It was always warm in there, because the dragons burped all the time; it was that or explode, which occasionally did happen. And there was Sybil in full dragon-keeping gear, walking calmly between the pens with a bucket in each hand, and behind her the doors at the other end were opening, and there was a short dark figure, and there was a rod with a little pilot flame on the end, and—
‘Look out! Behind you!’ Vimes yelled.
His wife stared at him, turned round, dropped the buckets and started to shout something.
And then the flame blossomed. It hit Sybil in the chest, splashed across the pens, and went out abruptly. The dwarf looked down and began to thump the pipe desperately.
The pillar of flame that was Lady Sybil said, in an authoritative voice that brooked no disobeying: ‘Lie down, Sam. Right now.’ And Sybil dropped to the sandy floor as, all down the lines of pens, dragon heads rose on long dragon necks.
Their nostrils were flaring. They were breathing in.
They’d been challenged. They’d been offended. And they’d just had their supper.
‘Good boys,’ said Sybil, from the floor.
Twenty-six streams of answering dragon fire rose to the occasion. Vimes, lying on the floor so that his body shielded Young Sam, felt the hairs crisp on the back of his neck.
This wasn’t the smoky red of the dwarf fire; this was something only a dragon’s stomach could cook up. The flames were practically invisible. At least one of them must have hit the dwarf’s weapon, because there was an explosion and something went through the roof. The dragon pens were built like a firework factory: the walls were very thick, and the roof was as thin as possible to provide a faster exit to heaven.
When the noise had died to an excited hiccuping, Vimes risked looking up. Sybil was getting to her feet, a little clumsily because of all the special clothing every dragon breeder wore.[11]
The iron of the far doors glowed around the black outline of a dwarf. A little way in front of them, two iron boots were cooling from white heat in a puddle of molten sand.
Metal went plink.
Lady Sybil reached up with heavy gloved hands, patted out some patches of burning oil on her leather apron, and lifted off her helmet. It landed on the sand with a thud.
‘Oh, Sam…’ she said softly.
‘Are you all right? Young Sam is fine. We’ve got to get out of here!’
‘Oh, Sam…’
‘Sybil, I need you to take him!’ Vimes said, speaking slowly and clearly to get through the shock. ‘There could be others out there!’
Lady Sybil’s eyes focused. ‘Give him to me,’ she ordered. ‘And you take Raja!’
Vimes looked where she was indicating. A young dragon with floppy ears and an expression of mildly concussed good humour blinked at him. He was a Golden Wouter, a breed with a flame so strong that one of them had once been used by thieves to melt their way into a bank vault.
Vimes picked him up carefully.
‘Coal him up,’ Sybil commanded.
It’s in the bloodline, Vimes told himself as he fed anthracite into Raja’s eager gullet. Sybil’s female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.
Vimes flinched as Raja burped.
‘That was a dwarf, wasn’t it?’ said Sybil, cradling Young Sam. ‘One of those deep-down ones?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did it try to kill me?’
When people are trying to kill you, it means you’re doing something right. It was a rule Sam had lived by. But this… even a real stone killer like Chrysoprase wouldn’t have tried something like this. It was insane. They will burn. They will burn.
‘I think they’re frightened of what I’m going to find out,’ said Vimes. ‘I think it’s all gone wrong for them, and they want to stop me.’
Could they have been that stupid? he wondered. A dead wife? A dead child? Could they think that would mean for one moment that I’d stop? As it is, when I catch up with whoever ordered this, and I will, I hope there’s someone there to hold me back. They will burn for what they did.
‘Oh, Sam…’ murmured Sybil, the iron mask falling for a moment.
‘I’m sorry. I never expected this,’ said Vimes. He put the dragon down and held her carefully, almost fearfully. The rage had been so strong; he had felt he might grow spikes, or snap into shards. And the headache was coming back, like a lump of lead nailed just over his eyes.
‘Whatever happened to all that, you know, hi-ho, hi-ho and being kind to poor lost orphans in the forest, Sam?’ Sybil whispered.
‘Willikins is in the house,’ he said. ‘Purity is as well.’
‘Let’s go and find them, then,’ said Sybil. She grinned, a little damply. ‘I wish you wouldn’t bring your work home with you, Sam.’
‘This time it followed me,’ said Vimes grimly. ‘But I intend to tidy it up, believe me.’ They shall bur— No! They shall be hunted down to any hole they hide in and brought back to face justice. Unless (oh, please!) they resist arrest…
Purity was standing in the hall, alongside Willikins. She was holding a trophy Klatchian sword, without much conviction. The butler had augmented his weaponry with a couple of meat cleavers, which he hefted with a certain worrying expertise.
‘My gods, man, you’re covered in blood!’ Sybil burst out.
‘Yes, your ladyship,’ said Willikins smoothly. ‘May I say in mitigation that it is not, in fact, mine.’
‘There was a dwarf in the dragon house,’ said Vimes. ‘Any sign of others?’
‘No, sir. The ones in the cellar had an apparatus for projecting fire, sir.’
‘The dwarf we saw had one too,’ said Vimes, adding: ‘It didn’t do him any good.’
‘Indeed, sir? I apprised myself of its use, sir, and tested my understanding by firing it down the tunnel they had arrived by until it ran out of igniferous juice, sir. Just in case there were more. It is for this reason, I suspect, that the shrubbery at Number Five is on fire.’
Vimes hadn’t met Willikins when they were both young. The Cockbill Street Roaring Lads had a treaty with Shamlegger Street, thus allowing them to ignore that flank while they concentrated on stopping the territorial aggression of the Pigsty Hill Dead Marmoset Gang. He was glad he hadn’t fetched up against young Willikins.
‘They must have come up for air there,’ he said. ‘The Jeffersons are on holiday.’
‘Well, if they’re not ready for that sort of thing, they shouldn’t be growing rhododendrons,’ said Sybil matter of factly. ‘What now, Sam?’
‘We’re staying the night at Pseudopolis Yard,’ said Vimes. ‘Don’t argue.’
‘Ramkins have never run away from anything,’ Sybil declared.
‘Vimeses have run like hell all the time,’ said Vimes, too diplomatic to mention the aforesaid ancestors who came home in pieces. ‘That means you fight where you want to fight. We’re all going to go and get the coach, and we’re all going down to the Yard. When we’re there I’ll send people back to pick up our stuff. Just for one night, all right?’
‘What would you like me to do with the visitors, sir?’ said Willikins, with a sidelong glance at Lady Sybil. ‘One is indeed dead, I am afraid. If you recall, I must have stabbed him with the ice knife I happened to be holding, having been cutting ice for the kitchen,’ he added, poker-faced.