“Why’ve you got a dress on, Nobby?”
“It’s hush hush, Duncan.”
“Ah, right.” Duncan shifted uneasily. “You couldn’t spare me a bob or two, could you, Nobby? I ain’t eaten for two days.”
Small coins gleamed in the dark.
“Now push off,” said Corporal Nobbs.
“Thanks, Nobby. You got any unsolved crimes, you know where to find me.”
Duncan lurched off into the night.
Sergeant Angua appeared behind Nobby, buckling on her breastplate.
“Poor old devil,” she said.
“He was a good thief in his day,” said Nobby, taking a notebook out of his handbag and jotting down a few lines.
“Kind of you to help him,” said Angua.
“Well, I can get the money back out of petty cash,” said Nobby. “An’ now we know who did the bullion job, don’t we. That’ll be a feather in my cap with Mister Vimes.”
“Bonnet, Nobby.”
“What?”
“Your bonnet, Nobby. It’s got a rather fetching band of flowers around it.”
“Oh…yeah…”
“It’s not that I’m complaining,” said Angua, “but when we were assigned this job I thought it was me who was going to be the decoy and you who was going to be the backup, Nobby.”
“Yeah, but what with you bein’…” Nobby’s expression creased as he edged his way into unfamiliar linguistic territory, “…mor…phor…log…ic…ally gifted…”
“A werewolf, Nobby. I know the word.”
“Right…well, obviously, you’d be a lot better at lurkin’, an’…an’ obviously it’s not right, women havin’ to act as decoys in police work…”
Angua hesitated, as she so often did when attempting to talk to Nobby on difficult matters, and waved her hands in front of her as if trying to shape the invisible dough of her thoughts.
“It’s just that…I mean, people might…” she began. “I mean…well, you know what people call men who wear wigs and gowns, don’t you?”
“Yes, miss.”
“You do?”
“Yes, miss. Lawyers, miss.”
“Good. Yes. Good,” said Angua slowly. “Now try another one…”
“Er…actors, miss?”
Angua gave up. “You look good in taffeta, Nobby,” she said.
“You don’t think it makes me look too fat?”
Angua sniffed.
“Oh no…” she said, quietly.
“I thought I’d better put scent on for verysillymitude,” said Nobby quickly.
“What? Oh…” Angua shook her head, took another breath. “I can smell…some…thing…else…”
“That’s surprising, ’cos this stuff’s a bit on the pungent side and frankly I don’t think lily of the valley is supposed to smell like this…”
“…it’s not perfume…”
“…but the lavender stuff they had you could clean brass with…”
“Can you get back to the Chitterling station by yourself, Nobby?” said Angua. Despite her rising panic, she mentally added: After all, what could happen? I mean, really?
“Yes, miss.”
“There’s something I’d better…sort out…”
Angua hurried away, the new scent filling her nostrils. It would have to be powerful to combat Eau de Nobbs, and it was. Oh, it was.
Not here, she thought. Not now.
Not him.
The running man swung along a branch wet with snow, and managed at last to lower himself onto a branch belonging to the next tree. That took him a long way from the stream. How good was their sense of smell? Pretty damn good, he knew. But this good?
He’d gotten out of the stream onto another overhanging branch. If they followed the banks, and they’d be bright enough to do that, they’d surely never know he’d left the stream.
There was a howl, away to the left.
He headed right, into the gloom of the forest.
Vimes heard Carrot scrabble around in the gloom, and the sound of a key in the lock.
“I thought the Campaign for Equal Heights was running this place now,” he said.
“It’s so hard to find volunteers,” said Carrot, ushering him through the low door and lighting a candle. “I come in every day just to keep an eye on things, but no one else seems very interested.”
“I can’t imagine why,” said Vimes, looking around the Dwarf Bread Museum.
The one positive thing you could say about the bread products around him was that they were probably as edible now as they were on the day they were baked. “Forged” was a better term. Dwarf bread was made as a meal of last resort and also as a weapon and a currency. Dwarfs were not, as far as Vimes knew, religious in any way, but the way they thought about bread came close.
There was a tinkle and a scrabbling noise somewhere in the gloom.
“Rats,” said Carrot. “They never stop trying to eat dwarf bread, poor things…Ah, here we are. The Scone of Stone. A replica, of course.”
Vimes stared at the misshaped thing on its dusty display stand. It was vaguely sconelike, but only if someone pointed this out to you beforehand. Otherwise, the term “a lump of rock” was pretty accurate. It was about the size, and shape, of a well sat-on cushion. There were a few fossilized currants visible.
“My wife rests her feet on something like that when she’s had a long day,” he said.
“It’s fifteen hundred years old,” said Carrot, with something like awe in his voice.
“I thought this was the replica.”
“Well, yes…but it’s a replica of a very important thing, sir,” said Carrot.
Vimes sniffed. The air had a certain pungent quality.
“Smells strongly of cats in here, doesn’t it?”
“I’m afraid they get in after the rats, sir. A rat who’s nibbled on dwarf bread tends not to be able to run very fast.”
Vimes lit a cigar. Carrot gave it a look of uncertain disapproval.
“We do thank people for not smoking in here, sir,” he said.
“Why? You don’t know they’re not going to,” said Vimes. He leaned against the display cabinet. “All right, Captain. Why am I really going to…Bonk? I don’t know a lot about diplomacy, but I do know it’s never just about one thing. What’s the Low King? Why’re our dwarfs scrapping?”
“Well, sir…have you heard of kruk?”
“Dwarf mining law?” said Vimes.
“Well done, sir. But it’s a lot more than that. It’s about…how you live. Laws of ownership, marriage laws, inheritance, rules for dealing with disputes of all kinds, that sort of thing. Everything, really. And the Low King…well, you could call him the final court of appeal. He’s advised, of course, but he’s got the last word. Still with me?”
“Makes sense so far.”
“And he is crowned on the Scone of Stone and sits on it to give his judgments because all the Low Kings have done that ever since B’hrian Bloodaxe, fifteen hundred years ago. It…gives authority.”
Vimes nodded, dourly. That made sense, too. You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was “but we’ve always done it this way.” A million dead people can’t have been wrong, can they?
“Does he get elected, or born or what?” he said.
“I suppose you could say he’s elected,” said Carrot. “But really a lot of senior dwarfs arrange it among themselves. After listening to other dwarfs, of course. Taking soundings, it’s called. Traditionally he’s from one of the big families. But…er…”
“Yes?”
“Things are a little different this year. Tempers are a bit…stretched.”
Ah, thought Vimes.
“Wrong dwarf won?” he said.
“Some dwarfs would say so. But it’s more that the whole process has been called into question,” said Carrot. “By the dwarfs in the biggest dwarf city outside Uberwald.”
“Don’t tell me, that must be that place hubward of—”
&nb
sp; “It’s Ankh-Morpork, sir.”
“What? We’re not a dwarf city!”
“Fifty thousand dwarfs now, sir.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
Of course he is, Vimes thought. He probably knows them all by name.
“You have to understand, sir, that there’s a sort of big debate going on,” said Carrot. “On how you define a dwarf.”
“Well, some people might say that they’re called dwarfs because—”
“No, sir. Not size. Nobby Nobbs is shorter than many dwarfs, and we don’t call him a dwarf.”
“We don’t call him a human, either,” said Vimes.
“And, of course, I am also a dwarf.”
“You know, Carrot, I keep meaning to talk to you about that—”
“Adopted by dwarfs, brought up by dwarfs…to dwarfs, I’m a dwarf, sir. I can do the rite of k’zakra, I know the secrets of h’ragna, I can ha’lk my g’rakha correctly…I am a dwarf.”
“What do those things mean?”
“I’m not allowed to tell non-dwarfs.” Carrot tactfully tried to stand out of the way of the cigar smoke. “Unfortunately, some of the mountain dwarfs think that dwarfs who have moved away aren’t proper dwarfs, either. But this time, the kingship has been swung by the views of the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs, and a lot of dwarfs back home don’t like it. There’s been a lot of bad feeling all round. Families falling out, that sort of thing. Much pulling of beards.”
“Really?” Vimes tried not to smile.
“It’s not funny if you’re a dwarf.”
“Sorry.”
“And I’m afraid this new Low King is only going to make matters worse, although of course I wish him well.”
“Tough, is he?”
“Er…I think you can assume, sir, that any dwarf who rises sufficiently in dwarf society to even be considered as a candidate for the kingship did not get there by singing the hi-ho song and bandaging wounded animals in the forest. But by dwarf standards, King Rhys Rhysson is a modern thinker, although I hear he doesn’t like Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Sounds like a very clear thinker, too.”
“Anyway, this has upset a lot of the more, er, traditional mountain dwarfs who thought the next king would be Albrecht Albrechtson.”
“Who is not a modern thinker?”
“He thinks even coming up above ground is dangerously non-dwarfish.”
Vimes sighed. “Well, I can see there’s a problem, Carrot, but the thing about this problem, the key point, is that it’s not mine. Or yours, dwarf or not.” He tapped the Scone’s case.
“Replica, eh?” he said. “Sure it’s not the real one?”
“Sir! There is only one real Scone. We call it the ‘thing and the whole of the thing.’”
“Well, if it’s a good replica, who’d know?”
“Any dwarf would, sir.”
“Only joking.”
There was a hamlet down there, where two rivers met. There would be boats.
This was working. The slopes behind him were white and free of dark shapes. No matter how good they were, let them try to outswim a boat…
Hard-packed snow crunched under his feet. He staggered past the few rough hovels, saw the jetty, saw the boats, fought with the frozen rope that moored the nearest one, grabbed an oar and pushed himself out into the current.
There was still no movement on the hills.
Now, at last, he could take stock. It was a bigger boat than one man could handle, but all he had to do was fend off the banks. That’d do for tonight. In the morning he could leave it somewhere, perhaps ask someone to get a message through to the tower, and then he’d buy a horse and…
Behind him, under the tarpaulin in the bows, something started to growl.
They really were very clever.
In a castle not far away, the vampire Lady Margolotta sat quietly, leafing through Twurp’s Peerage.
It wasn’t a very good reference book for the countries on this side of the Ramtops, where the standard work was The Almanac de Gothick, in which she herself occupied almost four pages,* but if you needed to know who thought they were who in Ankh-Morpork it was invaluable.
Her copy was now bristling with bookmarks. She sighed and pushed it away.
Beside her was a fluted glass containing a red liquid. She took a sip, and made a face. Then she stared at the candlelight, and tried to think like Lord Vetinari.
How much did he suspect? How much news got back? The clacks tower had only been up for a month, and was being roundly denounced throughout Bonk as an intrusion. But it seemed to be doing a good if stealthy local traffic.
Who would he send?
His choice would tell her everything, she was sure. Someone like Lord Rust or Lord Selachii…well, she’d think a lot less of him if he sent someone like those. All that she had heard, and Lady Margolotta heard a lot of things, the Ankh-Morpork diplomatic corps as a whole could not find its backside with a map. Of course, it was good business for a diplomat to appear stupid, right up to the moment when he’d stolen your socks, but Lady Margolotta had met some of Ankh-Morpork’s finest and no one could act that well.
The growing howling outside began to get on her nerves. She rang for her butler.
“Yeth, mithtreth?” said Igor, materializing out of the shadows.
“Go and tell the children of the night to make wonderful music somewhere else, will you? I have a headache.”
“Indeed, mithtreth.”
Lady Margolotta yawned. It had been a long night. She’d think better after a good day’s sleep.
As she went to blow out the candle, she glanced at the book again. There was a marker in the Vs.
But…surely even the Patrician couldn’t know that much…
She hesitated, and then pulled the bellpull above the coffin. Igor reappeared, in the way of Igors.
“Those keen young men at the clacks tower will be awake, won’t they?”
“Yeth, mithtreth.”
“Send a clacks to our agent asking for everything about Commander Vimes of the Watch, will you?”
“Ith he a diplomat, mithtreth?”
Lady Margolotta lay back. “No, Igor. He’s the reason for diplomats. Close the lid, will you?”
Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases, such as “and they can deliver it tomorrow” or “so I’ve invited them for dinner” or “they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply.”
Lady Sybil was aware of this. Sam could coherently carry on an entire conversation while thinking about something completely different.
“I will tell Willikins to pack winter clothes,” she said, watching him. “It’ll be pretty cold up there at this time of year.”
“Yes. That’s a good idea.” Vimes continued to stare at a point just above the fireplace.
“We’ll have to host a party ourselves, I expect, so we ought to take a cartload of typical Ankh-Morpork food. Show the flag, you know. Do you think I should take a cook along?”
“Yes, dear. That would be a good idea. No one outside the city knows how to make a knuckle sandwich properly.”
Sybil was impressed. Ears operating entirely on automatic had nevertheless triggered the mouth into making a small but coherent contribution.
She said, “Do you think we ought to take the alligator with us?”
“Yes, that might be advisable.”
She watched his face. Small furrows formed on Vimes’s brow as the ears nudged the brain. He blinked.
“What alligator?”
“You were miles away, Sam. In Uberwald, I expect.”
“Sorry.”
“Is ther
e a problem?”
“Why’s he sending me, Sybil?”
“I’m sure Havelock shares with me a conviction that you have hidden depths, Sam.”
Vimes sank gloomily into his armchair. It was, he felt, a persistent flaw in his wife’s otherwise practical and sensible character that she believed, against all evidence, that he was a man of many talents. He knew he had hidden depths. There was nothing in them that he’d like to see float to the surface. They contained things that should be left to lie.
There was also a nagging worry that he couldn’t quite pin down. Had he been able to, he might have expressed it like this: Policemen didn’t go on holiday. Where you got policemen, as Lord Vetinari was wont to remark, you got crime. So if he went to Bonk, however you pronounced the damn place, there would be a crime. It was something the world always laid on for policemen.
“It’ll be nice to see Serafine again,” said Sybil.
“Yes, indeed,” said Vimes.
In Bonk he would not, officially, be a policeman. He did not like this at all. He liked this even less than all the other things.
On the few occasions he’d been outside Ankh-Morpork and its surrounding fiefdom he’d either been going to other local cities where the Ankh-Morpork badge carried some weight, or he had been in hot pursuit, that most ancient and honorable of police procedures. From the way Carrot talked, in Bonk his badge would merely figure as extra roughage on someone’s menu.
His brow wrinkled again.
“Serafine?”
“Lady Serafine von Uberwald,” said Sybil. “Sergeant Angua’s mother? You remember me telling you last year? We were at finishing school together. Of course, we all knew she was a werewolf, but nobody would ever dream of talking about that sort of thing in those days. Well, you just didn’t. There was all that business over the ski instructor, of course, but I’m certain in my own mind that he must have fallen down some crevasse or other. She married the baron, and they live just outside Beyonk. I write to her with a little news every Hogswatch. A very old werewolf family.”
“A good pedigree,” said Vimes, absently.
“You know you wouldn’t like Angua to hear you say that, Sam. Don’t worry so. You’ll have a chance to relax, I’m sure. It will be good for you.”