"That"s what I thought too, sir."
Vimes sighed. "I hate the political ones."
When they"d gone, Lady Sybil sat for a while staring at her hands. Then she took a lamp into the library and pulled down a slim volume bound in white leather on which had been embossed in gold the words "OUR WEDDING".
It had been a strange event. Ankh-Morpork"s high society - so high that it"s stinking, Sam always said - had turned up, mostly out of curiosity. She was Ankh-Morpork"s most eligible spinster, who"d never thought she"d be married, and he was a mere captain of the guard who tended to annoy a lot of people.
And here were the iconographs of the event. There she was, looking rather more expansive than radiant, and there Sam was, scowling at the viewer with his hair hastily smoothed down. There was Sergeant Colon with his chest inflated so much his feet had almost left the ground, and Nobby grinning widely or perhaps just making a face; it was so hard to tell with Nobby.
Sybil turned over the pages with care. She had put a sheet of tissue between each one to protect them.
In many ways, she told herself, she was very lucky. She was proud of Sam. He worked hard for a lot of people. He cared about people who weren"t important. He always had far more to cope with than was good for him. He was the most civilized man she"d ever met. Not a gentleman, thank goodness, but a gentle man.
She never really knew what it was he did. Oh, she knew what the job was, but by all accounts he didn"t spend much time behind his desk. When he eventually came to bed, he tended to drop his clothes straight into the laundry basket, so she"d only hear later from the laundry girl about the bloodstains and the mud. There were rumours of chases over rooftops, hand-to-hand and knee-to-groin fights with men who had names like Harry "The Boltcutter" Weems...
There was a Sam Vimes she knew, who went out and came home again, and out there was another Sam Vimes who hardly belonged to her and lived in the same world as all those men with the dreadful names.
Sybil Ramkin had been brought up to be thrifty, thoughtful, genteel in an outdoor sort of way, and to think kindly of people.
She looked at the pictures again, in the silence of the house. Then she blew her nose loudly and went off to do the packing and other sensible things.
Corporal Cheery Littlebottom pronounced her name "Cheri". She was a she, and therefore a rare bloom in Ankh-Morpork.
It wasn"t that dwarfs weren"t interested in sex. They saw the vital need for fresh dwarfs to leave their goods to and continue the mining work after they had gone. It was simply that they also saw no point in distinguishing between the sexes anywhere but in private. There was no such thing as a dwarfish female pronoun or, once the children were on solids, any such thing as women"s work.
Then Cheery Littlebottom had arrived in Ankh-Morpork and had seen that there were men out there who did not wear chain-mail or leather underwear , but did wear interesting colours and exciting make-up, and these men were called "women". And in the little bullet head the thought had arisen: "Why not me?"
Now she was being denounced in cellars and dwarf bars across the city, as the first dwarf in Ankh-Morpork to wear a skirt. It was hard wearing brown leather and as objectively erotic as a piece of wood but, as some older dwarfs would point out, somewhere under there were his knees.
Worse, they were now finding that among their sons were some - they choked on the word - "daughters". Cheery was only the frothy bit on the tip of the wave. Some younger dwarfs were shyly wearing eyeshadow and declaring that, as a matter of fact, they didn"t like beer. A current was running through dwarf society.
Dwarf society was not against a few wellthrown rocks in the direction of those bobbing on the current, but Captain Carrot had put the word on the street that this would be assault on an officer, a subject on which the Watch held views, and however short the miscreants their feet really would not touch the ground.
Cheery had retained her beard and round iron helmet, of course. It was one thing to declare that you were female, but quite unthinkable to declare that you weren"t a dwarf. "
"Open and shut case, sir," she said when she saw Vimes come in. "They opened the window in the back room to get in, a very neat job, and didn"t shut the front door after they left. Smashed the Scone"s case. There"s the glass all round the stand. Didn"t take anything else that I can see. Left a lot of footprints in the dust. I took a few pictures, but they"re scuffed up and weren"t much good in the first place. That"s about it, really."
"No dropped fag-ends, wallets or bits of paper with an address on them?" said Vimes.
"No, sir. They were inconsiderate thieves."
"They certainly were," said Carrot grimly.
"A question that springs to mind," said Vimes, "is: why does it reek even worse of cat"s piss now?"
"It is rather sharp, isn"t it?" said Cheery. "With a hint of sulphur, too. Constable Ping said it was like this when he arrived, but there"s no cat prints."
Vimes crouched down and looked at the broken glass. "How did we find out about this?" he said, prodding a few fragments.
"Constable Ping heard the tinkle, sir. He went round the back and saw the window was open. Then the crooks got out through the front door."
"Sorry about that, sir," said Ping, stepping forward and saluting. He was a cautious-looking young man who appeared permanently poised to answer a question.
"We all make mistakes," said Vimes. "You heard glass break?"
"Yessir. And someone swore."
"Really? What did they say
"Er... "Bugger", sir."
"And you went around the back and saw the broken window and you... ?"
"I called out, "Is there anyone there?" sir."
"Really? And what would you have done if a voice had said "No"? No, don"t answer that. What happened next?"
"Er... I heard a lot more glass break and when I got round to the front the door was open and they were gone. So I legged it back to the Yard and told Captain Carrot, sir, knowing he sets a lot of store by this place."
"Thank you... Ping, is it?"
"Yessir." Entirely unasked, but obviously prepared to answer, Ping said, "It"s a dialect word meaning "watermeadow", sir."
"Off you go, then."
The lance-constable visibly sagged with relief, and left.
Vimes let his mind unfocus a little. He enjoyed moments like these, the little bowl of time when the crime lay before him and he believed that the world was capable of being solved. This was the time you really looked to see what was there, and sometimes the things that weren"t there were the most interesting things of all.
The Scone had been kept on a plinth about three feet high, inside a case made of five sheets of glass forming a box that was screwed down on the plinth.
"They smashed the glass by accident," he said eventually.
"Really, sir?"
"Look here, see?" Vimes pointed to three loose screws, neatly lined up. "They were trying to take the box apart carefully. It must have slipped."
"But what"s the point?" said Carrot. "It"s just a replica, sir! Even if you could find a buyer, it"s not worth more than a few dollars."
"If it"s a good one you could swap it with the real thing," said Vimes.
"Well, yes, I suppose you could try," said Carrot. "There would be a bit of a problem, though."
"What is it?"
"Dwarfs aren"t stupid, sir. The replica has got a big cross carved into the underside. And it"s only made of plaster in any case."
"Oh."
"But it was a good idea, sir," Carrot said encouragingly. "You weren"t to know."
"I wonder if the thieves knew."
"Even if they didn"t, they wouldn"t have a hope of getting away with it, sir."
"The real Scone is very well guarded," said Cheery. "It"s very rare that most dwarfs get a chance to see it."
"And other people would notice if you had a great lump of rock up your jumper," said Vimes, more or less to himself. "So, this was a stupid crime. But it doesn"t feel stupid. I mean, why go to all this trouble? The lock on that door is a joke. You could kick it right out of the woodwork. If I was going to pinch this thing, I could be in here and out again before the glass had stopped tinkling. What would be the point of being quiet at this time of night?"
The dwarf had been rummaging under a nearby display cabinet. She drew her hand out. Drying blood glistened on the blade of a screwdriver.
"See?" said Vimes. "Something slipped, and someone cut their hand. What"s the point of all this, Carrot? Cat"s piss and sulphur and screwdrivers... I hate it when you get too many clues. It makes it so damn hard to solve anything."
He threw the screwdriver down. By sheer luck it hit the floorboards tip first and stood there shuddering.
"I"m going home," he said. "We"ll find out what this is all about when it starts to smell."
Vimes spent the following morning trying to learn about two foreign countries. One of them turned out to be called Ankh-Morpork.
Uberwald was easy. It was five or six times bigger than the whole of the Sto Plains, and stretched all the way up to the Hub. It was so thickly forested, so creased by little mountain ranges and beset by rivers, that it was largely unmapped. It was mostly unexplored, too. The people who lived there had other things on their minds, and the people from outside who came to explore went into the forests and never came out again. And for centuries no one had bothered about the place. You couldn"t sell things to people hidden by too many trees.
It was probably the coach road that had changed everything, a few years back, when they drove it all the way through to Genua. A road is built to follow. Mountain people had always gravitated to the plains, and in recent years Uberwald folk had joined them. The news got back home: there"s money to be made in Ankh-Morpork, bring the kids. You don"t need to bring the garlic, though, because all the vampires work down at the kosher butchers". And if you"re pushed in Ankh-Morpork, you"re allowed to push back. No one cares enough about you to want to kill you.
Vimes could just about tell the difference between the Uberwald dwarfs and the ones from Copperhead, who were shorter, noisier and rather more at home among humans. The Uberwald dwarfs were quiet, tended to scuttle around corners, and often didn"t speak Morporkian. In some of the alleys off Treacle Mine Road you could believe you were in another country. But they were what every copper desires in a citizen. They were no trouble. They mostly had jobs working for one another, they paid their taxes rather more readily than humans did, although to be honest there were small piles of mouse droppings that yielded more money than most Ankh-Morpork citizens, and generally any problems they had they sorted out amongst themselves. If such people ever come to the attention of the police, it"s usually only as a chalk outline.
It turned out, though, that within the community, behind the grubby facades of all those tenements and workshops in Cable Street and Whalebone Lane, there were vendettas and feuds that, had their origins in two adjoining mine shafts five hundred miles away and a thousand years ago. There were pubs you only drank in if you were from a particular mountain. There were streets you didn"t walk down if your clan mined a particular lode. The way you wore your helmet, the way you parted your beard spoke complicated volumes to other dwarfs. They didn"t even hand a piece of paper to Vimes.
"Then there"s the way you krazak your G"ardrgh," said Corporal Littlebottom.
"I won"t even ask," said Vimes.
"I"m afraid I can"t explain in any case," said Cheery.
"Have I got a Gaadrerghuh?" said Vimes.
Cheery winced at the mispronunciation. "Yes, sir. Everyone has. But only a dwarf can krazak his properly," she said. "Or hers," she added.
Vimes sighed and looked down at the pages of scrawl in his notebook under the heading "Uberwald". He wasn"t strictly aware of it, but he treated even geography as if he was investigating a crime ("Did you see who carved out the valley? Would you recognize that glacier if you saw it again?").
"I"m going to make a lot of mistakes, Cheery," he said.
"I shouldn"t worry about that, sir. Humans always do. But most dwarfs can spot if you"re trying not to make them."
"Are you sure you don"t mind coming?"
"Got to face it sooner or later, sir."
Vimes shook his head sadly. "I don"t get it, Cheery. There"s all this fuss about a female dwarf trying to act like, like - "
"A lady, sir?"
"Right, and yet no one says anything about Carrot being called a dwarf, but he"s a human - "
"No, sir. Like he says, he"s a dwarf. He was adopted by dwarfs, he"s performed the Y"grad, he observes the j"kargra insofar as that"s possible in a city. He"s a dwarf."
"He"s six foot high!"
"He"s a tall dwarf, sir. We don"t mind if he wants to be a human as well. Not even the drudak"ak would have a problem with that."
"I"m running out of throat sweets here, Cheery. What was that?"
"Look, sir, most of the dwarfs here are... well, I suppose you"d call them liberal, sir. They"re mainly from the mountains behind Copperhead, you know? They get along with humans. Some of them even acknowledge that... they"ve got daughters, sir. But some of the more... old fashioned... Uberwald dwarfs haven"t got out so much. They act as if B"hrian Bloodaxe was still alive. That"s why we call them drudak"ak."
Vimes had a go, but he knew that to really speak dwarfish you needed a lifetime"s study and, if at all possible, a serious throat infection.
" "above ground"... "they negatively"..." he faltered.
" "They do not get out in the fresh air enough," " Cheery supplied.
"Ah, right. And everyone thought the new king was going to be one of these?"
"They say Albrecht"s never seen sunlight in his life. His clan never goes above ground in daylight. Everyone was certain it"d be him."
And as it turned out it wasn"t, thought Vimes. Some of the Uberwald dwarfs hadn"t supported him. And the world had moved on. There were plenty of dwarfs around now who had been born in Ankh-Morpork. Their kids went around with their helmets on back to front and spoke dwarfish only at home. Many of them wouldn"t know a pick-axe if you hit them with it. They weren"t about to be told how to run their lives by an old dwarf sitting on a stale bun under some distant mountain.
He tapped his pencil on his notebook thoughtfully. And because of this, he thought, dwarfs are punching one another on my streets.
"I"ve seen more of those dwarf sedan chair things around lately," he said. "You know, the ones carried by a couple of trolls. They have thick leather curtains..."
<>"Drudak"ak," said Cheery. "Very... traditional dwarfs. If they have to go out in daylight, they don"t look at it."
"I don"t recall them a year ago."
Cheery shrugged. "There"s lots of dwarfs here now, sir. The drudak"ak feel they"re among dwarfs now. They don"t have to deal with humans for anything."
"They don"t like us?"
"They won"t even talk to a human. They"re fairly choosy about talking to most dwarfs, to tell you the truth."
"That"s daft!" said Vimes. "How do they get food? You can"t live on fungi! How do they trade ore, dam streams, get wood for shoring up their shafts?"
"Well, either other dwarfs are paid to do it or humans are employed," said Cheery. "They can afford it. They"re very good miners. Well, they own very good mines, in any case."
"Sounds to me they"re a bunch of - " Vimes stopped himself. He was aware that a wise man should always respect the folkways of others, to use Carrot"s happy phrase, but Vimes often had difficulty with this idea. For one thing, there were people in the world whose folkways consisted of gutting other people like clams and this was not a procedure that commanded, in Vimes, any kind of respect at all.
"I"m not thinking diplomatically, am I?" he said. Cheery watched him with a carefully blank expression.
"Oh, I don"t know about that, sir," she said. "You didn"t actually finish the sentence. And, well, a lot of dwarfs respect them. You know... feel better for seeing them."
Vimes looked puzzled. Then understanding dawned.
"Oh, I get it," he said. "I bet they say things like "Thank goodness people are keeping up the old ways," eh?"
"That"s right, sir. I suppose that inside every dwarf in Ankh-Morpork is a little part of him - or her - that knows real dwarfs live underground."
Vimes doodled on his notepad. "Back home," he thought. Carrot had innocently talked about dwarfs "back home". To all dwarfs far, away, the mountains were "back home". It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren"t the people the people who made up the phrase "people are people everywhere" had traditionally thought of as people. And even if you weren"t virtuous, as you had been brought up to understand the term, you did like to see virtue in other people, provided it did not cost you anything.
"Why have these d"r... these traditional dwarfs come here, though? Ankh-Morpork"s full of humans. They must have their work cut out avoiding humans."
"They"re... needed, sir. Dwarf law is complicated, and there"s often disputes. And they conduct marriages and that sort of thing."
"You make them sound more like priests."
"Dwarfs aren"t religious, sir."
"Of course. Oh, well. Thank you, corporal. Off you go. Any fallout from last night? No sulphurous incontinent cats have come forward to confess?"
"No, sir. The Campaign for Equal Heights has put out a pamphlet saying it was another example of the second-class treatment of dwarfs in the city, but it was the same one they always put out. You know, the one with blanks to fill in the details."
"Nothing changes, Cheery. See you tomorrow morning, then. Send Detritus up."
Why him? Ankh-Morpork was lousy with diplomats. It was practically what the upper classes were for, and it was easy for them because half the foreign bigwigs they"d meet were old chums they"d played Wet Towel Tag with back at school. They tended to be on first-name terms, even with people whose names were Ahmed or Fong. They knew which forks to use. They hunted, shot and fished. They moved in circles that more or less overlapped the circles of their foreign hosts, and were a long way from the rather grubby circles that people like Vimes went around in every working day. They knew all the right nods and winks. What chance had he got against a tie and a crest?
Vetinari was throwing him amongst the wolves. And the dwarfs. And the vampires. Vimes shuddered. And Vetinari never did anything without a reason.
"Come in, Detritus."
It always amazed Sergeant Detritus that Vimes knew he was at the door. Vimes had never mentioned that the office wall creaked and bent inwards as the big troll made his way along the corridor.
"You want to see me, sir."
"Yes. Sit down, man. It"s this Uberwald business."
"Yessir."
"How do you feel about visiting the old country?"
Detritus"s face remained impassive, as it always did when he was waiting patiently for things to make sense.
"Uberwald, I mean," Vimes prompted.
"Dunno, sir. I was just a pebble when we left dere. Dad wanted a better life in der big city."
"There"ll be a lot of dwarfs, Detritus." Vimes didn"t bother to mention vampires and werewolves. Either of those who attacked a troll was making the last big mistake of its career in any case. Detritus carried a 2,000 lb.-draw crossbow as a hand weapon.
"Days Okay, sir. I"m very modern "bout dwarfs."
"These might be a bit old-fashioned about you, though."
"Dem deep-down dwarfs?"
"That"s right."
"I heard about dem."
"There"s still wars with trolls up near the Hub, I hear. Tact and diplomacy will be called for."
"You have come to der right troll for dat, sir," said Detritus.
"You did push that man through that wall last week, Detritus."
"It was done with tact, sir. Quite a fin wall."
Vimes let it go at that. The man in question had just laid out three watchmen with a club, which Detritus had broken in one hand before selecting the suitably tactful wall.
"See you tomorrow, then. Best dress armour, remember. Send Angua now, please."
"She"s not here, sir."
"Blast. Put out some messages for her, will you?"
Igor lurched through the castle corridors, dragging one foot after the other in the approved fashion.
He was Igor, son of Igor, nephew of several Igors, brother of Igors and cousin of more Igors than he could remember without checking up in his diary. Igors did not change a winning formula.
And, as a clan, Igors liked working for vampires. Vampires kept regular hours, were generally polite to their servants and, an important extra, didn"t require much work in the bedmaking and cookery department, and tended to have cool, roomy cellars where an Igor could pursue his true calling. This more than made up for those occasions when you had to sweep up their ashes.
He entered Lady Margolotta"s crypt and knocked politely on the coffin lid. It moved aside a fraction.
"Yes?"
"Thorry to wake you in the middle of the afternoon, your ladythip, but you did thay - "
"All right. And - ?"
"It"s going to be Vimeth, ladythip."
A dainty hand came out of the partly opened coffin and punched the air.
"Yes!"
"Meth, ladythip."
"Vell, vell. Samuel Vimes. Poor devil. Do the doggies know?"
Igor nodded. "The Baron"th Igor wath altho collecting a methage, ladythip."
"And the dwarfs?"
"It ith an official appointment, ladythip. Everyone knowth. Hith Grathe the Duke of Ankh, Thir Thamuel Vimeth, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork Thity Watch."
"Then the midden has hit the windmill, Igor."
"Very well put, ladythip. No one liketh a thort thower of thit."
"I imagine, Igor, that he"ll leave them behind."
Let us consider a castle from the point of view of its furniture.
This one has chairs, yes, but they don"t look very lived in. There is a huge sofa near the fire, and that is ragged with use, but other furnishings look as if they"re there merely for show.
There is a long oak table, well polished and looking curiously unused for such an old piece of furniture. Possibly the reason for this is that. on the floor around it are a large number of white earthenware bowls.
One of them has "Father" written on it.
The Baroness Serafine von Uberwald slammed shut Twurp"s Peerage, irritably.
"The man is a... a nothing," she said. "A paper man. A man of straw. An insult."
"The name Vimes goes back a long time," said Wolfgang von Uberwald, who was doing one-handed press-ups in front of the fire.
"So does the name Smith. What of it?"
Wolf changed to the other hand, in mid-air. He was naked. He liked his muscles to get an airing. They shone. Someone with an anatomical chart could have picked out every one. They might also have remarked on the unusual way his blond hair grew not only on his head but down and across his shoulders as well.
"He is a duke, Mother."
"Hah! Ankh-Morpork hasn"t even got a king!"
"... nineteen, twenty... I hear stories about that, Mother..."
"Oh, stories. Sybil writes silly little letters to me every year! Sam this, Sam that. Of course, she had to be grateful for what she could get, but... the man is just a thief-taker, after all. I shall refuse to see him."
"You will not do that, Mother," Wolf grunted. "That would be... twenty-nine, thirty... dangerous. What do you tell Lady Sybil about us?"
"Nothing! I don"t write back, of course. A rather sad and foolish woman."
"And she still writes every year?... thirty-six, thirty-seven..."
"Yes. Four pages, usually. And that tells you everything about her you need to know. Where is your father?"
A flap in the bottom of a nearby door swung back and a large, heavy-set wolf trotted in. It glanced around the room and then shook itself vigorously. The Baroness bridled.
"Guye! You know what I said! It"s after six! Change when you come in from the garden!"
The wolf gave her a look and strolled behind a massive oak screen at the far end of the room. There was a... noise, soft and rather strange, not so much an actual sound as a change in the texture of the air.
The Baron walked around from behind the screen, doing up the cord of a tattered dressing gown. The Baroness sniffed.
"At least your father wears clothes," she said.
"Clothes are unhealthy, Mother," said Wolf calmly. "Nakedness is purity."
The Baron sat down. He was a large, red-faced man, insofar as a face could be seen under the beard, hair, moustache and eyebrows, which were engaged in a bitter four-way war over the remaining areas of bare skin.
"Well?" he growled.
"Vimes the thief-taker from Ankh-Morpork is going to be the alleged ambassador!" snapped the Baroness.
"Dwarfs?"
"Of course they"ll be told."
The Baron sat staring at nothing, with the same expression Detritus used when a new thought was being assembled.
"Bad?" he ventured, at last.
"Guye, I"ve told you about this a thousand times!" said the Baroness. "You"re spending far too much time changed! You know what you"re like afterwards. Supposing we had official visitors?"
"Bite "em!"
"You see? Go on off to bed and don"t come down until you"re fit to be human!"
"Vimes could ruin everything, Father," said Wolfgang. He was now doing handstands, using one hand.
"Guye! Down!"
The Baron stopped trying to scratch his ear with his leg. "Do?" he said.
Wolfgang"s gleaming body dipped a moment as he changed hands again.
"City life makes men weak. Vimes will be fun. They do say he likes running, though." He gave a little laugh. "We shall have to see how fast he is."
"His wife says he"s very soft-hearted - Guye! Don"t you dare do that! If you"re going to do that sort of thing do it upstairs!"
The Baron looked only moderately ashamed, but readjusted his clothing anyway.
"Bandits!" he said.
"Yes, they could be a problem at this time of year," said Wolfgang.
"At least a dozen," said the Baroness. "Yes, that should - "
Wolf grunted, upside down. "No, Mother. You are being stupid. His coach must get here safely. You understand? When he is here... that is a different matter."
The Baron"s massive eyebrows tangled with a thought. "Plan! King!"
"Exactly."
The Baroness sighed. "I don"t trust that little dwarf."
Wolf somersaulted on to his feet. "No. But trustworthy or not, he"s all we"ve got. Vimes must get here, with his soft heart. He may even be useful. Perhaps we should... assist matters."
"Why?" snapped the Baroness. "Let Ankh-Morpork look after their own!"
There was a knock on the door while Vimes was having breakfast. Willikins ushered in a small thin man in neat but threadbare black clothes, whose overlarge head gave him the appearance of a lolly nearing the last suck. He carried a black bowler hat the way a soldier carries his helmet, and walked like a man who had something wrong with his knees.
"I am so sorry to disturb your grace..."
Vimes laid down his knife. He"d been peeling an orange. Sybil insisted he eat fruit.
"Not your grace," he said. "Just Vimes. Sir Samuel, if you must. Are you Vetinari"s man?"
"Inigo Skimmer, sir. Mhm-mhm. I am to travel with you to Uberwald."
"Ah, you"re the clerk who"s going to do all the whispering and winking while I hand around the cucumber sandwiches, are you?"
"I will try to be of service, sir, although I"m not much of a winker. Mhm-mhm."
"Would you like some breakfast?"
"I ate already, sir. Mhm-mhm."
Vimes looked the clerk up and down. It wasn"t so mush that his head was big, it was simply that someone appeared to have squeezed the bottom half of it and forced everything up into the top. He was going bald, too, and had carefully teased the remaining strands of hair across the pink dome. It was hard to tell his age. He could be twenty-five and a big worrier, or a fresh-faced forty. Vimes inclined to the former - the man had the look of someone who had spent his life watching the world over the top of a book. And there was that... well, was it a nervous laugh? A giggle? An unfortunate way of clearing his throat?
And that strange way he walked...
"Not even some toast? A piece of fruit? These oranges are fresh from Klatch, I really can recommend them."
Vimes tossed one at the man. It bounced off his arm, and Skimmer took a step backwards, mildly appalled at the upper class"s habit of fruithurling.
"Are you all right, sir? Mhm-mhm?"
"Sorry about that," said Vimes. "I was carried away by fruit."
He laid aside his napkin and got up from the table, putting his arm around Skimmer"s shoulders.
