Feet of Clay (22 page)

‘Uh—’

‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Slant. I do apologize.’

‘Speaking as the President of the Guild of Lawyers,’ said Mr Slant, the most respected zombie in Ankh-Morpork, ‘I must recommend stability in this matter. I wonder if I may offer some advice?’

‘How much will it cost us?’ said Mr Sock.

‘Stability,’ said Mr Slant, ‘equals monarchy.’

‘Oh, now, don’t tell us—’

‘Look at Klatch,’ said Mr Slant doggedly. ‘Generations of Seriphs. Result: political stability. Take Pseudopolis. Or Sto Lat. Or even the Agatean Empire—’

‘Come
on
,’ said Dr Downey. ‘Everyone knows that kings—’

‘Oh, monarchs come and go, they depose one another, and so on and so forth,’ said Mr Slant. ‘But the
institution
goes on. Besides, I think you’ll find that it is possible to work out … an accommodation.’

He realized that he had the floor. His fingers absent-mindedly touched the seam where his head had been sewn back on. All those years ago Mr Slant had refused to die until he had been paid for the disbursements in the matter of conducting his own defence.

‘How do you mean?’ said Mr Potts.

‘I accept that the question of resurrecting the Ankh-Morpork succession has been raised several times recently,’ said Mr Slant.

‘Yes. By madmen,’ said Mr Boggis. ‘It’s part of the symptoms. Put underpants on head, talk to trees, drool, decide that Ankh-Morpork needs a king …’

‘Exactly. Supposing
sane
men were to give it consideration?’

‘Go on,’ said Dr Downey.

‘There have been precedents,’ said Mr Slant. ‘Monarchies who have found themselves bereft of a convenient monarch have … obtained one. Some suitably born member of some other royal line. After all, what is required is someone who, uh, knows the ropes, as I believe the saying goes.’

‘Sorry? Are you saying we
send out
for a king?’ said Mr Boggis. ‘We put up some kind of advertisement? “Throne vacant, applicant must supply own crown”?’

‘In fact,’ said Mr Slant, ignoring this, ‘I recall that, during the first Empire, Genua wrote to Ankh-Morpork and asked to be sent one of our generals to be their king, their own royal lines having died out through interbreeding so intensively that the last king kept trying to breed with himself. The history books say that we sent our loyal General Tacticus, whose first act after obtaining the crown was to declare a war on Ankh-Morpork. Kings are … interchangeable.’

‘You mentioned something about reaching an accommodation,’ said Mr Boggis. ‘You mean, we tell a
king
what to
do
?’

‘I like the sound of that,’ said Mrs Palm.

‘I like the echoes,’ said Dr Downey.

‘Not
tell
,’ said Mr Slant. ‘We … agree. Obviously, as king, he would concentrate on those things traditionally associated with kingship—’

‘Waving,’ said Mr Sock.

‘Being gracious,’ said Mrs Palm.

‘Welcoming ambassadors from foreign countries,’ said Mr Potts.

‘Shaking hands.’

‘Cutting off heads—’

‘No! No. No, that will not be part of his duties. Minor affairs of state will be carried out—’

‘By his advisors?’ said Dr Downey. He leaned back. ‘I’m sure I can see where this is going, Mr Slant,’ he said. ‘But kings, once acquired, are so damn hard to get rid of. Acceptably.’

‘There have been precedents for that, too,’ said Mr Slant.

The Assassin’s eyes narrowed.

‘I’m intrigued, Mr Slant, that as soon as the Lord Vetinari appears to be seriously ill, you pop up with suggestions like this. It sounds like … a remarkable coincidence.’

‘There is no mystery, I assure you. Destiny works its course. Surely many of you have heard the rumours – that there is, in this city, someone with a bloodline traceable all the way back to the last royal family? Someone working in this very city in a comparatively humble position? A lowly Watchman, in fact?’

There were some nods, but not very definite ones. They were to nods what a grunt is to ‘yes’. The guilds all picked up information. No one
wanted
to reveal how much, or how little, they personally knew, just in case they knew too little or, even worse, turned out to know too much.

However, Doc Pseudopolis of the Guild of Gamblers put on a careful poker face and said, ‘Yes, but the tricentennial is coming up. And in a few years it’ll be the Century of the Rat. There’s something about centuries that gives people a kind of fever.’

‘Nevertheless, the person exists,’ said Mr Slant. ‘The evidence stares one in the face if one looks in the right places.’

‘Very well,’ said Mr Boggis. ‘Tell us the name of this captain.’ He often lost large sums at poker.

‘Captain?’ said Mr Slant. ‘I’m sorry to say his natural talents have thus far not commended him to that extent. He is a corporal. Corporal C. W. St J. Nobbs.’

There was silence.

And then there was a strange putt-putting sound, like water negotiating its way through a partially blocked pipe.

Queen Molly of the Beggars’ Guild had so far been silent apart from occasional damp sucking noises as she tried to dislodge a particle of her lunch from the things which, because they were still in her mouth and apparently attached, were technically her teeth.

Now she was laughing. The hairs wobbled on every wart. ‘Nobby Nobbs?’ she said. ‘You’re talking about
Nobby Nobbs
?’

‘He is the last known descendant of the Earl of
Ankh
, who could trace
his
descent all the way to a distant cousin to the last king,’ said Mr Slant. ‘It’s the talk of the city.’

‘A picture forms in my mind,’ said Dr Downey. ‘Small monkeylike chap, always smoking very short cigarettes. Spotty. He squeezes them in public.’

‘That’s Nobby!’ Queen Molly chuckled. ‘Face like a blind carpenter’s thumb!’

‘Him? But the man’s a tit!’

‘And dim as a penny candle,’ said Mr Boggis. ‘I don’t see—’

Suddenly he stopped, and then contracted the contemplative silence that was gradually affecting everyone else around the table.

‘Don’t see why we shouldn’t … give this … due consideration,’ he said, after a while.

The assembled leaders looked at the table. Then they looked at the ceiling. Then they studiously avoided one another’s gaze.

‘Blood
will
out,’ said Mr Carry.

‘When I’ve watched him go down the street I’ve always thought: “There’s a man who walks in greatness,”’ said Mrs Palm.

‘He squeezes them in a very regal way, mind you. Very graciously.’

The silence rolled over the assembly again. But it was busy, in the same way that the silence of an anthill is busy.

‘I must remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that poor Lord Vetinari is still alive,’ said Mrs Palm.

‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Mr Slant. ‘And long may
he
remain so. I’ve merely set out for you one option against that day, may it be a long time coming, when we should consider a … successor.’

‘In any case,’ said Dr Downey, ‘there is no doubt that Vetinari has been over-doing it. If he survives – which is greatly to be hoped, of course – I feel we should require him to step down for the sake of his health. Well done thou good and faithful servant, and so on. Buy him a nice house in the country somewhere. Give him a pension. Make sure there’s a seat for him at official dinners. Obviously, if he can be so easily poisoned now he should welcome the release from the chains of office …’

‘What about the wizards?’ said Mr Boggis.

‘They’ve never got involved in civic concerns,’ said Dr Downey. ‘Give ’em four meat meals a day and tip your hat to them and they’re happy. They know nothing about politics.’

The silence that followed was broken by the voice of Queen Molly of the Beggars. ‘What about Vimes?’

Dr Downey shrugged. ‘He is a servant of the city.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘Surely
we
represent the city?’

‘Hah! He won’t see it that way. And you know what Vimes thinks about kings. It was a Vimes who chopped the head off the last one.
There’s
a bloodline that thinks a swing of an axe can solve anything.’

‘Now, Molly, you know Vimes’d probably take an axe to Vetinari if he thought he could get away with it. No love lost there, I fancy.’

‘He won’t like it. That’s all I tell you. Vetinari keeps Vimes wound up. No knowing what happens if he unwinds all at once—’

‘He’s a public servant!’ snapped Dr Downey.

Queen Molly made a face, which was not difficult in one so naturally well endowed, and sat back. ‘So this is the new way of things, is it?’ she muttered. ‘Lot of ordinary men sit around a table and talk and suddenly the world’s a different place? The sheep turn round and charge the shepherd?’

‘There’s a soirée at Lady Selachii’s house this evening,’ said Dr Downey, ignoring her. ‘I believe Nobbs is being invited. Perhaps we can … meet him.’

Vimes told himself he was really going to inspect the progress on the new Watch House in Chittling Street. Cockbill Street was just round the corner. And then he’d call in, informally. No sense in sparing a man when they were pushed anyway, what with these murders and Vetinari and Detritus’s anti-Slab crusade.

He turned the corner, and stopped.

Nothing much had changed. That was the shocking thing. After … oh, too many years … things had no
right
not to have changed.

But washing lines still criss-crossed the street between the grey, ancient buildings. Antique paint still peeled in the way cheap paint peeled when it had been painted on wood too old and rotten to take paint. Cockbill Street people were usually too
penniless
to afford decent paint, but always far too proud to use whitewash.

And the place was slightly smaller than he remembered. That was all.

When had he last come down here? He couldn’t remember. It was beyond the Shades, and up until quite recently the Watch had tended to leave that area to its own unspeakable devices.

Unlike the Shades, though, Cockbill Street was clean, with the haunting, empty cleanliness you get when people can’t afford to waste dirt. For Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn’t
know
how poor they were. If you asked them they would probably say something like ‘mustn’t grumble’ or ‘there’s far worse off than us’ or ‘we’ve always kept uz heads above water and we don’t owe nobody nowt’.

He could hear his granny speaking. ‘No one’s too poor to buy soap.’ Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride.

What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve
that
?

Cockbill Street people would stand aside to let the meek through. For what kept them in Cockbill Street, mentally and physically, was their vague comprehension that there were
rules
. And they
went
through life filled with a quiet, distracted dread that they weren’t quite obeying them.

People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn’t true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people.

It was oddly quiet. Normally there’d be swarms of kids, and carts heading down towards the docks, but today the place had a shut-in look.

In the middle of the road was a chalked hopscotch path.

Vimes felt his knees go weak. It was still here! When had he last seen it? Thirty-five years ago? Forty? So it must have been drawn and redrawn thousands of times.

He’d been pretty good at it. Of course, they’d played it by Ankh-Morpork rules. Instead of kicking a stone they’d kicked William Scuggins. It had been just one of the many inventive games they’d played which had involved kicking, chasing or jumping on William Scuggins until he threw one of his famous wobblers and started frothing and violently attacking himself.

Vimes had been able to drop William in the square of his choice nine times out of ten. The tenth time, William bit his leg.

In those days, tormenting William and finding enough to eat had made for a simple, straightforward life. There weren’t so many questions you
didn’t
know the answers to, except maybe how to stop your leg festering.

Sir Samuel looked around, saw the silent street, and flicked a stone out of the gutter with his foot. Then he booted it surreptitiously along the squares, adjusted his cloak, and hopped and jumped his way up, turned, hopped—

What was it you shouted as you hopped? ‘Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper?’? No? Or was it the one that went ‘William Scuggins is a bastard’? Now he’d wonder about that all day.

A door opened across the street. Vimes froze, one leg in mid-air, as two black-clothed figures came out slowly and awkwardly.

This was because they were carrying a coffin.

The natural solemnity of the occasion was diminished by their having to squeeze around it and out into the street, pulling the casket after them and allowing two other pairs of bearers to edge their way into the daylight.

Vimes remembered himself in time to lower his other foot, and then remembered even more of himself and snatched his helmet off in respect.

Another coffin emerged. It was a lot smaller. It needed only two people to carry it and that was really one too many.

As mourners trooped out behind them, Vimes fumbled in a pocket for the scrap of paper Detritus had given him. The scene was, in its way, funny, like the bit in a circus where the coach stops and a dozen clowns get out of it. Apartment houses round
here
made up for their limited number of rooms by having a large number of people occupy them.

He found the paper and unfolded it. First Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street.

And this was it. He’d arrived in time for a funeral. Two funerals.

‘Looks like it’s a really bad day to be a golem,’ said Angua. There was a pottery hand lying in the gutter. ‘That’s the third one we’ve seen smashed in the street.’