Feet of Clay

  “Dis is an outrage,” said Igneous, “You got no right comin’ in here. You got no reason—”

  Detritus let go of the golem and spun around. His hand shot out and caught Igneous around the throat. “You see dose statchoos of Monolith over dere? You see dem?” he growled, twisting the other troll’s head to face a row of troll religious statues on the other side of the warehouse, “You want I should smash one open, see what dey’re fill wit’, maybe find a reason?”

  Igneous’s slitted eyes darted this way and that. He might have been hard of thinking, but he could feel a killing mood when it was in the air. “No call for dat, I always help der Watch,” he muttered. “What dis all about?”

  Carrot laid out the golem on a table. “Start, then,” he said. “Rebuild him. Use as much of the old clay as you can, understand?”

  “How can it work when its lights’re out?” said Detritus, still puzzled by this mission of mercy.

  “The clay remembers!”

  The sergeant shrugged.

  “And give him a tongue,” said Carrot.

  Igneous looked shocked. “I won’t do dat,” he said. “Everbody know it blasphemy if golems speak.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Detritus. He strode across the warehouse to the group of statues and glared at them. Then he said, “Whoops, here’s me accident’ly trippin’ up, ooo, dis is me grabbin’ a statchoo for support, oh, der arm have come right off, where can I put my face…and what is dis white powder what I sees here with my eyes accident’ly spillin’ on der floor?”

  He licked a finger and gingerly tasted the stuff.

  “Slab,” he growled, walking back to the trembling Igneous. “You tellin’ me about blasphemy, you sedimentr’y coprolith? You doin’ what Captain Carrot say right now or you goin’ out of here in a sack!”

  “Dis is police brutality…” Igneous muttered.

  “No, dis is just police shoutin’!” yelled Detritus. “You want to try for brutality it OK wit’ me!”

  Igneous tried to appeal to Carrot. “It not right, he got a badge, he puttin’ me in fear, he can’t do dis,” he said.

  Carrot nodded. There was a glint in his eye that Igneous should have noticed. “That’s correct,” he said. “Sergeant Detritus?”

  “Sir?”

  “It’s been a long day for all of us. You can go off-duty.”

  “Yessir!” said Detritus, with considerable enthusiasm. He removed his badge and laid it down carefully. Then he started to struggle out of his armor.

  “Look at it like this,” said Carrot. “It’s not that we’re making life, we’re simply giving life a place to live.”

  Igneous finally gave up. “OK, OK,” he muttered. “I doin’ it. I doin’ it.”

  He looked at the various lumps and shards that were all that remained of Dorfl, and rubbed the lichen on his chin.

  “You got most of the bits,” he said, professionalism edging resentment aside for a moment. “I could glue him together wit’ kiln cement. Dat’d do the trick if we bakes him overnight. Lessee…I reckon I got some over dere…”

  Detritus blinked at his finger, which was still white with the dust, and sidled over to Carrot. “Did I just lick dis?” he said.

  “Er, yes,” said Carrot.

  “T’ank goodness for dat,” said Detritus, blinking furiously. “’D hate to believe dis room was really full of giant hairy spide…weeble weeble sclup…”

  He hit the floor, but happily.

  “Even if I do it you can’t make it come alive again,” muttered Igneous, returning to his bench. “You won’t find a priest who’s goin’ to write der words for in der head, not again.”

  “He’ll make up his own words,” said Carrot.

  “And who’s going to watch the oven?” said Igneous. “It’s gonna take ’til breakfast at least…”

  “I wasn’t planning on doing anything for the rest of tonight,” said Carrot, taking off his helmet.

  Vimes awoke around four o’clock. He’d gone to sleep at his desk. He hadn’t meant to, but his body had just shut down.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d opened bleary eyes there. But at least he wasn’t lying in anything sticky.

  He focused on the report he’d half-written. His notebook was beside it, page after page of laborious scrawl to remind him that he was trying to understand a complex world by means of his simple mind.

  He yawned, and looked out at the shank of the night.

  He didn’t have any evidence. No real evidence at all. He’d had an interview with an almost incoherent Corporal Nobbs, who hadn’t really seen anything. He had nothing that wouldn’t burn away like the fog in the morning. All he’d got were a few suspicions and a lot of coincidences, leaning against one another like a house of cards with no card on the bottom.

  He peered at his notebook.

  Someone seemed to have been working hard. Oh, yes. It had been him.

  The events of last night jangled in his head. Why’d he written all this stuff about a coat of arms?

  Oh, yes…

  Yes!

  Ten minutes later he was pushing open the door of the pottery. Warmth spilled out into the clammy air.

  He found Carrot and Detritus asleep on the floor on either side of the kiln. Damn. He needed someone he could trust, but he hadn’t the heart to wake them. He’d pushed everyone very hard the last few days…

  Something tapped on the door of the kiln.

  Then the handle started to turn by itself.

  The door opened as far as it could go and something half-slid and half-fell on to the floor.

  Vimes still wasn’t properly awake. Exhaustion and the importunate ghosts of adrenaline sizzled around the edges of his consciousness, but he saw the burning man unfold himself and stand upright.

  His red-hot body gave little pings as it began to cool. Where it stood, the floor charred and smoked.

  The golem raised his head and looked around.

  “You!” said Vimes, pointing an unsteady finger. “Come with me!”

  “Yes,” said Dorfl.

  Dragon King of Arms stepped into his library. The dirt of the small high windows and the remnants of the fog made sure there was never more than grayness here, but a hundred candles yielded their soft light.

  He sat down at his desk, pulled a volume towards him, and began to write.

  After a while he stopped and stared ahead of him. There was no sound but the occasional spluttering of a candle.

  “Ah-ha. I can smell you, Commander Vimes,” he said. “Did the Heralds let you in?”

  “I found my own way, thank you,” said Vimes, stepping out of the shadows.

  The vampire sniffed again. “You came alone?”

  “Who should I have brought with me?”

  “And to what do I owe the pleasure, Sir Samuel?”

  “The pleasure is all mine. I’m going to arrest you,” said Vimes.

  “Oh, dear. Ah-ha. For what, may I ask?”

  “Can I invite you to notice the arrow in this crossbow?” said Vimes. “No metal on the point, you’ll see. It’s wood all the way.”

  “How very considerate. Ah-ha.” Dragon King of Arms twinkled at him. “You still haven’t told me what I’m accused of, however.”

  “To start with, complicity in the murders of Mrs. Flora Easy and the child William Easy.”

  “I am afraid those names mean nothing to me.”

  Vimes’s finger twitched on the bow’s trigger. “No,” he said, breathing deeply. “They probably don’t. We are making other inquiries and there may be a number of additional matters. The fact that you were poisoning the Patrician I consider a mitigating circumstance.”

  “You really intend to proffer charges?’

  “I’d prefer violence,” said Vimes loudly. “Charges is what I’m going to have to settle for.”

  The vampire leaned back. “I hear you’ve been working very hard, Commander,” he said. “So I will not—”

  “We’ve got the testimony of Mr. Carry,
” lied Vimes. “The late Mr. Carry.”

  Dragon’s expression changed by not one tiny tremor of muscle. “I really do not know, ah-ha, what you are talking about, Sir Samuel.”

  “Only someone who could fly could have got into my office.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, sir.”

  “Mr. Carry was killed tonight,” Vimes went on. “By someone who could get out of an alley guarded at both ends. And I know a vampire was in his factory.”

  “I’m still gamely trying to understand you, Commander,” said Dragon King of Arms. “I know nothing about the death of Mr. Carry and in any case there are a great many vampires in the city. I’m afraid your…aversion is well known.”

  “I don’t like to see people treated like cattle,” said Vimes. He stared briefly at the volumes piled in the room. “And of course that’s what you’ve always done, isn’t it? These are the stock books of Ankh-Morpork.” The crossbow swung back towards the vampire, who hadn’t moved. “Power over little people. That’s what vampires want. The blood is just a way of keeping score. I wonder how much influence you’ve had over the years?”

  “A little. You are correct there, at least.”

  “‘A person of breeding,’” said Vimes. “Good grief. Well, I think people wanted Vetinari out of the way. But not dead, yet. Too many things’d happen too fast if he were dead. Is Nobby really an earl?”

  “The evidence suggests so.”

  “But it’s your evidence, right? You see, I don’t think he’s got noble blood in him. Nobby’s as common as muck. It’s one of his better points. I don’t set any score by the ring. The amount of stuff his family’s nicked, you could probably prove he’s the Duke of Pseudopolis, the Caliph of Klatch, and the Dowager Duchess of Quirm. He pinched my cigar case last year and I’m damn’ certain he’s not me. No, I don’t think Nobby is a nob. But I think he was convenient.”

  It seemed to Vimes that Dragon was getting bigger, but perhaps it was only a trick of the candlelight. The light flickered as the candles hissed and popped.

  “You made good use of me, eh?” Vimes carried on. “I’d been ducking out of appointments with you for weeks. I expect you were getting quite impatient. You were so surprised when I told you about Nobby, eh? Otherwise you’d’ve had to send for him or something, very suspicious. But Commander Vimes discovered him. That looks good. Practically makes it official.

  “And then I started thinking: who wants a king? Well, nearly everyone. It’s built in. Kings make it better. Funny thing, isn’t it? Even those people who owe everything to him don’t like Vetinari. Ten years ago most of the guild leaders were just a bunch of thugs and now…well, they’re still a bunch of thugs, to tell the truth, but Vetinari’s given ’em the time and energy to decide they never needed him.

  “And then young Carrot turns up with charisma writ all over him, and he’s got a sword and a birthmark and everyone gets a funny feeling and dozens of buggers start going through the records and say, ‘Hey, looks like the king’s come back.’ And then they watch him for a while and say, ‘Shit, he really is decent and honest and fair and just, just like in all the stories. Whoops! If this lad gets on the throne we could be in serious trouble! He might turn out to be one of them inconvenient kings from long ago who wanders around talking to the common people—’”

  “You are in favor of the common people?” said Dragon mildly.

  “The common people?” said Vimes. “They’re nothing special. They’re no different from the rich and powerful except they’ve got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit. So I suppose I’ve got to be on their side.”

  “A man married to the richest woman in the city?”

  Vimes shrugged. “The Watchman’s helmet isn’t like a crown. Even when you take it off you’re still wearing it.”

  “That’s an interesting statement of position, Sir Samuel, and I would be the first to admire the way you’ve come to terms with your family history, but—”

  “Don’t move!” Vimes shifted his grip on the crossbow. “Anyway…Carrot wouldn’t do, but the news was getting around, and someone said, ‘Right, let’s have a king we can control. All the rumors say the king is a humble Watchman so let’s find one.’ And they had a look and found that when it comes to ‘humble’ you can’t beat Nobby Nobbs. But…I think people weren’t too sure. Killing Vetinari wasn’t an option. As I said, too many things would happen too fast. But to just gently remove him, so that he’s there and not there at the same time, while everyone tried out the idea…that was a good wheeze. That’s when someone got Mr. Carry to make poisoned candles. He’d got a golem. Golems can’t talk. No one would know. But it turned out to be a bit…erratic.”

  “You seem to wish to involve me,” said Dragon King of Arms. “I know nothing about this man other than that he’s a customer—”

  Vimes strode across the room and pulled a piece of parchment from a board. “You did him a coat of arms!” he shouted. “You even showed me when I was here! ‘The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker!’ Remember?”

  There was no sound now from the hunched figure.

  “When I first met you the other day,” said Vimes, “you made a point of showing me Arthur Carry’s coat of arms. I thought it was a bit fishy at the time, but all that business with Nobby put it out of my mind. But I do remember it reminded me of the one for the Assassins’ Guild.”

  Vimes flourished the parchment.

  “I looked and looked at it last night, and then I wound my sense of humor down ten notches and let it go out of focus and looked at the crest, the fish-shaped lamp. Lampe au poisson, it’s called. A sort of bilingual play on words, perhaps? ‘A lamp of poison?’ You’ve got to have a mind like old Detritus to spot that one. And Fred Colon wondered why you’d left the motto in modern Ankhian instead of putting it into the old language, and that made me wonder so I sat up with the dictionary and worked it out and, you know, it would have read ‘Ars Enixa Est Candelam. Ars Enixa.’ That must have really cheered you up. You’d said who did it and how it was done and gave it to the poor bugger to be proud of. It didn’t matter that no one else would spot it. It made you feel good. Because we ordinary mortals just aren’t as clever as you, are we?” He shook his head. “Good grief, a coat of arms. Was that the bribe? Was that all it took?”

  Dragon slumped in his chair.

  “And then I wondered what was in it for you,” continued Vimes. “Oh, there’s a lot of people involved, I expect, for the same old reasons. But you? Now, my wife breeds dragons. Out of interest, really. Is that what you do? A little hobby to allow the centuries to fly by? Or does blue blood taste sweeter? Y’know, I hope it was some reason like that. Some decent mad selfish one.”

  “Possibly—if someone were so inclined, and I certainly make no such admission, ah-ha—they might simply be thinking of improving the race,” said the shape in the shadows.

  “Breeding for receding chins or bunny teeth, that sort of thing?” said Vimes. “Yes, I can see where it’d be more straightforward if you had the whole king business. All those courtly balls. All those little arrangements which see to it that the right kind of gal meets only the right kind of boy. You’ve had hundreds of years, right? And everyone consults you. You know where all the family trees are planted. But it’s all got a bit messy under Vetinari, hasn’t it? All the wrong people are getting to the top. I know how Sybil curses when people leave the pen gates open: it really messes up her breeding program.”

  “You are wrong about Captain Carrot, ah-ha. The city knows how to work around…difficult kings. But would it want a future king who might really be called Rex?”

  Vimes looked blank. There was a sigh from the shadows. “I am, ah-ha, referring to his apparently stable relationship with the werewolf.”

  Vimes stared. Understanding eventually dawned. “You think they’d have puppies?”

  “The genetics of werewolves are not straightforward, ah-ha, but the chance of such an outcome woul
d be considered unacceptable. If someone were thinking on those lines.”

  “By gods, and that’s it?”

  The shadows were changing. Dragon was still slumped in his chair, but his outline seemed to be blurring.

  “Whatever the, ah-ha, motives, Mr. Vimes, there is no evidence other than supposition and coincidence and your will to believe that links me with any attempt on Vetinari’s, ah-ha, life…”

  The old vampire’s head was sunk even further in his chest. The shadows of his shoulders seemed to be getting longer.

  “It was sick, involving the golems,” said Vimes, watching the shadows. “They could feel what their ‘king’ was doing. Perhaps it wasn’t very sane even to begin with, but it was all they had. Clay of their clay. The poor devils didn’t have anything except their clay, and you bastards took away even that—”

  Dragon leapt suddenly, bat-wings unfolding. Vimes’s wooden bolt clattered somewhere near the ceiling as he was borne down.

  “You really thought you could arrest me with a piece of wood?” said Dragon, his hand around Vimes’s neck.

  “No,” Vimes croaked. “I was more…poetic…than that. All I had…to do…was keep you talking. Feeling…weak, are you? The biter bit…you might say…?” He grinned.

  The vampire looked puzzled, and then turned his head and stared at the candles. “You…put something in the candles? Really?”

  “We…knew garlic…would smell but…our alchemist reckoned that…if you get…holy water…soak the wicks…water evaporates…just leaves holiness.”

  The pressure was released. Dragon King of Arms sat back on his haunches. His face had changed, shaping itself forward, giving him an expression like a fox.

  Then he shook his head. “No,” he said, and this time it was his turn to grin. “No, that’s just words. That wouldn’t work…”

  “Bet…your…unlife?” rasped Vimes, rubbing his neck. “A better way…than old Carry went, eh?”

  “Trying to trick me into an admission, Mr. Vimes?”

  “Oh, I had that,” said Vimes. “When you looked straight at the candles.”

  “Really? Ah-ah. But who else saw me?” said Dragon.