“We couldn’t let a foreign despot raise a hand to Ankh-Morpork, could we, sir?” said the butler. There was a slight tremble in his voice.
“I suppose not…”
“So it was right, what we did.”
“I suppose so…”
“The gardener was saying that Lord Vetinari put one over on the Klatchians, sir…”
“I don’t see why not. He’s done it with everyone else.”
“That would be very satisfactory, sir. Lady Sybil is in the Slightly Pink Drawing Room, sir.”
She was knitting inexpertly when Vimes came in, but rose and gave him a kiss.
“I heard the news,” she said. “Well done.” She looked him up and down. As far as she could see, he was all there.
“I’m not sure that we won…”
“Getting you back alive counts as a win, Sam. Although of course I wouldn’t say that in front of Lady Selachii.” Sybil waved the knitting at him. “She’s organized a committee to knit socks for our brave lads at the front, but it turns out you’re back. And I haven’t even worked out how to turn a heel yet. She’s probably going to be annoyed.”
“Er…how long do you think my legs are?”
“Um…” She looked at the knitting. “Do you need a scarf?”
He kissed her again.
“I’m going to have a bath and then something to eat,” he said.
The water was only lukewarm. Vimes had some hazy idea that Sybil thought that really hot baths might be letting the side down while there was a war on.
He was lying with his nose just above the surface when he heard, with the addition of that special
gloinggloing
sound that comes from listening with your ears underwater, some distant talking. Then the door opened.
“Fred’s here. Vetinari wants you,” said Sybil.
“Already? But we haven’t even
started
dinner.”
“I’m coming with you, Sam. He can’t keep on calling you out at all hours, you know.”
Sam Vimes tried to look as serious as any man can when he’s holding a loofah.
“Sybil, I’m the Commander of the Watch and he’s the ruler of the city. It’s not like going to complain to the teacher because I’m not doing well in geography…”
“I said I’m coming with you, Sam.”
The Boat slipped down its rails and into the water. A stream of bubbles came up.
Leonard sighed. He had very carefully refrained from putting the cork in. The current might roll it anywhere. He hoped it’d roll to the deepest pit of the ocean, or even right over the Rim.
He walked unnoticed through the crowds until he came to the palace. He let himself into the secret corridor and avoided the various traps without thinking, since he himself had designed them.
He reached the door to his airy room and unlocked it. When he was inside he locked it again, and pushed the key back under the door. And then he sighed.
So that was the world, was it? Clearly a mad place, with madmen in it. Well, from now on he’d be careful. It was clear that some men would try to turn
anything
into a weapon.
He made himself a cup of tea, a process slightly delayed while he designed a better sort of spoon and a small device to improve the circulation of the boiling water.
Then he sat back in his special chair and pulled a lever. Counterweights dropped. Somewhere, water sloshed from one tank to another. Bits of the chair creaked and slid into a comfortable position.
Leonard stared bleakly out of the skylight. A few seabirds turned lazily in the blue square, circling, hardly moving their wings…
After a while, his tea growing cold, Leonard began to draw.
“Lady Sybil? This is an unexpected surprise,” said Lord Vetinari. “Good evening, Sir Samuel, and may I say what a nice scarf you’re wearing. And Captain Carrot. Please sit down. We have a lot of business to finish.”
They sat.
“Firstly,” said Lord Vetinari, “I have just drafted a proclamation for the town criers. The news is good.”
“The war
is
officially over, is it?” said Carrot.
“The war, captain, never happened. It was a…misunderstanding.”
“Never happened?” said Vimes. “People got killed!”
“Quite so,” said Lord Vetinari. “And this suggests, does it not, that we should try to understand one another as much as possible?”
“What about the Prince?”
“Oh, I am sure we can do business with him, Vimes.”
“I don’t think so!”
“Prince Khufurah? I thought you rather liked the man.”
“What? What happened to the other one?”
“He appears to have gone on a long visit to the country,” said the Patrician. “At some speed.”
“You mean the kind of visit where you don’t even stop to pack?”
“That kind of visit, yes. He seems to have upset people.”
“Do we know which country?” said Vimes.
“Klatchistan, I believe—I’m sorry, did I say something funny?”
“Oh, no. No. Just a thought crossed my mind, that’s all.”
Vetinari leaned back. “And so once again peace spreads her tranquil blanket.”
“I shouldn’t think the Klatchians are very happy, though.”
“It is in the nature of people to turn on their leaders when they fail to be lucky,” Vetinari added, his expression not changing. “Oh, there will no doubt be problems. We will just have to…discuss them. Prince Khufurah is an amiable man. Very much like most of his ancestors. A flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thou, or at least a selection of thous, and he’d not be too interested in politics.”
“They’re as clever as us,” said Vimes.
“We just have to stay ahead of them, then,” said Vetinari.
“A brain race, sort of,” said Vimes.
“Better than an arms race. Cheaper, too,” said the Patrician. He flicked through the papers in front of him. “Now then, what was—Oh, yes. The matter of traffic?”
“Traffic?” Vimes’s brain tried to do a U-turn.
“Yes. Our ancient streets are becoming very congested these days. I hear there is a carter in Kings’ Way who settled down and raised a family while in the queue. And the responsibility for keeping the streets clear is, in fact, one of the most ancient ones incumbent on the Watch.”
“Maybe, sir, but these days—”
“So you will set up a department, Vimes, to regulate matters. To deal with things. Stolen carts and so on. And keeping the major crossroads clear. And perhaps to fine carters who park for too long and impede the flow. And so on. Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs would, I think, be eminently fitted for this work which, I suspect, should easily be self-financing. What is your opinion?”
A chance to be “self-financing” and not get shot at, thought Vimes. They’ll think they’ve died and gone to heaven.
“Is this some sort of a reward for them, sir?”
“Let us say, Vimes, that where one finds one has a square peg, one should look for a square hole.”
“I suppose that’s all right, sir. Of course, that means I’ll have to promote someone—”
“I am sure I can leave the details to you. A small bonus for each of them would not be out of order. Ten dollars, say. Oh, there is one other thing, Vimes. And I am particularly glad that Lady Sybil is here to hear this. I am persuaded to change the title of your office.”
“Yes?”
“‘Commander’ is rather a mouthful. So I have been reminded that a word that originally meant
commander
was ‘Dux.’”
“Dux Vimes?” said Vimes. He heard Sybil gasp.
He was aware of a waiting hush around him, such as may be found between the lighting of a fuse and the bang. He rolled the word over and over in his mind.
“
Duke
?” he said. “Oh,
no
—Sybil, could you wait outside?”
“Why. Sam?”
“I need to discuss this very personally with his lordship.”
“Have a row, you mean?”
“A discussion.”
Lady Sybil sighed. “Oh, very well. It’s up to you, Sam. You know that.”
“There are…associated matters,” said Lord Vetinari, when the door closed behind her.
“No!”
“Perhaps you should hear them.”
“No! You’ve done this to me before! We’ve got the Watch set up, we’ve almost got the numbers, the widows and orphans fund is so big the men are queueing up for the dangerous beats, and the dartboard we’ve got is nearly new! You can’t bribe me into accepting this time! There is
nothing
we want!”
“Stoneface Vimes was a much-maligned man, I’ve always thought,” said Vetinari.
“I’m not accepting—What?” Vimes skidded in mid-anger.
“I’ve always thought that, too,” said Carrot loyally.
Vetinari stood up and went to stand by the window, looking down at Broad Way with his hands behind his back.
“The thought occurs that this might be time for…reconsideration of certain ancient assumptions,” said Vetinari.
The meaning enveloped Vimes like a chilly mist.
“You’re offering to change history?” he said. “Is that it? Rewrite the—”
“Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being reexamined and reevaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can’t possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands. The Chairman of the Guild of Historians is in full agreement with me, I know, that the pivotal role of your ancestor in the city’s history is ripe for fresh…analysis.”
“Discussed it with him, have you?” said Vimes.
“
Not yet
.”
Vimes opened and shut his mouth a few times. The Patrician went back to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper.
“And, of course, other details would have to be taken care of…” he said.
“Such as?” Vimes croaked.
“The Vimes coat of arms would be resurrected, of course. It would have to be. I know Lady Sybil was extremely upset when she found you weren’t entitled to one. And a coronet, I believe, with knobs on—”
“You can take that coronet with the knobs on and—”
“—which I hope you will wear on formal occasions, such as, for example, the unveiling of the statue which has for so long disgraced the city by its absence.”
For once, Vimes managed to get ahead of the conversation.
“Old Stoneface again?” he said. “That part of it, is it? A statue to old Stoneface?”
“Well done,” said Lord Vetinari. “Not of you, obviously. Putting up a statue to someone who tried to
stop
a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we’d be melting the bronze already. No. I was thinking of the first Vimes who tried to make a future and merely made history. I thought perhaps somewhere in Peach Pie Street—”
They watched one another like cats, like poker players.
“Top of Broad Way,” Vimes said hoarsely. “Right in front of the palace.”
The Patrician glanced out of the window. “Agreed. I shall enjoy looking at it.”
“And right up close to the wall. Out of the wind.”
“Certainly.”
Vimes looked nonplussed for a moment. “We lost people—”
“Seventeen, caught in skirmishes of one sort or another,” said Lord Vetinari.
“I want—”
“Financial arrangements will be made for widows and dependants.”
Vimes gave up.
“Well done, sir!” said Carrot.
The new duke rubbed his chin.
“But that means I’ll have to be married to a duchess,” he said. “That’s a big fat word,
duchess
. And Sybil’s never been very interested in that sort of thing.”
“I bow to your knowledge of the female psyche,” said Vetinari. “I saw her face just now. No doubt when she next takes tea with her friends, who I believe include the Duchess of Quirm and Lady Selachii, she will be entirely unmoved and not faintly smug in any way.”
Vimes hesitated. Sybil was an amazingly levelheaded woman, of course, and this sort of thing…She’d left it entirely up to him, hadn’t she?…This sort of thing wouldn’t…Well, of
course
she wouldn’t, she…Of course she would, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t swank, she’d just be very comfortable knowing that they knew that she knew that they knew…
“All right,” he said, “but, look, I thought only a king could make someone a duke. It’s not like all these knights and barons, that’s just, well, political, but something like a duke needs a—”
He looked at Vetinari. And then at Carrot. Vetinari had said that he’d been
reminded
…
“I’m sure, if ever there
is
a king in Ankh-Morpork again, he will choose to ratify my decision,” said Vetinari smoothly. “And if there never is a king, well, I see no practical problems.”
“I’m bought and sold, aren’t I?” said Vimes, shaking his head. “Bought and sold.”
“Not at all,” said Vetinari.
“Yes, I am. We all are. Even Rust. And all those poor buggers who went off to get slaughtered. We’re not part of the big picture, right? We’re just bought and sold.”
Vetinari was suddenly in front of Vimes, his chair hitting the floor behind his desk.
“Really? Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!” He hesitated, and then shrugged. “And you say bought and sold? All right. But not, I think, needlessly spent.” The Patrician flashed one of those sharp, fleeting little smiles to say that something that wasn’t very funny had nevertheless amused him. “
Veni, vici
…Vetinari.”
Seaweed floated away on aimless currents. Apart from the driftwood, there was nothing to show that Leshp had ever been.
Seabirds wheeled. But their cries were more or less drowned out by the argument going on just above sea level.
“It is entirely our wood, you nodding acquaintance of a dog!”
“Oh? Really? On your side of the island, is it? I don’t
think
so!”
“It floated up!”
“How do you know we didn’t have some driftwood on our side of the island? Anyway,
we’ve
still got a barrel of fresh water, camel breath!”
“All right! We’ll share! You can have half the raft!”
“Aha! Aha! Want to negotiate, eh, now we’ve got you over a barrel?”
“Can we just say yes, Dad? I’m fed up with treading water!”
“And you’ll have to do your share of the paddling.”