Feet of Clay (2 page)

Hmm. Going thin on top. Definitely a receding scalp there. Less hair to comb but, on the other hand, more face to wash …

There was a flicker in the glass.

He moved sideways and ducked.

The mirror smashed.

There was the sound of feet somewhere beyond the broken window, and then a crash and a scream.

Vimes straightened up. He fished the largest piece of mirror out of the shaving bowl and propped it up on the black crossbow bolt that had buried itself in the wall.

He finished shaving.

Then he rang the bell for the butler. Willikins materialized. ‘Sir?’

Vimes rinsed the razor. ‘Get the boy to nip along to the glazier, will you?’

The butler’s eyes flickered to the window and then to the shattered mirror. ‘Yes, sir. And the bill to go to the Assassins’ Guild again, sir?’

‘With my compliments. And while he’s out he’s to call in at that shop in Five And Seven Yard and get me another shaving mirror. The dwarf there knows the kind I like.’

‘Yes, sir. And I shall fetch a dustpan and brush directly, sir. Shall I inform her ladyship of this eventuality, sir?’

‘No. She always says it’s my fault for encouraging them.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Willikins.

He dematerialized.

Sam Vimes dried himself off and went downstairs to the morning-room, where he opened the cabinet and took out the new crossbow Sybil had given to him as a wedding present. Sam Vimes was used to the old guard crossbows, which had a nasty habit of firing backwards in a tight corner, but this was a Burleigh and Stronginthearm made-to-measure job with the oiled walnut stock. There was none finer, it was said.

Then he selected a thin cigar and strolled out into the garden.

There was a commotion coming from the dragon house. Vimes entered, and shut the door behind him. He rested the crossbow against the door.

The yammering and squeaking increased. Little gouts of flame puffed above the thick walls of the hatching pens.

Vimes leaned over the nearest one. He picked up a newly hatched dragonette and tickled it under the chin. As it flamed excitedly he lit his cigar and savoured the smoke.

He blew a smoke ring at the figure hanging from the ceiling. ‘Good morning,’ he said.

The figure twisted frantically. By an amazing feat of muscle control it had managed to catch a foot around a beam as it fell, but it couldn’t quite pull itself up. Dropping was not to be thought of. A dozen baby dragons were underneath it, jumping up and down excitedly and flaming.

‘Er … good morning,’ said the hanging figure.

‘Turned out nice again,’ said Vimes, picking up a bucket of coal. ‘Although the fog will be back later, I expect.’

He took a small nugget and tossed it to the dragons. They squabbled for it.

Vimes gripped another lump. The young dragon that had caught the coal already had a distinctly longer and hotter flame.

‘I suppose,’ said the young man, ‘that I could not prevail upon you to let me down?’

Another dragon caught some coal and belched a fireball. The young man swung desperately to avoid it.

‘Guess,’ said Vimes.

‘I suspect, on reflection, that it was foolish of me to choose the roof,’ said the assassin.

‘Probably,’ said Vimes. He’d spent several hours a few weeks ago sawing through joists and carefully balancing the roof tiles.

‘I should have dropped off the wall and used the shrubbery.’

‘Possibly,’ said Vimes. He’d set a bear-trap in the shrubbery.

He took some more coal. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t tell me who hired you?’

‘I’m afraid not, sir. You know the rules.’

Vimes nodded gravely. ‘We had Lady Selachii’s son up before the Patrician last week,’ said Vimes. ‘Now,
there’
s a
lad
who needs to learn that “no” doesn’t mean “yes, please”.’

‘Could be, sir.’

‘And then there was that business with Lord
Rust’s
boy. You can’t shoot servants for putting your shoes the wrong way round, you know. It’s too messy. He’ll have to learn right from left like the rest of us. And right from wrong, too.’

‘I hear what you say, sir.’

‘We seem to have reached an impasse,’ said Vimes.

‘It seems so, sir.’

Vimes aimed a lump at a small bronze and green dragon, which caught it expertly. The heat was getting intense.

‘What I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘is why you fellows mainly try it here or at the office. I mean, I walk around a lot, don’t I? You could shoot me down in the street, couldn’t you?’

‘What? Like some common murderer, sir?’

Vimes nodded. It was black and twisted, but the Assassins’ Guild had honour of a sort. ‘How much was I worth?’

‘Twenty thousand, sir.’

‘It should be higher,’ said Vimes.

‘I agree.’ If the assassin got back to the guild it would be, Vimes thought. Assassins valued their own lives quite highly.

‘Let me see now,’ said Vimes, examining the end of his cigar. ‘Guild takes fifty per cent. That leaves ten thousand dollars.’

The assassin seemed to consider this, and then reached up to his belt and tossed a bag rather clumsily towards Vimes, who caught it.

Vimes picked up his crossbow. ‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘that if a man were to be let go he might well
make
it to the door with no more than superficial burns. If he were fast. How fast are you?’

There was no answer.

‘Of course, he’d have to be desperate,’ said Vimes, wedging the crossbow on the feed table and taking a piece of cord out of his pocket. He lashed the cord to a nail and fastened the other end to the crossbow’s string. Then, standing carefully to one side, he eased the trigger.

The string moved very slightly.

The assassin, watching him upside down, seemed to have stopped breathing.

Vimes puffed at his cigar until the end was an inferno. Then he took it out of his mouth and leaned it against the restraining cord so that it would have just a fraction of an inch to burn before the string began to smoulder.

‘I’ll leave the door unlocked,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been an unreasonable man. I shall watch your career with interest.’

He tossed the rest of the coals to the dragons, and stepped outside.

It looked like being another eventful day in Ankh-Morpork, and it had only just begun.

As Vimes reached the house he heard a whoosh, a click, and the sound of someone running very fast towards the ornamental lake. He smiled.

Willikins was waiting with his coat. ‘Remember you have an appointment with his lordship at eleven, Sir Samuel.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Vimes.

‘And you are to go and see the Heralds at ten. Her
ladyship
was very explicit, sir. Her exact words were, “Tell him he’s not to try to wriggle out of it again,” sir.’

‘Oh, very well.’

‘And her ladyship said please to try not to upset anyone.’

‘Tell her I’ll try.’

‘And your sedan chair is outside, sir.’

Vimes sighed. ‘Thank you. There’s a man in the ornamental lake. Fish him out and give him a cup of tea, will you? Promising lad, I thought.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

The chair. Oh, yes, the chair. It had been a wedding present from the Patrician. Lord Vetinari knew that Vimes loved walking the streets of the city, and so it was very typical of the man that he presented him with something that did not allow him to do so.

It was waiting outside. The two bearers straightened up expectantly.

Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the City Watch, rebelled again. Perhaps he
did
have to use the damn thing, but …

He looked at the front man and motioned with a thumb to the chair’s door. ‘Get in,’ he commanded.

‘But sir—’

‘It’s a nice morning,’ said Vimes, taking off his coat again. ‘I’ll drive myself.’

‘Dearest Mumm & Dad …’

Captain Carrot of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch was on his day off. He had a routine. First he had breakfast in some handy café. Then he wrote his letter home. Letters home always gave him some trouble. Letters
from
his parents were always interesting, being full of mining statistics and exciting news about new shafts and promising seams. All
he
had to write about were murders and such things as that.

He chewed the end of his pencil for a moment.

Well, it has been an intresting week again [he wrote]. I am running around like a flye with a blue bottom and No Mistake! We are opening another Watch House at Chittling Street which is handy for the Shades, so now we have no Less than 4 including Dolly Sisters and Long Wall, and I am the only Captain so I am around at all hours. Persnally I sometimes mifs the cameraderry of the old days when it was just me and Nobby and Sergeant Colon but this is the Century of the Fruitbat. Sergeant Colon is going to retire at the end of the month, he says Mrs Colon wants him to buy a farm, he says he is looking forward to the peace of the country and being Close to Nature, I’m sure you would wish him well. My friend Nobby is still Nobby only more than he was.

Carrot absent-mindedly took a half-eaten
mutton
chop from his breakfast plate and held it out below the table. There was an
unk
.

Anyway, back to the jobb, also I am sure I have told you about the Cable Street Particulars, although they are still based in Pseudopolis Yard, people do not like it when Watchmen do not wear uniforms but Commander Vimes says criminals dont wear uniforms either so be d*mned to the lot of them.

Carrot paused. It said a lot about Captain Carrot that, even after almost two years in Ankh-Morpork, he was still uneasy about ‘d*mned’.

Commander Vimes says you have to have secret policemen because there are secret crimes …

Carrot paused again. He loved his uniform. He didn’t have any other clothes. The idea of Watchmen in disguise
was
… well, it was unthinkable. It was like those pirates who sailed under false colours. It was like spies. However, he went on dutifully:

… and Commander Vimes knows what he is talking about I am sure. He says it’s not like old fashioned police work which was catching the poor devils too stupid to run away!! Anyhow it all means a lot more work and new faces in the Watch.

While he waited for a new sentence to form, Carrot took a sausage from his plate and lowered it.

There was another
unk
.

The waiter bustled up.

‘Another helping, Mr Carrot? On the house.’ Every restaurant and eatery in Ankh-Morpork offered free food to Carrot, in the certain and happy knowledge that he would always insist on paying.

‘No, indeed, that was very good. Here we are … twenty pence and keep the change,’ said Carrot.

‘How’s your young lady? Haven’t seen her today.’

‘Angua? Oh, she’s … around and about, you know. I shall definitely tell her you asked after her, though.’

The dwarf nodded happily, and bustled off.

Carrot wrote another few dutiful lines and then said, very softly, ‘Is that horse and cart still outside Ironcrust’s bakery?’

There was a whine from under the table.

‘Really? That’s odd. All the deliveries were over hours ago and the flour and grit doesn’t usually arrive until the afternoon. Driver still sitting there?’

Something barked, quietly.

‘And that looks quite a good horse for a delivery cart. And, you know, normally you’d expect the driver to put a nosebag on. And it’s the last Thursday in the month. Which is payday at Ironcrust’s.’ Carrot laid down his pencil and waved a hand politely to catch the waiter’s eye.

‘Cup of acorn coffee, Mr Gimlet? To take away?’

In the Dwarf Bread Museum, in Whirligig Alley, Mr Hopkinson the curator was somewhat excited. Apart from other considerations, he’d just been murdered. But at the moment he was choosing to consider this as an annoying background detail.

He’d been beaten to death with a loaf of bread. This is unlikely even in the worst of human bakeries, but dwarf bread has amazing properties as a weapon of offence. Dwarfs regard baking as part of the art of warfare. When they make rock cakes, no simile is intended.

‘Look at this dent here,’ said Hopkinson. ‘It’s quite
ruined
the crust!’

AND YOUR SKULL TOO
, said Death.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Hopkinson, in the voice of one who regards skulls as ten a penny but is well aware of the rarity value of a good bread exhibit. ‘But what was wrong with a simple cosh? Or even a hammer? I could have provided one if asked.’

Death, who was by nature an obsessive personality himself, realized that he was in the presence of a master. The late Mr Hopkinson had a squeaky voice and wore his spectacles on a length of black tape – his ghost now wore their spiritual counterpart – and these were always the signs of a mind that polished the undersides of furniture and stored paperclips by size.

‘It really is too bad,’ said Mr Hopkinson. ‘And ungrateful, too, after the help I gave them with the oven. I really feel I shall have to complain.’

MR HOPKINSON, ARE YOU FULLY AWARE THAT YOU ARE DEAD
?

‘Dead?’ trilled the curator. ‘Oh, no. I can’t possibly be dead. Not at the moment. It’s simply not convenient. I haven’t even catalogued the combat muffins.’

NEVERTHELESS
.

‘No, no. I’m sorry, but it just won’t do. You will have to wait. I really cannot be bothered with that sort of nonsense.’

Death was nonplussed. Most people were, after the initial confusion, somewhat relieved when they died. A subconscious weight had been removed. The other cosmic shoe had dropped. The worst had happened and they could, metaphorically, get on with their lives. Few people treated it as a simple annoyance that might go away if you complained enough.

Mr Hopkinson’s hand went through a tabletop. ‘Oh.’

YOU SEE
?

‘This is most uncalled-for. Couldn’t you have arranged a less awkward time?’

ONLY BY CONSULTATION WITH YOUR MURDERER
.

‘It all seems very badly organized. I wish to make a complaint. I pay my taxes, after all.’