Men at Arms (8 page)

Carrot waved at a couple of dwarfs.

“I didn’t know this,” he said. “I thought there was just some wicked rebellion or something.”

Vimes shrugged. “It’s in the history books, if you know where to look.”

“And that was the end of the kings of Ankh-Morpork.”

“Oh, there was a surviving son, I think. And a few mad relatives. They were banished. That’s supposed to be a terrible fate, for royalty. I can’t see it myself.”

“I think I can. And
you
like the city, sir.”

“Well, yes. But if it was a choice between banishment and having my head chopped off, just help me down with this suitcase. No, we’re well rid of kings. But, I mean…the
city
used to work.”

“Still does,” said Carrot.

They passed the Assassins’ Guild and drew level with the high, forbidding walls of the Fools’ Guild, which occupied the other corner of the block.

“No, it just keeps going. I mean, look up there.”

Carrot obediently raised his gaze.

There was a familiar building on the junction of Broad Way and Alchemists. The facade was ornate, but covered in grime. Gargoyles had colonized it.

The corroded motto over the portico said “NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT CAN STAY THESE MESSENGERS ABOUT THEIR DUTY” and in more spacious days that may have been the case, but recently someone had found it necessary to nail up an addendum which read:

DONT ASK US ABOUT:

rocks

troll’s with sticks

All sorts of dragons

Mrs. Cake

Huje green things with teeth

Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows

Rains of spaniel’s.

fog.

Mrs. Cake

“Oh,” he said. “The Royal Mail.”

“The Post Office,” corrected Vimes. “My granddad said that once you could post a letter there and it’d be delivered within a month, without fail. You didn’t have to give it to a passing dwarf and hope the little bugger wouldn’t eat it before…”

His voice trailed off.

“Uh. Sorry. No offense meant.”

“None taken,” said Carrot cheerfully.

“It’s not that I’ve got anything against dwarfs. I’ve always said you’d have to look very hard before you’d find a, a better bunch of highly skilled, law-abiding, hard-working—”

“—little buggers?”

“Yes. No!”

They proceeded.

“That Mrs. Cake,” said Carrot, “definitely a strong-minded woman, eh?”

“Too true,” said Vimes.

Something crunched under Carrot’s enormous sandal.

“More glass,” he said. “It went a long way, didn’t it.”

“Exploding dragons! What an imagination the girl has.”

“Woof woof,” said a voice behind them.

“That damn dog’s been following us,” said Vimes.

“It’s barking at something on the wall,” said Carrot.

Gaspode eyed them coldly.

“Woof woof, bloody whine whine,” he said. “Are you bloody blind or what?”

It was true that normal people couldn’t hear Gaspode speak, because dogs
don’t
speak. It’s a well-known fact. It’s well known at the organic level, like a lot of other well-known facts which overrule the observations of the senses. This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no one would ever get anything done.
^*
Besides, almost all dogs don’t talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored.

However, Gaspode had found he did tend to get heard on a subconscious level. Only the previous day someone had absent-mindedly kicked him into the gutter and had gone a few steps before they suddenly thought: I’m a bastard, what am I?

“There is something up there,” said Carrot. “Look…something blue, hanging off that gargoyle.”

“Woof woof,
woof!
Would you
credit
it?”

Vimes stood on Carrot’s shoulders and walked his hand up the wall, but the little blue strip was still out of reach.

The gargoyle rolled a stony eye toward him.

“Do you mind?” said Vimes. “It’s hanging on your ear…“

With a grinding of stone on stone, the gargoyle reached up a hand and unhooked the intrusive material.

“Thank you.”

“’on’t ent-on it.”

Vimes climbed down again.

“You like gargoyles, don’t you, captain,” said Carrot, as they strolled away.

“Yep. They may only be a kind of troll but they keep themselves to themselves and seldom go below the first floor and don’t commit crimes anyone ever finds out about. My type of people.”

He unfolded the strip.

It was a collar or, at least, what remained of a collar—it was burnt at both ends. The word “Chubby” was just readable through the soot.

“The devils!” said Vimes. “They
did
blow up a dragon!”

The most dangerous man in the world should be introduced.

He has never, in his entire life, harmed a living creature. He has dissected a few, but only after they were dead,
^*
and had marvelled at how well they’d been put together considering it had been done by unskilled labor. For several years he hadn’t moved outside a large, airy room, but this was OK, because he spent most of his time inside his own head in any case. There’s a certain type of person it’s very hard to imprison.

He had, however, surmised that an hour’s exercise every day was essential for a healthy appetite and proper bowel movements, and was currently sitting on a machine of his own invention.

It consisted of a saddle above a pair of treadles which turned, by means of a chain, a large wooden wheel currently held off the ground on a metal stand. Another, freewheeling, wooden wheel was positioned in front of the saddle and could be turned by means of a tiller arrangement. He’d fitted the extra wheel and tiller so that he could wheel the entire thing over to the wall when he’d finished taking his exercise and, besides, it gave the whole thing a pleasing symmetry.

He called it “the-turning-the-wheel-with-pedals-and-another-wheel-machine.”

Lord Vetinari was also at work.

Normally, he was in the Oblong Office or seated in his plain wooden chair at the foot of the steps in the palace of Ankh-Morpork; there was an ornate throne at the top of the steps, covered with dust. It was the throne of Ankh-Morpork and was, indeed, made of gold. He’d never dreamed of sitting on it.

But it was a nice day, so he was working in the garden.

Visitors to Ankh-Morpork were often surprised to find that there were some interesting gardens attached to the Patrician’s Palace.

The Patrician was not a gardens kind of person. But some of his predecessors had been, and Lord Vetinari never changed or destroyed anything if there was no logical reason to do so. He maintained the little zoo, and the racehorse stable, and even recognized that the gardens themselves were of extreme historic interest because this was so obviously the case.

They had been laid out by Bloody Stupid Johnson.

Many great landscape gardeners have gone down in history and been remembered in a very solid way by the magnificent parks and gardens that they designed with almost god-like power and foresight, thinking nothing of making lakes and shifting hills and planting woodlands to enable future generations to appreciate the sublime beauty of wild Nature transformed by Man. There have been Capability Brown, Sagacity Smith, Intuition De Vere Slade-Gore…

In Ankh-Morpork, there was Bloody Stupid Johnson.

Bloody Stupid “It Might Look A Bit Messy Now But Just You Come Back In Five Hundred Years’ Time” Johnson. Bloody Stupid “Look, The Plans Were The Right Way Round When I Drew Them” Johnson. Bloody Stupid Johnson, who had 2,000 tons of earth built into an artificial hillock in front of Quirm Manor because “It’d drive me mad to have to look at a bunch of trees and mountains all day long, how about you?”

The Ankh-Morpork palace grounds were considered the high spot, if such it could be called, of his career. For example, they contained the ornamental trout lake, one hundred and fifty yards long and, because of one of those trifling errors of notation that were such a distinctive feature of Bloody Stupid’s designs, one inch wide. It was the home of one trout, which was quite comfortable provided it didn’t try to turn around, and had once featured an ornate fountain which, when first switched on, did nothing but groan ominously for five minutes and then fire a small stone cherub a thousand feet into the air.

It contained the hoho, which was like a haha only deeper. A haha is a concealed ditch and wall designed to allow landowners to look out across rolling vistas without getting cattle and inconvenient poor people wandering across the lawns. Under Bloody Stupid’s errant pencil it was dug fifty feet deep and had claimed three gardeners already.

The maze was so small that people got lost looking
for
it.

But the Patrician rather liked the gardens, in a quiet kind of way. He had certain views about the mentality of most of mankind, and the gardens made him feel fully justified.

Piles of paper were stacked on the lawn around the chair. Clerks renewed them or took them away periodically. They were different clerks. All sorts and types of information flowed into the Palace, but there was only one place where it all came together, very much like strands of gossamer coming together in the center of a web.

A great many rulers, good and bad and quite often dead, know what happened; a rare few actually manage, by dint of much effort, to know what’s happening. Lord Vetinari considered both types to lack ambition.

“Yes, Dr. Cruces,” he said, without looking up.

How the
hell
does he do it? Cruces wondered. I
know
I didn’t make any noise…

“Ah, Havelock—” he began.

“You have something to tell me, doctor?”

“It’s been…mislaid.”

“Yes. And no doubt you are anxiously seeking it. Very well. Good day.”

The Patrician hadn’t moved his head the whole time. He hadn’t even bothered to ask what It was. He bloody well knows, thought Cruces. How is it you can never tell him anything he doesn’t know?

Lord Vetinari put down a piece of paper on one of the piles, and picked up another.

“You are still here, Dr. Cruces.”

“I can assure you, m’Lord, that—”

“I’m sure you can. I’m sure you can. There is one question that intrigues me, however.”

“M’Lord?”

“Why was it in your Guild House to be stolen? I had been given to understand it had been destroyed. I’m quite sure I gave orders.”

This was the question the Assassin had been hoping would not be asked. But the Patrician was good at that game.

“Er. We—that is, my
predecessor
—thought it should serve as a warning and an example.”

The Patrician looked up and smiled brightly.

“Capital!” he said. “I have always had a
great
belief in the effectiveness of examples. So I am sure you’ll be able to sort this out with minimum inconvenience all round.”

“Certainly, m’Lord,” said the Assassin, glumly. “But—”

Noon began.

Noon in Ankh-Morpork took some time, since twelve o’clock was established by consensus. Generally, the first bell to start was that one in the Teachers’ Guild, in response to the universal prayers of its members. Then the water clock on the Temple of Small Gods would trigger the big bronze gong. The black bell in the Temple of Fate struck once, unexpectedly, but by then the silver pedal-driven carillon in the Fools’ Guild would be tinkling, the gongs, bells and chimes of all the Guilds and temples would be in full swing, and it was impossible to tell them apart, except for the tongueless and magical octiron bell of Old Tom in the Unseen University clock tower, whose twelve measured silences temporarily overruled the din.

And finally, several strokes behind all the others, was the bell of the Assassin’s Guild, which was always last.

Beside the Patrician, the ornamental sundial chimed twice and fell over.

“You were saying?” said the Patrician mildly.

“Captain Vimes,” said Dr. Cruces. “He’s taking an interest.”

“Dear me. But it is his job.”

“Really? I must demand that you call him off!”

The words echoed around the, garden. Several pigeons flew away.

“Demand?” said the Patrician, sweetly.

Dr. Cruces backed and filled desperately. “He is a servant after all,” he said. “I see no reason why he should be allowed to involve himself in affairs that don’t concern him.”

“I rather believe he thinks he’s a servant of the law,” said the Patrician.

“He’s a jack-in-office and an insolent upstart!”

“Dear me. I did not appreciate your strength of feeling. But since you demand it, I will bring him to heel without delay.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Do not let me keep you.”

Dr. Cruces wandered off in the direction of the Patrician’s idle gesture.

Lord Vetinari bent over his paperwork again, and did not even look up when there was a distant, muffled cry. Instead, he reached down and rang a small silver bell.

A clerk hurried up.

“Go and fetch the ladder, will you, Drumknott?” he said. “Dr. Cruces seems to have fallen in the hoho.”

The back door to the dwarf Bjorn Hammerhock’s workshop lifted off the latch and creaked open. He went to see if there was anyone there, and shivered.

He shut the door.

“Bit of a chilly breeze,” he said, to the room’s other occupant. “Still, we could do with it.”

The ceiling of the workshop was only about five feet above the floor. That was more than tall enough for a dwarf.

Ow, said a voice that no one heard.

Hammerhock looked at the thing clamped in the vice, and picked up a screwdriver.

Ow.

“Amazing,” he said. “I
think
that moving this tube down the barrel forces the, er, six chambers to slide along, presenting a new one to the, er, firing hole. That seems clear enough. The triggering mechanism is really just a tinderbox device. The spring…
here
…has rusted through. I can easily replace that. You know,” he said, looking up, “this is a very interesting device. With the chemicals in the tubes and all. Such a
simple
idea. Is it a clown thing? Some kind of automatic slap-stick?”