‘Yes, it was like tar in there. There really wasn’t much proper food in the store, but I managed to make you a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.’
‘Thank you, dear.’ Vimes cautiously lifted a corner of the bread with his stricken pencil. There seemed to be too much lettuce, which was to say, there was some lettuce.
‘There’s a lot of dwarfs come to see you, Sam,’ said Sibyl, as if this was preying on her mind.
Vimes stood up so fast that his chair fell over. ‘Is Young Sam all right?’ he said.
‘Yes, Sam. They’re city dwarfs. You know them all, I think. They say they want to talk to you about—’
But Vimes was already clattering down the stairs, drawing his sword as he did so.
The dwarfs were clustered nervously by the duty officer’s desk. They had that opulence of metalwork, sleekness of beard and thickness of girth that marked them out as dwarfs who were doing very well for themselves, or who had been right up until now.
Vimes appeared in front of them like a whirlwind of wrath.
You scum, you rat-sucking little worm eaters! You headsdown little scurriers in the dark! What did you bring to my city? What were you thinking? Did you want the deep-downers here? Did you dare deplore what Hamcrusher said, all that bile and ancient lies? Or did you say ‘Well, I don’t agree with him, of course, but he’s got a point’? Did you say, ‘Oh he goes too far but it’s about time somebody said it’? And now, have you come here to wring your hands and say how dreadful, it was nothing to do with you? Who were the dwarfs in the mobs, then? Aren’t you community leaders? Were you leading them? And why are you here now, you ugly snivelling grubbers? Is it possible, is it possible, that now, after that bastard’s bodyguards tried to kill my family, you’re here to complain? Have I broken some code, trodden on some ancient toe? To hell with it. To hell with you.
He could feel the words straining, fighting to get out, and the effort of restraining them filled his stomach with acid and made his temples throb. Just one whine, he thought. Just one pompous moan. Go on.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
The dwarfs had perceptibly moved backwards. Vimes wondered if they’d read his thoughts; they’d echoed in his brain loudly enough.
A dwarf cleared his throat. ‘Commander Vimes—’ he began.
‘You’re Pors Stronginthearm, aren’t you?’ Vimes demanded. ‘One half of Burleigh & Stronginthearm? You make crossbows.’
‘Yes, commander, and—’
‘Remove your weapons! All of them! All of you!’ Vimes snapped.
The room fell silent. Out of the corner of his eye Vimes saw a couple of dwarf officers, who had at least been pretending to be engaged in paperwork, rising from their seats.
He was being dangerously stupid, part of him knew, but right now he wanted to hurt a dwarf and he wasn’t allowed to do it with steel. Most of the battle stuff they wore was simply for clang in any case, but a dwarf would sooner drop his drawers than put aside his axe. And these were serious city dwarfs, with seats in the Guilds and everything. Ye gods, he was going too far.
He managed to grunt, ‘All right, keep your battle-axes. Leave everything else at the desk. You’ll get a receipt.’
For a moment, quite a long moment, he thought, no, he hoped they would refuse. But one of them, somewhere in the group, said, ‘I think we must do this for the commander. These are difficult times. We must learn to fit them.’
Vimes went up to his office, hearing the clinks and clangs behind him, and landed so violently in his chair that this time a wheel snapped off. The receipt was a nasty touch. He was quite pleased with it.
On his desk, on a little stand that Sybil had made for it, was his official baton of office. It was in fact the same size as the ordinary copper’s truncheon, but was turned out of rosewood and silver instead of lignum vitae or oak. It still had plenty of weight, though. Certainly enough to leave the words PROTECTER OF THEE KINGE’S PIECE printed back to front on a dwarf skull.
The dwarfs were ushered in, looking slightly less heavy.
Just one word, Vimes thought, as the acid swirled. One damn word. Go on. Just a breath wrong.
‘Very well, what can I do for you?’ he said.
‘Uh, I’m sure you know all of us,’ Pors began, trying to smile.
‘Probably. The dwarf next to you is Grabpot Thundergust, who has just launched the new “Ladies’ Secrets” range of perfumes and cosmetics. My wife uses your stuff all the time.’
Thundergust, in traditional chain mail, a three-horned helmet and an enormous axe strapped across his back, gave Vimes an embarrassed nod. Vimes’s gaze moved on. ‘And you are Setha Ironcrust, proprietor of the chain of bakeries of the same name, and you are surely Gimlet Gimlet, owner of two famous dwarf delicatessens and the newly opened “Yo Rat!” in Attic Bee Street.’ Vimes looked round the office, dwarf after dwarf, until he got back to the front row and a dwarf of fairly modest dress by dwarf standards, who had been watching him intently. Vimes had a good memory for faces and had seen this one recently, but couldn’t place it. Perhaps it had been behind a well-flung half-brick…
‘You, I don’t think I know,’ he said.
‘Oh, we haven’t exactly been introduced, commander,’ said the dwarf cheerfully. ‘But I’m very interested in the theory of games.’
… or Mr Shine’s Thud Academy? Vimes thought. The dwarf’s voice sounded like the one that had, he’d admit it, been of diplomatic help downstairs. He wore a simple plain round helmet, a plain leather shirt with some basic mail on it, and his beard was clipped to something tidier than the general dwarfish ‘gorse bush’ effect. Compared to the other dwarfs, this one looked… streamlined. Vimes couldn’t even see an axe.
‘Indeed?’ he said. ‘Well, in fact I don’t play ’em, so what’s your name?’
‘Bashfull Bashfullsson, commander. Grag Bashfullsson.’
Quietly, Vimes picked up his truncheon and rolled it in his fingers.
‘Not underground, then?’ he said.
‘Some of us move on, sir. Some of us think that darkness isn’t a depth, it’s a state of mind.’
‘That’s nice of you,’ said Vimes. Oh, friendly and forward-looking are we now? Where were you yesterday? But now I’ve got all the aces! Those bastards murdered four city dwarfs! They broke into my home, tried to kill my wife! And now they’ve had it away on their toes! Wherever they’ve gone they’re going dow— coming up!
He put the truncheon back on its stand. ‘As I said, what can I do for you… gentlemen?’
He got the sense that they were all turning, physically or mentally, to Bashfullsson. I see, he thought, it seems that what we have here is a dozen monkeys and one organ grinder, eh?
‘How can we help you, commander?’ said the grag.
Vimes stared. You could have stopped them, that’s how you could have helped. Don’t give me those sombre faces. Maybe you didn’t say ‘yes’ but you sure as hell didn’t say ‘no!’ loud enough. I owe you not one damned thing. Don’t come to me for your bloody absolution.
‘Right now? By going out on to the street, walking up to the biggest troll you can see and shaking him warmly by the hand, maybe?’ said Vimes. ‘Or just going out into the street. Quite frankly, I’m busy, gentlemen, and the middle of a horse race is not the time to be mending fences.’
‘They’ll be heading for the mountains,’ said Bashfullsson. ‘They’ll steer clear of Uberwald and Lancre. They won’t be sure of meeting friends there. That means going into the mountains via Llamedos. Lots of caves there.’