Thud!

  “But it’s pretty much a 24/8 job for us.” said Angua, “There’s always—”

  “You mean it is for him, because he likes it that way, and so you go along with it?” said the vampire, and that one got through all Angua’s defenses.

  “It’s my life! Why should I listen to advice from a vampire?”

  “Because you’re a werewolf,” said Sally. “Only a vampire would dare to give it, right? You don’t have to be at his heel all the time.”

  “Look, I’ve been through all this, understand? It’s a werewolf thing. We are what we are!”

  “I’m not. You don’t get the black ribbon just for signing the pledge, you know. And it doesn’t mean you stop craving blood. You just don’t do anything about it. At least you can go out at night and chase chickens.”

  There was a stony silence. Then Angua said: “You know about the chickens?”

  “Yes.”

  “I pay for them, you know.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “And it’s not as though it’s every night.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. Look, do you know there are people out there who will volunteer to be a vampire’s…dinner companion? Providing it’s all done with style? And we are considered weird?” She sniffed. “By the way, what did you wash your hair in?”

  “Willard Brothers ‘Good Girl!’ Flea Shampoo,” said Angua. “It brings out the gloss,” she added defensively. “Look, I want to get this clear, right? Just because we spent hours wading around under the city, and, okay, maybe saved each other’s lives once or twice, it does not mean we’re friends, okay? We just happened to…be there at the same time!”

  “You do need some time off,” said Sally. “I was going to buy a drink for Tawneee anyway, to say thanks, and Cheery wants to tag along. How about it? We’ve been stood down for now. Time out for a little fun?”

  Angua struggled with a seething snake’s nest of emotions. Tawneee had been very kind, and far more helpful than you might expect from someone wearing six inches of heel and four square inches of clothing.

  “Come on,” said Sally encouragingly. “I don’t know about you, but it’s going to take a bit of effort to get the taste of that mud out of my mouth.”

  “Oh, all right! But this doesn’t mean we’re bonding!”

  “Fine. Fine.”

  “I’m not a bondage kind of person,” Angua added.

  “Yes, yes,” said Sally. “I can see that.”

  Vimes sat and stared at his notebook. He’d got “talking cube” written down and circled.

  Out of the corner of his ear, he could hear the sounds of the City Watch rising from below: the bustle in the yard of the Old Lemonade Factory, where the Specials were assembling again, just in case; the rattle of the hurry-up wagon; the general murmur of voices coming up through the floor…

  After some thinking, he wrote “old well” and circled that, too.

  He’d scrumped plums in the gardens of Empirical Crescent with all the other kids. Half the houses were empty, and no one cared much. Yes, there had been a well, but it had long been full up to the top with garbage, even then. Grass was growing on the top. They only found the bricks because they looked for them.

  So, let’s say that anything buried right at the bottom, where the dwarfs had headed, had been dumped, oh, more than fifty, sixty years ago…

  You seldom saw a dwarf in Ankh-Morpork even forty years ago, and they weren’t anything like rich or powerful enough to own a cube. They were hard workers, seeking—just possibly—a better life. So, what human would throw away a talking box worth a mountain of gold? He’d have to be bloody mad—

  Vimes sat rigidly, staring at the scrawls on the page. In the distance, Detritus was barking a command at someone.

  He felt like a man crossing a river on stepping-stones. He was nearly halfway across, but the next stone was just a bit too far and could only be reached with serious groinal stress. Nevertheless, his foot was waving in the air, and it was that or a soaking…

  He wrote: “Rascal.” Then he circled the word several times, the pencil biting into the cheap paper.

  Rascal must have been to Koom Valley. Let’s say he found a cube there, who knows how. Just lying there? Anyway, he brings it home. He paints his picture and goes mad, but somewhere along, the cube starts talking to him.

  Vimes wrote “SPECIAL WORD?” He drew a circle around it so hard that his pencil broke.

  Maybe he can’t find the word for “stop talking”? Anyway, he chucks it down a well…

  He tried to write “Did Rascal ever live in Empirical Crescent?,” and then gave up and tried to remember it.

  Anyway…then he dies and, afterwards, this damn book is written. It doesn’t sell many copies, but recently it’s republished and…ah, but now there’re lots of dwarfs in the city. Some of them read it, and something tells them that the secret is in this cube. They want to find out where it is. How? Damn. Doesn’t the book say the secret of Koom Valley is in the painting? Okay. Maybe he…somehow painted some kind of code into the painting to say where the cube was? But so what? What was so bad to hear that you killed the poor devils who heard it?

  I think I’m looking at this wrong. It’s not my cow. It’s a sheep with a pitchfork. Unfortunately, it goes quack.

  He was getting lost now, going all over the place, but he’d got a toe on the opposite stone and he felt he made some progress. But to what, exactly?

  I mean, what would really happen if there was real proof that, say, the dwarfs ambushed the trolls? Nothing that isn’t happening already, that’s what. You can always find an excuse that your side will accept, and who cares what the enemy thinks? In the real world, it wouldn’t make any difference.

  There was a very faint knock at the door, the sort that you use if you secretly hope it won’t be answered. Vimes sprang from his chair and pulled it open.

  A. E. Pessimal stood there.

  “Ah, A. E.,” said Vimes, going back to his desk and laying down his pencil. “Come on in. What can I do for you? How’s the arm?”

  “Er…could you spare a moment of your time, Your Grace?”

  Your Grace, thought Vimes. Well, he hadn’t the heart to object, this time.

  He sat down again. A. E. Pessimal was still wearing the chain-mail shirt with the Specials badge on it. He didn’t look very shiny. Brick’s swipe had bowled him across the plaza like a ball.

  “Er…” A. E. Pessimal began.

  “You’ll have to start as a lance constable, but a man of your talents ought to make it to sergeant within a year. And you can have your own office,” said Vimes.

  A. E. Pessimal shut his eyes. “How did you know?” he breathed.

  “You attacked a boozed-up troll with your teeth,” said Vimes. “‘There’s a man born for the badge,’ I thought to myself.”

  And that’s what you’ve always wanted, right? But you were always too small, too weak, too shy to be a watchman. I can buy big and strong anywhere. Right now I need a man who knows how to hold a pencil without breaking it.

  “You’ll be my adjutant,” he went on. “You’ll handle all my paperwork. You’ll read the reports, you’ll try to figure out what’s important. And so you can learn what is important, you’ll have to do at least two patrols a week.”

  A tear was running down A. E. Pessimal’s cheek. “Thank you, Your Grace,” he said hoarsely.

  If A. E. Pessimal had enough chest to stick out, it would be sticking.

  “Of course, you’ll need to finish your report on the Watch first,” Vimes added. “That is a matter between you and his lordship. And now, if you will excuse me, I really must get on. I look forward to seeing you working for me, Lance Constable Pessimal.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace!”

  “Oh, and you won’t call me ‘Your Grace,’ ” said Vimes. He thought for a moment, and decided that the man had earned this, all in one go, and added: “ ‘Mister Vimes’ will do.”

  And so we make progress, he said to hi
mself, after A. E. Pessimal had floated away. And his lordship won’t like it, so, as far as I can see, there’s no downside. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, er, qui custodes custodient? Was that right for “Who watches the watcher that watches the watchmen”? Probably not. Still…your move, my lord.

  He was just puzzling over his notebook again when the door opened without an introductory knock.

  Sybil entered, with a plate.

  “You’re not eating enough, Sam,” she announced. “And the canteen here is a disgrace. It’s all grease and garbage!”

  “That’s what the men like, I’m afraid,” said Vimes guiltily.

  “I’ve cleaned out the tar in the tea urn, at least,” Sybil went on, with satisfaction.

  “You cleaned out the tea urn?” said Vimes in a hollow voice. It was like being told that someone had wiped the patina off a fine old work of art.

  “Yes, it was like tar in there. There really wasn’t much proper food in the store, but I managed to make you a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.”

  “Thank you, dear.” Vimes cautiously lifted a corner of the bread with his broken pencil. There seemed to be too much lettuce, which was to say, there was some lettuce.

  “There’s a lot of dwarfs come to see you, Sam,” said Sibyl, as if this was preying on her mind.

  Vimes stood up so fast that his chair fell over.

  “Is Young Sam all right?” he said.

  “Yes, Sam. They’re city dwarfs. You know them all, I think. They say they want to talk to you about—”

  But Vimes was already clattering down the stairs, drawing his sword as he did so.

  The dwarfs were clustered nervously by the duty sergeant’s desk. They had that opulence of metalwork, sleekness of beard, and thickness of girth that marked them out as dwarfs who were doing very well for themselves, or who had been right up until now.

  Vimes appeared in front of them like a whirlwind of wrath.

  You scum, you rat-sucking little worm-eaters! You heads-down little scurriers in the dark! What did you bring to my city? What were you thinking? Did you want the deep-downers here? Did you dare deplore what Hamcrusher said, all that bile and ancient lies? Or did you say, “Well, I don’t agree with him, of course, but he’s got a point”? Did you say, “Oh, he goes too far, but it’s about time somebody said it”? And now have you come here to wring your hands and say how dreadful, it was nothing to do with you? Who were the dwarfs in the mobs, then? Aren’t you community leaders? Were you leading them? And why are you here now, you ugly, sniveling grubbers? Is it possible, is it possible, that now, after that bastard’s bodyguards tried to kill my family, you’re here to complain? Have I broken some code, trodden on some ancient toe? To hell with it. To hell with you.

  He could feel the words straining, fighting to get out, and the effort of restraining them filled his stomach with acid and made his temples throb. Just one whine, he thought. Just one pompous moan. Go on.

  “Well?” he demanded, rubbing his aching hand.

  The dwarfs have perceptibly moved backwards. Vimes wondered if they’d read his thoughts; they’d echoed in his brain loudly enough.

  A dwarf cleared his throat. “Commander Vimes—” he began.

  “You’re Pors Strongingthearm, aren’t you?” Vimes demanded. “One half of Burleigh & Stronginthearm? You make crossbows.”

  “Yes, Commander, and—”

  “Remove your weapons! All of them! All of you!” Vimes snapped.

  The room fell silent. Out of the corner of his eye, Vimes saw a couple of dwarf officers, who had at least been pretending to be engaged in paperwork, rising from their seats.

  He was being dangerously stupid, part of him knew, but right now he wanted to hurt a dwarf and he wasn’t allowed to do it with steel. Most of the battle stuff they wore was simply for clang in any case, but a dwarf would sooner drop his drawers than put aside his axe. And these were serious city dwarfs, with seats in the guilds and everything. Ye gods, he was going too far.

  He managed to grunt: “All right, keep your battle-axes. Leave everything else at the desk. You’ll get a receipt.”

  For a moment, quite a long moment, he thought, no, he hoped they would refuse. But one of them, somewhere in the group, said: “I think we must do this for the commander. These are difficult times. We must learn to fit them.”

  Vimes went up to his office, hearing the clinks and clangs behind him, and landed so violently in his chair that this time a wheel snapped off. The receipt was a nasty touch. He was quite pleased with it.

  On his desk, on a little stand that Sybil had made for it, was his official baton of office. It was, in fact, the same size as the ordinary coppers’ truncheons, but turned out of rosewood and silver instead of lignum vitae or oak. It still had plenty of weight, though. Certainly enough to leave the words Protecter of thee Kinge’s Piece printed back to front on a dwarf skull.

  The dwarfs were ushered in, looking slightly less heavy.

  Just one word, Vimes thought as the acid swirled. One damn word. Go on. Just breathe wrong.

  “Very well, what can I do for you?” he said.

  “Uh, I’m sure you know all of us,” Pors began, trying to smile.

  “Probably. The dwarf next to you is Grabpot Thundergust, who has just launched the new Ladies’ Secrets range of perfumes and cosmetics. My wife uses your stuff all the time.”

  Thundergust, in traditional chain mail, a three-horned helmet, and with an enormous axe strapped across his back, gave Vimes an embarrassed nod. Vimes’s gaze moved on.

  “And you are Setha Ironcrust, proprietor of the chain of bakeries of the same name, and you are surely Gimlet Gimlet, owner of two famous dwarf delicatessens and the newly opened Yo Rat! in Attic Bee Street.” Vimes looked around the office, dwarf after dwarf, until he got back to the front row and a dwarf of fairly modest dress by dwarf standards, who had been watching him intently. Vimes had a good memory for faces, and had seen this one recently, but couldn’t place it. Perhaps it had been behind a well-flung halfbrick…

  “You, I don’t think I know,” he said.

  “Oh, we haven’t exactly been introduced, Commander,” said the dwarf cheerfully. “But I’m very interested in the theory of games.”

  …or Mr. Shine’s Thud Academy? Vimes thought. The dwarf’s voice sounded like the one that had, he’d admit it, been of diplomatic help downstairs. He wore a simple, plain, round helmet, a plain leather shirt with some basic mail on it, and his beard was clipped to something tidier than the general dwarfish gorse-bush effect. Compared to the other dwarfs, this one looked…streamlined. Vimes couldn’t even see an axe.

  “Indeed?” he said. “Well, in fact, I don’t play ’em, so what’s your name?”

  “Bashfull Bashfullsson, Commander. Grag Bashfullsson.”

  Quietly, Vimes picked up his truncheon and rolled it in his fingers.

  “Not underground, then?” he said.

  “Some of us move on, sir. Some of us think that darkness isn’t a depth, it’s a state of mind.”

  “That’s nice of you,” said Vimes. Oh, friendly and forward-looking, are we now? Where were you yesterday? But now I’ve got all the aces! Those bastards murdered four city dwarfs! They broke into my home, tried to kill my wife! And now they’ve had it away on their toes! Wherever they’ve gone, they’re going dow—coming up!

  He put the truncheon back on its stand. “As I said, what can I do for you…gentlemen?”

  He got the sense that they were all turning, physically or mentally, to Bashfullsson. I see, he thought, it seems that what we have here is a dozen monkeys and one organ grinder, eh?

  “How can we help you, Commander?” said the grag.

  Vimes stared. You could have stopped them, that’s how you could have helped. Don’t give me those somber faces. Maybe you didn’t say “yes” but you sure as hell didn’t say “no!” loud enough. I owe you not one damned thing. Don’t come to me for your bloody absolution.

  “Right now?
By going out into the street, walking up to the biggest troll you can see, and shaking him warmly by the hand, maybe?” said Vimes. “Or just going out into the street. Quite frankly, I’m busy, gentlemen, and the middle of a horse race is not the time to be mending fences.”

  “They’ll be heading for the mountains,” said Bashfullsson. “They’ll steer clear of Uberwald and Lancre. They won’t be sure of meeting friends there. That means going into the mountains via Llamedos. Lots of caves there.”

  Vimes shrugged.

  “We can see you’re annoyed, Mister Vimes,” said Stronginthearm. “But we—”

  “I’ve got two dead assassins in the morgue,” said Vimes. “One of ’em died of poison. What do you know about that? And I’m Commander Vimes, thank you.”

  “It’s said they take a slow poison before they go on an important mission,” said Bashfullsson.

  “No turning back, eh?” said Vimes. “Well, that’s interesting. But it’s the living that concern me right now.” He stood up. “I have to go and see a dwarf in the cells who does not want to talk to me.”

  “Ah, yes. That would be Helmclever,” said Bashfullsson. “He was born here, Commander, but went off to study the mountains more than three months ago, against his parents’ wishes. I’m sure he never intended anything like this. He was trying to find himself.”

  “Well, he can start looking in my cells,” said Vimes crisply.

  “May I be there when you question him?” said the grag.

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, it may prevent rumors that he was mistreated.”

  “Or start them?” said Vimes. Who watches the watchmen? he asked himself. Me!

  Bashfullsson gave him a cool look. “It could…calm the situation, sir.”

  “I don’t habitually beat up prisoners, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” said Vimes.

  “And I am sure you would not wish to do so tonight.”

  Vimes opened his mouth to shout the grag out of the building, and stopped.

  Because the cheeky little sod had got it right slap-bang on the money. Vimes had been on the edge since leaving the house. He’d felt a tingling across his skin, and a tightness in his gut, and a sharp, nasty little headache. Someone was going to pay for all this…this…this thisness, and it didn’t need to be a screwed-up bit player like Helmclever.