The Truth (16 page)

“Oh, his dog. Right,” said William. “Er…” He looked around at the throng. Some of those people could
tell
him things, and he was talking to a dogsmeat man. Still…

“Could you let me have a tiny piece of meat?” he said.

“Are you going to put it in the paper?”

“Yes. Sort of. In a way.”

William found a quiet alcove hidden from the general excitement, and gingerly let the piece of meat dribble one drop of blood onto the little gray pile.

The dust mushroomed up into the air, became a mass of colored flecks, became Otto Chriek.

“How was that vun?” he said. “Oh…”

“I think you got the picture,” said William. “Er…your jacket…”

Part of the sleeve of the vampire’s jacket was now the color and texture of the stair carpet in the big hall, a rather dull pattern of red and blue.

“Carpet dust got mixed in, I expect,” said Otto. “Do not be alarmed. Happens all zer time.” He sniffed the sleeve. “Finest steak? Thank you!”

“It was dog food,” said William the Truthful.

“Dog food?”

“Yes. Grab your stuff and follow me—”

“
Dog
food?”

“You did say it was finest steak. Lord Vetinari is kind to his dog. Look, don’t complain to
me
. If this sort of thing happens a lot, then you ought to carry a little bottle of emergency blood! Otherwise people will do the best they can!”

“Vell, yes, fine, zank you anyvay,” the vampire mumbled, trailing behind him. “Dog food, dog food, oh dear me…vere are we goink now?”

“To the Oblong Office to see where the attack was made,” said William. “I just hope it isn’t being guarded by someone clever.”

“Ve will get into a lot off trouble.”

“Why?” said William. He’d been thinking the same thing, but: why? The Palace belonged to the city, more or less. The Watch probably wouldn’t like him going in there, but William felt in his bones that you couldn’t run a city on the basis of what the Watch liked. The Watch would probably like it if everyone spent their time indoors, with their hands on the table where people could see them.

The door to the Oblong Office was open. Guarding it, if you could truly be said to be on guard whilst leaning against the wall staring at the opposite wall, was Corporal Nobbs. He was smoking a surreptitious cigarette.

“Ah, just the man I was looking for!” said William. That was true. Nobby was more than he’d hoped for.

The cigarette disappeared by magic.

“Am I?” wheezed Nobbs, smoke curling out of his ears.

“Yes, I’ve been talking to Commander Vimes, and now I would like to see the room where the crime was committed.” William had great hopes of that sentence. It
seemed
to contain the words “and he gave me permission to” without actually doing so.

Corporal Nobbs looked uncertain, but then he noticed the notebook. And Otto. The cigarette appeared between his lips again.

“’Ere, are you from that newspaper?”

“That’s right,” said William. “I thought people would be interested in seeing how our brave Watch swings into action at a time like this.”

Corporal Nobbs’s skinny chest visibly swelled.

“Corporal Nobby Nobbs, sir, probably thirty-four, bin in uniform since prob’ly ten years old, man and boy.”

William felt he ought to make a show of writing this down.

“
Probably
thirty-four?”

“Our mam has never been one for numbers, sir. Always a bit vague on fine detail, our mam.”

“And…” William took a closer look at the corporal. You had to assume he was a human being because he was broadly the right shape, could talk, and wasn’t covered in hair. “Man and boy and…?” he heard himself say.

“Just man and boy, sir,” said Corporal Nobbs reproachfully. “Just man and boy.”

“And were you first on the scene, corporal?”

“Last on the scene, sir.”

“And your important job is to…?”

“Stop anyone going through this door, sir,” said Corporal Nobbs, trying to read William’s notes upside down. “That’s ‘Nobbs’ without a ‘K,’ sir. It’s amazing how people get that wrong. What’s he doing with that box?”

“Got to take a picture of Ankh-Morpork’s finest,” said William, easing himself towards the door. Of course, that
was
a lie, but since it was such an obvious lie, he considered that it didn’t count. It was like saying the sky was green.

By now Corporal Nobbs was almost leaving the floor under the lifting power of pride.

“Could I have a copy for my mam?” he said.

“Smile, please…”

“I
am
smilin’.”

“Stop smiling, please.”

Click. WHOOMPH.

“Aaarghaarghaargh…”

A screaming vampire is always the center of attention. William slipped into the Oblong Office.

Just inside the door was a chalk outline. In
colored
chalk. It must have been done by Corporal Nobbs, because he was the only person who would add a pipe and draw in some flowers and clouds.

There was also a stink of peppermint.

There was a chair, knocked over.

There was a basket, kicked upside down in the corner of the room.

There was a short, evil-looking metal arrow sticking into the floor at an angle; it had a City Watch label tied to it now.

There was a dwarf. He—no, William corrected himself, on seeing the heavy leather skirt and the slight raised heels to the iron boots—
she
was lying down on her stomach, picking at something on the floor with a pair of tweezers. It looked like a smashed jar.

She glanced up.

“Are you new? Where’s your uniform?” she said.

“Well, er, I, er…”

She narrowed her eyes.

“You’re not a watchman, are you? Does Mister Vimes know you’re here?”

The way of the truthful-by-nature is as a bicycle race in a pair of sandpaper underpants, but William clung to an indisputable fact.

“I spoke to him just now,” he said.

But the dwarf wasn’t Sergeant Detritus, and certainly not Corporal Nobbs.

“And he
said
you could come in here?” she demanded.

“Not exactly
said
—”

The dwarf walked across and swiftly opened the door.

“Then get—”

“Ah, a vonderful framing effect!” said Otto, who’d been on the other side of the door.

Click!

William shut his eyes.

WHOOMPH.

“Ohhbuggerrrrr…”

This time William caught the little piece of paper before it hit the ground.

The dwarf stood open-mouthed. Then she closed her mouth. Then she opened it again to say: “What the
hell
just happened?”

“I suppose you could call it a sort of industrial injury,” said William. “Hang on, I think I’ve still got a piece of dog food somewhere…honestly, there’s
got
to be a better way than this…”

He unwrapped it from a grubby piece of newspaper and gingerly dropped it onto the heap.

The ash fountained and Otto arose, blinking.

“How vas that? Vun more? This time wizt the obscurograph?” he said. He was already reaching for his bag.

“Get out of here right now!” said the dwarf.

“Oh, please”—William glanced at the dwarf’s shoulder—“corporal, let him do his job. Give him a chance, eh? He’s a Black Ribboner, after all…” Behind the watchman, Otto took an ugly, newtlike creature out of its jar.

“Do you want me to arrest the pair of you? You’re interfering with the scene of a crime!”

“What crime, would you say?” said William, flipping open his notebook.

“Out, the pair of—”

“Boo,” said Otto softly.

The land eel must have been quite tense already. In response to thousands of years of evolution in a high magical environment, it discharged a nighttime’s worth of darkness all at once. It filled the room for a moment, sheer solid black laced with traceries of blue and violet. Again, for a moment William thought he could feel it wash through him in a flood. Then light flowed back, like chilly water after a pebble has been dropped in the lake.

The corporal glared at Otto.

“That was dark light, wasn’t it?”

“Ah, you too are from Ubervald—” Otto began happily.

“Yes, and I did
not
expect to see that here! Get
out!
”

They hurried past the startled Corporal Nobbs, down the wide stairs, and out into the frosty air of the courtyard.

“Is there something you ought to be telling me, Otto?” said William. “She seemed
extremely
angry when you took that second picture.”

“Vell, it’s a little hard to explain—” said the vampire awkwardly.

“It’s not
harmful,
is it?”

“Oh, no, zere are no physical effects vhatsoever—”

“Or
mental
effects?” said William, who had spun words too often to miss such a carefully misleading statement.

“Perhaps zis is not zer time—”

“That’s true. Tell me about it later.
Before
you try it again, okay?”

William’s head buzzed as he ran along Filigree Street. Barely an hour ago he’d been agonizing over what stupid letters to put in the newspaper and the world had seemed more or less normal. Now it had been turned upside down. Lord Vetinari was supposed to have tried to kill someone, and
that
didn’t make sense, if only because the person he had tried to kill was apparently still alive. He had been trying to get away with a load of money, too, and
that
didn’t make sense either. Oh, it wasn’t hard to imagine a person trying to embezzle money and attacking someone, but if you mentally inserted someone like the Patrician into the picture, it all fell apart. And what about the peppermint? The room had
reeked
of it.

There were a lot more questions. The look in the corporal’s eye as she’d chased him out of the office suggested firmly to William that he was unlikely to get any more answers from the Watch.

And, looming up in his mind, was the gaunt shape of the press. Somehow he was going to have to make some kind of coherent story about all this, and he’d have to do it
now…

The happy figure of Mr. Wintler greeted him as he strode into the pressroom.

“What do you think of this funny marrow, eh, Mr. de Worde?”

“I suggest you stuff it, Mr. Wintler,” said William, pushing past.

“Just as you say, sir, that’s just what my lady wife said, too.”

“I’m sorry, but he insisted on waiting for you,” Sacharissa whispered as William sat down. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure…” said William, staring hard at his notes.

“Who’s been killed?”

“Er…no one…I think…”

“That’s a mercy, then.” Sacharissa looked down at the papers covering her desk.

“I’m afraid we’ve had five other people in here with humorous vegetables,” she said.

“Oh.”

“Yes. They weren’t all that funny, to tell truth.”

“Oh.”

“No, they mainly looked like…um, you know.”

“Oh…what?”

“
You
know,” she said, beginning to go red. “A man’s…um, you know.”

“Oh.”

“Not even very much like, um, you know, too. I mean, you had to
want
to see a…um, you know…there, if you understand me.”

William hoped that no one was making notes about this conversation. “Oh,” he said.

“But I took their names and addresses, just in case,” said Sacharissa. “I thought it might be worth it if we’re short of stuff.”

“We’re never going to be that short,” said William quickly.

“You don’t think so?”

“I’m positive.”

“You may be right,” she said, looking at the mess of paper on her desk. “It’s been very busy in here while you were out. People have been queuing up with all sorts of news. Things that are going to happen, lost dogs, things they want to sell—” “That’s advertising,” said William, trying to concentrate on his notes. “If they want it in the paper, they have to pay.”

“I don’t see that it’s up to us to decide—”

William thumped the desk, to his own amazement and Sacharissa’s shock. “Something is
happening
, do you understand? Something really real is
happening!
And it’s not an amusing shape! It’s really serious! And I’ve got to write it down as soon as possible! Can you just let me do that?”

He realized Sacharissa was staring not at him but at his fist. He followed her gaze.

“Oh, no…what the
hell
is
this?
”

A long sharp nail projected straight upwards from the desk, an inch from his hand. It must have been at least six inches long. Pieces of paper had been impaled on it. When he picked it up, he saw that it remained upright because it had been hammered through a wooden block.

“It’s a spike,” said Sacharissa quietly. “I…I, er, brought it in to keep our papers tidy. M…my grandfather always uses one. All…all the engravers do. It’s…it’s sort of a cross between a filing cabinet and a wastepaper basket. I thought it would be useful. Er…it’ll save you using the floor.”

“Er…right, yes, good idea,” said William, looking at her reddening face. “Er…”

He couldn’t think straight.

“Mr. Goodmountain?” he yelled.

The dwarf looked up from a playbill he was setting.

“Can you put stuff in type if I dictate to you?”

“Yes.”

“Sacharissa,
please
go and find Ron and his…friends. I want to get a small paper out as soon as possible. Not tomorrow morning. Right now. Please?”

She was about to protest, and then she saw the look in his eye.

“Are you sure you’re allowed to do this?” she said.

“No! I’m not! I won’t know until after I’ve done it! That’s why I’ve got to do it! Then I’ll know! And I’m sorry I’m shouting!”