towards the cattle pens.

  Sock unfroze. They never fought back, did they? They couldn’t. It was how the damn’ things were made.

  He stared around at the other workers, humans and trolls alike. “Don’t just stand there! Get it!”

  One or two hesitated. It was a big cleaver in the golem’s hand. And when Dorfl stopped to look around at them there was something different about the golem’s stance, too. It didn’t look like something that wouldn’t fight back.

  But Sock didn’t employ people for the muscles in their heads. Besides, no one had really liked a golem around the place.

  A troll aimed a pole-axe at him. Dorfl caught it one-handed without turning his head and snapped the hickory handle with his fingers. A man with a hammer had it plucked from his hand and thrown so hard at the wall that it left a hole.

  After that they followed at a cautious distance. Dorfl took no notice of them.

  The steam over the cattle pens mingled further with the fog. Hundreds of dark eyes watched Dorfl curiously as it walked between the fences. They were always quiet when the golem was around.

  He stopped by one of the largest pens. There were voices from behind.

  “Don’t tell me it’s going to slaughter the lot of ’em! We’ll never get that lot jointed this shift!”

  “I heard where there was one at a carpenter’s that went odd and made five thousand tables in one night. Lost count or something.”

  “It’s just staring at them…”

  “I mean, five thousand tables? One of them had twenty-seven legs. It got stuck on legs…”

  Dorfl brought the cleaver down hard and sliced the lock off the gate. The cattle watched the golem, with that guarded expression which cattle have that means they’re waiting for the next thought to turn up.

  He walked on to the sheep pens and opened them, too. The pigs were next, and then the poultry.

  “All of them?” said Mr. Sock.

  The golem walked calmly back down the line of pens, ignoring the watchers, and re-entered the slaughterhouse. He came out very shortly afterwards leading the ancient and hairy billygoat on a piece of string. He went past the waiting animals until he reached the wide gates that opened into the main road, which it opened. Then he let the goat loose.

  The animal sniffed the air and rolled its slotted eyes. Then, apparently deciding that the distant odor of the cabbage fields beyond the city wall was much preferable to the smells immediately around it, it trotted away up the road.

  The animals followed it in a rush, but with hardly any other noise than the rustle of movement and the sounds of their hooves. They streamed around the stationary figure of Dorfl, who stood and watched them go.

  A chicken, bewildered by the stampede, landed on the golem’s head and started to cluck.

  Anger finally overcame Sock’s terror. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, trying to field a few stray sheep as they bolted out of the pens. “That’s money walking out of the gate, you—”

  Dorfl’s hand was suddenly around his throat. The golem picked him up and held the struggling man at arm’s-length, turning its head this way and that as if considering its next course of action.

  Finally he tossed away the cleaver, reached up under the chicken that had taken up residence, and produced a small brown egg. With apparent ceremony the golem smashed it carefully on Sock’s scalp and dropped him.

  The golem’s former co-workers jumped back out of the way as Dorfl walked back through the slaughterhouse.

  There was a tally board by the entrance. Dorfl looked at it for a while, then picked up the chalk and wrote:

  NO MASTER…

  The chalk crumbled in its fingers. Dorfl walked out into the fog.

  Cheri looked up from her workbench.

  “The wick’s full of arsenous acid,” she said. “Well done, sir! This candle even weighs slightly more than other candles!”

  “What an evil way to kill anyone,” said Angua.

  “Certainly very clever,” said Vimes. “Vetinari sits up half the night writing, and in the morning the candle’s burned down. Poisoned by the light. The light’s something you don’t see. Who looks at the light? Not some plodding old copper.”

  “Oh, you’re not that old, sir,” said Carrot, cheerfully.

  “What about plodding?”

  “Or that plodding, either,” Carrot added quickly. “I’ve always pointed out to people that you walk in a very purposeful and meaningful manner.”

  Vimes gave him a sharp look and saw nothing more than a keen and innocently helpful expression.

  “We don’t look at the light because the light is what we look with,” said Vimes. “OK. And now I think we should go
and have a look at the candle factory, shouldn’t we? You come, Littlebottom, and bring your…have you got taller, Littlebottom?”

  “High-heeled boots, sir,” said Cheri.

  “I thought dwarfs always wore iron boots…”

  “Yes, sir. But I’ve got high heels on mine, sir. I welded them on.”

  “Oh. Fine. Right.” Vimes pulled himself together. “Well, if you can still totter, bring your alchemy stuff with you. Detritus should’ve come off-duty from the palace. When it comes to locked doors you can’t beat Detritus—he’s a walking crowbar. We’ll pick him up on the way.”

  He loaded his crossbow and lit a match.

  “Right,” he said. “We’ve done it the modern way, now let’s try policing like grandfather used to do it. It’s time to—”

  “Prod buttock, sir?” said Carrot, hurriedly.

  “Close,” said Vimes, taking a deep drag and blowing out a smoke ring, “but no cigar.”

  Sergeant Colon’s view of the world was certainly changing. Just when something was about to fix itself firmly in his mind as the worst moment of his entire life, it was hurriedly replaced by something even nastier.

  Firstly, the drainpipe he was riding hit the wall of the building opposite. In a well-organized world he might have landed on a fire escape, but fire escapes were unknown in Ankh-Morpork and the flames generally had to leave via the roof.

  With the pipe thus leaning against the wall, he found himself sliding down the diagonal. Even this might have been a happy outcome were it not for the fact that Colon was a heavy man and, as his weight slid nearer to the middle of the unsupported pipe, the pipe sagged, and cast iron has only a very limited amount of sag before it snaps, which it now did. Colon dropped, and landed on something soft—at least, softer than the street—and the something went “mur-r-r-r-r-m!” He bounced off it and landed on something lower and softer which went “baaaaarp!” and rolled from this on to something even lower and apparently made of feathers, which went insane. And pecked him.

  The street was full of animals, milling around uncertainly. When animals are in a state of uncertainty they get nervous, and the street was already, as it were, paved with anxiety. The only benefit to Sergeant Colon was that this made it slightly softer than would otherwise have been the case.