It was because of his son that everyone was staying in the boats.
A party of Ankh-Morpork fishermen had gone ashore that morning to search for the heaps of treasure that everyone knew littered the ocean bottom and had found a tiled floor, washed clean by the rain. Pretty blue and white squares showed a pattern of waves and shells and, in the middle, a squid.
And Les had said, “That looks pretty big, Dad.”
And everyone had looked around at the weed-covered buildings and had shared the Thought, which remained unspoken but was made up of a lot of little thoughts like the occasional ripples in the pools, and the little splashes in the dark water of cellars that made the mind think of claws, winnowing the deeps, and the odd things that sometimes got washed up on beaches or turned up in nets. Sometimes you pulled things over the side that’d put a man off fish for life.
And suddenly no one wanted to explore any more, just in case they found something.
Solid Jackson pulled his head back under the cover.
“Why’n’t we going home, Dad?” said his son. “You said this place gives you the willies.”
“All right, but they’re
Ankh-Morpork
willies, see? And no foreigner’s going to get his hands on them.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, lad?”
“Who was Mr. Hong?”
“How should I know?”
“Only, when we was all heading back for the boats one of the other men said, ‘We all know what happened to Mr. Hong when he opened the Three Jolly Luck Take-Away Fish Bar on the site of the old fish-god temple in Dagon Street on the night of the full moon, don’t we…?’ Well,
I
don’t know.”
“Ah…” Solid Jackson hesitated. Still, Les was a big lad now…
“He…closed up and left in a bit of a hurry, lad. So quick he had to leave some things behind.”
“Like what?”
“If you must know…half an earhole and one kidney.”
“Cool!”
The boat rocked, and wood splintered. Jackson jerked the cover up. Spray washed over him. Somewhere close in the wet darkness a voice shouted: “Why you not carrying lights, you second cousin of a jackal?”
Jackson pulled out the lantern and held it up.
“What’re you doing in Ankh-Morpork territorial waters, you camel-eating devil?”
“These waters belong to us!”
“We were here first!”
“Yeah?
We
were here first!”
“We were here first
first
!”
“You damaged my boat! That’s
piracy
, that is!”
There were other shouts around them. In the darkness the two flotillas had collided. Bowsprits tore away rigging. Hulls boomed. The controlled panic that is normal sailing became the frantic panic composed of darkness, spray and too much rigging coming unrigged.
At times like this the ancient traditions of the sea that unite all mariners should come to the fore and see them combine in the face of their common foe, the hungry and relentless ocean.
However, at this point Mr. Arif hit Mr. Jackson over the head with an oar.
“Hnh? Wuh?”
Vimes opened the only eye that appeared to respond. A horrible sight met it.
…
I read him his rites, whereupon, he said up, yours copper. Sgnt Detritus then, cautioned him, upon which he said, ouch
…
There may be a lot of things I’m not good at, thought Vimes, but at least I don’t treat the punctuation of a sentence like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey…
He rolled his head away from Carrot’s fractured grammar. The pile of paper shifted under him.
Vimes’s desk was becoming famous. Once there were piles, but they had slipped as piles do, forming this dense compacted layer that was now turning into something like peat. It was said there were plates and unfinished meals somewhere down there. No one wanted to check. Some people said they’d heard movement.
There was a genteel cough. Vimes rolled his head again and looked up into the big pink face of Willikins, Lady Sybil’s butler.
His
butler, too, technically, although Vimes hated to think of him like that.
“I think we had better proceed with alacrity, Sir Samuel. I have brought your dress uniform, and your shaving things are by the basin.”
“What? What?”
“You are due at the University in half an hour. Lady Sybil has vouchsafed to me that if you are not there she will utilize your intestines for hosiery accessories, sir.”
“Was she smiling?” said Vimes, staggering to his feet and making his way to the steaming basin on the washstand.
“Only slightly, sir.”
“Oh gods…”
“
Yes
, sir.”
Vimes made an attempt at shaving while, behind him, Willikins brushed and polished. Outside, the city’s clocks began to strike ten.
It must’ve been almost four when I sat down, Vimes thought. I know I heard the shift change at eight, and then I had to sort out Nobby’s expenses, that’s advanced mathematics if ever there was some…
He tried to yawn and shave at the same time, which is never a good idea.
“Damn!”
“I shall fetch some tissue paper directly, sir,” said Willikins, without looking round. As Vimes dabbed at his chin, the butler went on: “I should like to take this opportunity to raise a matter of some import, sir…”
“Yes?” Vimes stared blearily at the red tights that seemed to be a major item of his dress uniform.
“Regretfully, I am afraid I must ask leave to give in my notice, sir. I wish to join the Colors.”
“Which colors are these, Willikins?” said Vimes, holding up a shirt with puffed sleeves. Then his brain caught up with his ears. “You want to become a
soldier
?”
“They say Klatch needs to be taught a sharp lesson, sir. A Willikins has never been found wanting when his country calls. I thought that Lord Venturi’s Heavy Infantry would do for me. They have a particularly attractive uniform of red and white, sir. With gold frogging.”
Vimes pulled his boots on. “You’ve had military experience, have you?”
“Oh, no, sir. But I am a quick learner, sir, and I believe I have some prowess with the carving knife.” The butler’s face showed a patriotic alertness.
“On turkeys and so on…” said Vimes.
“Yes, sir,” said Willikins, buffing up the ceremonial helmet.
“And you’re off to fight the screaming hordes in Klatch, are you?”
“If it should come to that, sir,” said Willikins. “I think this is adequately polished now, sir.”
“A very sandy place, so they say.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Willikins, adjusting the helmet under Vimes’s chin.
“And rocky. Very rocky. Lots of rocks. Dusty, too.”
“Very parched in parts, sir, I believe you are correct.”
“And so into this land of sand-colored dust and sand-colored rocks and sand-colored sand
you
, Willikins, will march with your expertise in cutlery and your red and white uniform?”
“With the gold frogging, sir.” Willikins thrust out his jaw. “Yes, sir. If the need arises.”
“You don’t see anything wrong with this picture?”
“Sir?”
“Oh, never mind.” Vimes yawned. “Well, we shall miss you, Willikins.” Others may not, he thought. Especially if they have time for a second shot.
“Oh, Lord Venturi says it’ll all be over by Hogswatch, sir.”
“Really? I didn’t know it had started.”
Vimes ran down the stairs and into a smell of curry.
“We saved you some, sir,” said Sergeant Colon. “You was asleep when the lad brought it round.”
“It was Goriff’s kid,” said Nobby, chasing a bit of rice around his tin plate. “Enough for half the shift.”
“The rewards of duty,” said Vimes, hurrying toward the door.
“Bread and mango pickle and everything,” said Colon happily. “I’ve always said old Goriff isn’t that bad for a rag’ead.”
A pool of sizzling oil
…Vimes stopped at the door.
The family, huddling together
…He took out his watch. It was twenty past ten. If he ran—
“Fred, could you just step up to my office?” he said. “It won’t take a moment.”
“Right, sir.”
Vimes ushered the sergeant up the stairs and closed the door.
Nobby and the other watchmen strained to listen, but there was no sound except for a low murmuring which went on for some time.
The door opened again. Vimes came down the stairs.
“Nobby, come up to the University in five minutes, will you? I want to stay in touch and I’m damned if I’m taking a pigeon with this uniform on.”
“Right, sir.”
Vimes left.
A few moments later Sergeant Colon walked carefully down to the main office. He had a slightly glassy look and walked back to his desk with the nonchalance that only the extremely worried try to achieve. He toyed with some paper for a while and then said:
“You don’t mind what people call
you
, do you, Nobby?”
“I’d be minding the whole time if I minded that, sarge,” said Corporal Nobbs cheerfully.
“Right. Right! And
I
don’t mind what people call
me
, neither.” Colon scratched his head. “Don’t make sense, really. I reckon Sir Sam is missing too much sleep.”
“He’s a very busy man, Fred.”
“Trying to do everything, that’s his trouble. And…Nobby?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Sergeant Colon, thanks.”
There was sherry. There was always sherry at these occasions. Sam Vimes could regard it dispassionately, since he always drank fruit juice these days. He’d heard they made sherry by letting wine go rotten. He couldn’t see the
point
of sherry.
“And you will
try
to look dignified, won’t you?” said Lady Sybil, adjusting his cloak.
“Yes, dear.”
“What will you try to look?”
“Dignified, dear.”
“And
please
try to be diplomatic.”
“Yes, dear.”
“What will you try to be?”
“Diplomatic, dear.”
“You’re using your ‘henpecked’ voice, Sam.”
“Yes, dear.”
“You know that’s not fair.”
“No, dear.” Vimes raised a hand in a theatrical gesture of submission. “All right, all
right
. It’s just these feathers. And these tights.” He winced and tried to do some surreptitious rearranging in an effort to prevent himself becoming the city’s first hunchgroin. “I mean, supposing people
see
me?”
“Of course they’ll see you, Sam. You’re leading the procession. And I’m
very
proud of you.”
She brushed some lint off his shoulder.
*
Feathers in my hat, Vimes thought glumly. And fancy tights. And a shiny breastplate. A breastplate shouldn’t be shiny. It should be too dented to take a decent polish. And diplomatic talk? How should I know how to talk diplomatically?
“And now I must go and have a word with Lady Selachii,” said Lady Sybil. “You’ll be all right, will you? You keep yawning.”
“Of course. Didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all.”
“You promise not to run away?”
“
Me
? I
never
run—”
“You ran away before the big soirée for the Genuan ambassador. Everyone saw you.”
“I’d just got news that the De Bris gang were robbing Vortin’s strongroom!”
“But
you
don’t have to chase everyone, Sam. You employ people for that now.”
“We got ’em, though,” said Vimes, with satisfaction.
He’d enjoyed it immensely, too. It wasn’t just the pursuit that was so invigorating, with his velvet cloak left behind on a tree and his hat in a puddle somewhere, it was the knowledge that while he was doing this he wasn’t eating very small sandwiches and making even smaller talk. It wasn’t proper police work, Vimes considered, unless you were doing something that someone somewhere would much rather you weren’t doing.
When Sybil had disappeared into the crowd he found a handy shadow and lurked in it. It enabled him to see almost the whole of the University’s Great Hall.
He quite liked the wizards. They didn’t commit crimes. Not Vimes’s type of crimes, anyway. The occult wasn’t Vimes’s beat. The wizards might well mess up the very fabric of time and space but they didn’t lead to paperwork, and that was fine by Vimes.
There were a lot of them in the hall, in all their glory. And there was nothing finer than a wizard dressed up formally, until someone could find a way of inflating a Bird of Paradise, possibly by using an elastic band and some kind of gas. But the wizards were getting a run for their money, because the rest of the guests were either nobles or guild leaders or both, and an occasion like the Convivium brought out the peacock in everyone.
His gaze went from face to chatting face, and he wondered idly what each person was guilty of.
*
Quite a few of the ambassadors were there, too. They were easy to pick out. They wore their national costumes, but since by and large their national costumes were what the average peasant wore they looked slightly out of place in them. Their bodies wore feathers and silks, but their minds persistently wore suits.
They chatted in small groups. One or two nodded and smiled to him as they passed.
The world is watching
, Vimes thought. If something went wrong and this stupid Leshp business started a war, it’s men like these who’d be working out exactly how to deal with the winner, whoever it was. Never mind who started it, never mind how it was fought, they’d want to know how to deal with things
now
. They represented what people called the “international community.” And like all uses of the word “community,” you were never quite sure what or who it was.
He shrugged. It wasn’t his world, thank goodness.
He sidled over to Corporal Nobbs, who was standing by the main doors in the sort of lopsided slouch which was the closest a living Nobbs could come to attention.
“All quiet, Nobby?” he said, out of the corner of his mouth.
“Yessir.”
“Nothing going on
at all
?”
“Nossir. Not a pigeon anywhere, sir.”
“What, nowhere? Nothing?”
“Nossir.”