Carrot ran a few steps after the figure, and then stopped and came back.
“Why do you hate them so much?” he said.
“You wouldn’t understand. I really think you wouldn’t understand,” said Angua. “It’s an…undead thing. They…sort of throw in your face the fact you’re not human.”
“But you are human!”
“Three weeks out of four. Can’t you understand that, when you have to be careful all the time, it’s dreadful to see things like that being accepted? They’re not even alive. But they can walk around and they never get people passing remarks about silver or garlic…up until now, anyway. They’re just machines for doing work!”
“That’s how they’re treated, certainly,” said Carrot.
“You’re being reasonable again!” snapped Angua. “You’re deliberately seeing everyone’s point of view! Can’t you try to be unfair even once?”
Nobby had been left alone for a moment while the party buzzed around him, so he’d elbowed some waiters away from the buffet and was currently scraping out a bowl with his knife.
“Ah, Lord de Nobbes,” said a voice behind him.
He turned. “Wotcha,” he said, licking the knife and wiping it on the tablecloth.
“Are you busy, my lord?”
“Just making meself this meat-paste sandwich,” said Nobby.
“That’s pâté de foie gras, my lord.”
“’S that what it’s called? It doesn’t have the kick of Clammer’s Beefymite Spread, I know that. Want a quail’s egg? They’re a bit small.”
“No, thank you—”
“There’s loads of them,” said Nobby generously. “They’re free. You don’t have to pay.”
“Even so—”
“I can get six in my mouth at once. Watch—”
“Amazing, my lord. I was wondering, however, whether you would care to join a few of us in the smoking-room?”
“Fghmf? Mfgmf fgmf mgghjf?”
“Indeed.” A friendly arm was put around Nobby’s shoulders and he was adroitly piloted away from the buffet, but not before he had grabbed a plate of chicken legs. “So many people want to talk to you…”
“Mgffmph?”
Sergeant Colon tried to clean himself up, but trying to clean yourself up with water from the Ankh was a difficult maneuver. The best you could hope for was an allover gray.
Fred Colon hadn’t reached Vimes’s level of sophisticated despair. Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage.
Why had he been tied up with string? There were still loops of it around his arms and legs.
“You sure you don’t know where I was?” he said.
“Yez walked into the place,” said Wee Mad Arthur, trotting along beside him. “How come yez don’t know?”
“’Cos it was dark and foggy and I wasn’t paying attention, that’s why. I was just going through the motions.”
“Aha, good one!”
“Don’t mess about. Where was I?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Wee Mad Arthur. “I just hunts under the whole cattle-market area. I don’t bother about what’s up top. Like I said, them runs go everywhere.”
“Anyone along there make string?”
“It’s all animal stuff, I tell yez. Sausages and soap and stuff like that. Is this the bit where yez gives me the money?”
Colon patted his pockets. They squelched.
“You’ll have to come to the Watch House, Wee Mad Arthur.”
“I got a business to run here!”
“I’m swearin’ you in as a Special Watchman for the night,” said Colon.
“What’s the pay?”
“Dollar a night.”
Wee Mad Arthur’s tiny eyes gleamed. They gleamed red.
“Ye gods, you look awful,” said Colon. “What’re you looking at my ear for?”
Wee Mad Arthur said nothing.
Colon turned.
A golem was standing behind him. It was taller than any he’d seen before, and much better proportioned—a human statue rather than the gross shape of the usual golems, and handsome, too, in the cold way of a statue. And its eyes shone like red searchlights.
It raised a fist above its head and opened its mouth. More red light streamed out.
It screamed like a bull.
Wee Mad Arthur kicked Colon on the ankle.
“Are we running or what?” he said.
Colon backed away, still staring at the thing.
“It’s…it’s all right, they can’t move fast…” he muttered. And then his sensible body gave up on his stupid brain and fired up his legs, spinning him around and shoving him in the opposite direction.
He risked looking over his shoulder. The golem was running after him in long, easy strides.
Wee Mad Arthur caught him up.
Colon was used to proceeding gently. He wasn’t built for high speeds, and said so. “And you certainly can’t run faster than that thing!” he wheezed.
“Just so long as I can run faster’n yez,” said Wee Mad Arthur. “This way!”
There was a flight of old wooden stairs against the side of a warehouse. The gnome went up them like the rats he hunted. Colon, panting like a steam engine, followed him.
He stopped half-way up and looked around.
The golem had reached the bottom step. It tested it carefully. The wood creaked and the whole stairway, gray with age, trembled.
“It won’t take the weight!” said Wee Mad Arthur. “The bugger’s gonna smash it up! Yeah!”
The golem took another step. The wood groaned.
Colon got a grip on himself and hurried on up the stairs.
Behind him, the golem seemed to have satisfied itself that the wood could indeed take its weight, and started to leap from step to step. The rails shook under Colon’s hands and the whole structure swayed.
“Come on, will yez?” said Wee Mad Arthur, who had already reached the top. “It’s gaining on yez!”
The golem lunged. The stairs gave way. Colon flung out his hands and grabbed the edge of the roof. Then his body thudded into the side of the building.
There was the distant sound of woodwork hitting cobbles.
“Come on then,” said Wee Mad Arthur. “Pull yourself up, yer silly bugger!”
“Can’t,” said Colon.
“Why not?”
“It’s holding on to my foot…”
“A cigar, your lordship?”
“Brandy, my lord?”
Lord de Nobbes sat back in the comfort of his chair. His feet only just reached the ground. Brandy and cigars, eh? This was the life all right. He took a deep puff at the cigar.
“We were just talking, my lord, about the future governance of the city now that poor Lord Vetinari’s health is so bad…”
Nobby nodded. This was the kind of thing you talked about when you were a nob. This was what he’d been born for.
The brandy was giving him a pleasant warm feeling.
“It would obviously upset the current equilibrium if we looked for a new Patrician at this point,” said another armchair. “What is your view, Lord de Nobbes?”
“Oh, yeah. Right. The guilds’d fight like cats in a sack,” said Nobby. “Everyone knows that.”
“A masterly summary, if I may say so.”
There was a general murmur of agreement from the other chairs.
Nobby grinned. Oh, yes. This was the bee’s pyjamas and no mistake. Hobnobbing with his fellow nobs, talking big talk about important matters instead of having to think up reasons why the tea-money tin was empty…oh, yes.
A chair said, “Besides, are any of the guild leaders up to the task? Oh, they can organize a bunch of tradesmen, but ruling an entire city…I think not. Gentlemen, perhaps it is time for a new directio
n. Perhaps it is time for blood to reveal itself.”
Odd way of putting it, Nobby thought, but clearly this was how you were supposed to speak.
“At a time like this,” said a chair, “the city will surely look at those representatives of its most venerable families. It would be in all our interests if such a one would take up the burden.”
“He’d need his head examined, if you want my opinion,” said Nobby. He took another swig of the brandy and waved the cigar expansively.
“Still, not to worry,” he said. “Everyone knows we’ve got a king hanging around. No problem there. Send for Captain Carrot, that’s my advice.”
Another evening folded over the city in layers of fog.
When Carrot arrived back at the Watch House Corporal Littlebottom made a face at him and indicated, with a flicker of her eyes, the three people sitting grimly on the bench against one wall.
“They want to see an officer!” she hissed. “But S’arnt Colon isn’t back and I knocked on Mister Vimes’s door and I don’t think he’s in.”
Carrot composed his features into a welcoming smile.
“Mrs. Palm,” he said. “And Mr. Boggis…and Dr. Downey. I am so sorry. We’re rather stretched at present, what with the poisoning and this business with the golems—”
The head of the Assassin’s Guild smiled, but only with his mouth. “It’s about the poisoning we wish to speak,” he said. “Is there somewhere a little less public?”
“Well, there’s the canteen,” said Carrot. “It’ll be empty at this time of night. If you’d just step this way…”
“You do well for yourselves here, I must say,” said Mrs. Palm. “A canteen—”
She stopped as she stepped through the door.
“People eat in here?” she said.
“Well, grumble about the coffee, mostly,” said Carrot. “And write their reports. Commander Vimes is keen on reports.”
“Captain Carrot,” said Dr. Downey, firmly, “we have to talk to you on a grave matter concerning—What have I sat in?”
Carrot brushed a chair hurriedly. “Sorry, sir, we don’t seem to have much time to clean up—”
“Leave it for now, leave it for now.”
The head of the Assassins’ Guild leaned forward with his hands pressed together.
“Captain Carrot, we are here to discuss this terrible matter of the poisoning of Lord Vetinari.”
“You really ought to talk to Commander Vimes—”
“I believe that on a number of occasions Commander Vimes has made derogatory comments to you about Lord Vetinari,” said Dr. Downey.
“You mean like ‘He ought to be hung except they can’t find a twisty enough rope’?” said Carrot. “Oh, yes. But everyone does that.”
“Do you?”
“Well, no,” Carrot admitted.
“And I believe he personally took over the investigation of the poisoning?”
“Well, yes. But—”
“Didn’t you think that was odd?”
“No, sir. Not when I thought about it. I think he’s got a sort of soft spot for the Patrician, in his way. He once said that if anyone was going to kill Vetinari he’d like it to be him.”
“Indeed?”
“But he was smiling when he said it. Sort of smiling, anyway.”
“He, er, visits his lordship most days, I believe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I understand that his efforts to discover the poisoner have not reached any conclusions?”
“Not as such, sir,” said Carrot. “We’ve found a lot of ways he’s not being poisoned.”
Downey nodded at the others. “We would like to inspect the Commander’s office,” he said.
“I don’t know if that’s—” Carrot began.
“Please think very carefully,” said Dr. Downey. “We three represent most of the guilds of this city. We feel we have a good reason for inspecting the Commander’s office. You will of course accompany us to see that we do nothing illegal.”
Carrot looked awkward. “I suppose…if I’m with you…” he said.
“That’s right,” said Downey. “That makes it official.”
Carrot led the way. “I don’t even know, if he’s back,” he said, opening the door. “As I said, we’ve been…oh.”
Downey peered around him and at the figure slumped over the desk.
“It would appear that Sir Samuel is in,” he said. “But quite out of it.”
“I can smell the drink from here,” said Mrs. Palm. “It’s terrible what drink will do to a man.”
“A whole bottle of Bearhugger’s finest,” said Mr. Boggis. “All right for some, eh?”
“But he hasn’t touched a drop all year!” said Carrot, giving the recumbent Vimes a shake. “He goes to meetings about it and everything!”
“Now let us see…” said Downey.
He pulled open one of the desk drawers, and held it open.
“Captain Carrot?” he said. “Can you witness that there appears to be a bag of grayish powder in here? I will now—”
Vimes’s hand shot out and slammed the drawer on the man’s fingers. His elbow rammed back into the assassin’s stomach and, as Downey’s chin jerked down, Vimes’ arm swung upwards and caught him full on the nose.
Then Vimes opened his eyes.
“Wassat? Wassat?” he said, raising his head. “Dr. Downey? Mr. Boggis? Carrot? Hmm?”
“Hwat? Hwat?” screamed Downey. “You hns-fruck me!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Vimes, concern radiating from every feature as he pushed the chair back into Downey’s groin and stood up. “I’m afraid I must have dropped off and, of course, when I woke up and found someone stealing from…”
“You’re raving drunk, man!” said Mr. Boggis.
Vimes’s features froze.
“Indeed? Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” he snarled, prodding the man in the chest. “A peck of bloody pickled peppers Peter Piper damn’ well picked. Do you want me to continue?” he said, poking the man until his back was against the wall. “It doesn’t get much better!”
“Hwhat about thif packet?” shouted Downey, clutching his streaming nose with one hand and waving at the desk with the other.
Vimes still wore a wild-eyed mirthless grin. “Ah, well, yes,” he said. “You’ve got me there. A highly dangerous substance.”
“Ah, you admit it!”
“Yes, indeed. I suppose I have no alternative but to dispose of the evidence…” Vimes grabbed the packet, ripped it open and tipped most of the contents into his mouth.
“Mmm mmm,” he said, powder spraying everywhere as he masticated. “Feel that tingle on the tongue!”
“But that’s arsenic,” said Boggis.
“Good gods, is it?” said Vimes, swallowing. “Amazing! I’ve got this dwarf downstairs, you know, clever little bugger, spends all his time with pipes and chemicals and things to find out what is arsenic and what isn’t, and all the time here’s you able to spot it just by looking! I’ve got to hand it to you!”
He dropped the torn packet into Boggis’s hand, but the thief jerked back and the packet tumbled to the floor, spraying its contents.
“Excuse me,” said Carrot. He knelt down and peered at the powder.
It is traditionally the belief of policemen that they can tell what a substance is by sniffing it and then gingerly tasting it, but this practice had ceased in the Watch ever since Constable Flint had dipped his finger into a blackmarket consignment of ammonium chloride cut with radium, said “Yes, this is definitely slab wurble wurble sclup,” and had to spend three days tied to his bed until the spiders went away.
Nevertheless, Carrot said, “I’m sure this isn’t poisonous,” licked his finger and tried a bit.
“It’s sugar,” he said.
Downey, his composure severely compromised, waved a finger at Vimes. “You admitted it was dangerous!” he screamed.
“Right! Take too much of it and see what it does to
your teeth!” bellowed Vimes. “What did you think it was?”
“We had information…” Boggis began.
“Oh, you had information, did you?” said Vimes. “You hear that, Captain? They had information. So that’s all right!”
“We acted in good faith,” said Boggis.
“Let me see,” said Vimes. “Your information was something on the lines of: Vimes is dead-drunk in the Watch House and he’s got a bag of arsenic in his desk? And I’ll just bet you wanted to act in good faith, eh?”
Mrs. Palm cleared her throat. “This has gone far enough. You are correct, Sir Samuel,” she said. “We were all sent a note.” She handed a slip of paper to Vimes. It had been written in capitals. “And I can see we have been misinformed,” she added, glaring at Boggis and Downey. “Do allow me to apologize. Come, gentlemen.”
She swept out of the door. Boggis followed her quickly.
Downey dabbed at his nose. “What’s the guild price on your head, Sir Samuel?” he said.
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
“Really? I think we shall definitely have to upgrade you.”
“Delighted. I shall have to buy a new beartrap.”
“I’ll, er, show you out,” said Carrot.
When he hurried back he found Vimes leaning out of the window and feeling the wall below it.
“Not a brick dislodged,” Vimes muttered. “Not a tile loose…and the front office has been manned all day. Odd, that.”
He shrugged and walked back to his desk, where he picked up the note.
“And I shouldn’t think we’ll be able to find any Clues on this,” he said. “There’s too many greasy fingermarks all over it.” He put down the paper and glared at Carrot. “When we find the man responsible,” he said, “somewhere at the top of the charge sheet is going to be Forcing Commander Vimes To Tip a Whole Bottle of Single Malt on to the Carpet. That’s a hanging offense.” He shuddered. There were some things a man should not have to do.
“It’s disgusting!” said Carrot. “Fancy them even thinking that you’d poison the Patrician!”
“I’m offended that they think I’d be daft enough to keep the poison in my desk drawer,” said Vimes, lighting a cigar.
“Right,” said Carrot. “Did they think you were some kind of fool who’d keep evidence like that where anyone could find it?”