The Fifth Elephant

This time the King smiled. He was slightly shorter than average for dwarfs, and dressed in the usual almost- uniform of leather and home-forged chain-mail. He looked old, but dwarfs started looking old around the age of five years and were still looking old three hundred years later, and he had that musical cadence to his speech that Vimes associated with Llamedos. If he'd asked Vimes to pass the ketchup in Gimlet's Whole Food Delicatessen, Vimes wouldn't have given him a second look.

'This diplomacy business,' said the King, 'Are you getting the hang of it, do you think?'

'It doesn't come easy, I must admit... er, your majesty.'

'I believe you have been, until now, a watchman in Ankh-Morpork?'

'Er, yes.'

'And you had a famous ancestor, I believe, who was a regicide?'

Here it comes, thought Vimes. 'Yers, Stoneface Vimes,' he said, as levelly as possible. 'I've always thought that was a bit unfair, though. It was only one king. It wasn't as if it was a hobby.'

'But you don't like kings,' said the dwarf.

'I don't meet many, sir,' said Vimes, hoping that this would pass for a diplomatic answer. It seemed to satisfy the King.

'I went to Ankh-Morpork once, when I was a young dwarf,' he said, walking towards a long table piled high with scrolls.

'Er, really?'

'Lawn ornament, they called me. And... what was it... ah, yes... shortarse. Some children threw stones at me.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I expect you'll tell me that sort of thing doesn't happen any more.'

'It doesn't happen as much. But you always get idiots who don't move with the times.'

The King 'gave Vimes a piercing glance. 'Indeed. The times... But now they're always Ankh-Morpork's times, see?'

'I'm sorry?'

'When people say 'We must move with the times,' they really mean 'You must do it my way.' And there are some who would say that Ankh-Morpork is... a kind of vampire. It bites, and what it bites it turns into copies of itself. It sucks, too. It seems all our best go to Ankh-Morpork, where they live in squalor. You leave us dry.'

Vimes was at a loss. It was clear that the little figure now sitting at the long table was a lot brighter than he was, although right now he felt as dim as a penny candle in any case. It was also clear that the King hadn't slept for quite some time. He decided to go for honesty.

'Can't really answer that, sir,' he said, adopting a variant on his talking-to-Vetinari approach. 'But...'

'Yes?'

'I'd wonder... you know, if I was a king... I'd wonder why people were happier living in squalor in Ankh- Morpork than staying back home... sir.'

'Ah. You're telling me how I should think, now?'

'No, sir. Just how I think. There's dwarf bars all over Ankh-Morpork, and they've got mining tools wired to the wall, and there's dwarfs in 'em every night quaffing beer and singing sad songs about how they wish they were back in the mountains digging for gold. But if you said to them, fine, the gate's open, off you go and send us a postcard, they'd say, 'Oh, well, yeah I'd love to, but we've just got the new workshop finished... Maybe next year we'll go to Uberwald.' '

'They come back to the mountains to die,' said the King.

'They live in Ankh-Morpork.'

'Why is this, do you think?'

'I couldn't say. Because no one tells them how to, I suppose.'

'And now you want our gold and iron,' said the King. 'Is there nothing we can keep?'

'Don't know about that either, sir. I wasn't trained for this job.'

The King muttered something under his breath. Then, much louder, he said, 'I can offer you no favours, your excellency. These are difficult times, see.'

'But my real job is finding things out,' said Vimes, 'If there is anything that I could do to—'

The King thrust the papers at Vimes. 'Your letters of accreditation, your excellency. Their contents have been noted!'

And that shuts me up, Vimes thought.

'I would ask you one thing, though,' the King went on.

'Yes, sir?'

'Really thirty men and a dog?'

'No. There were only seven men. I killed one of them because I had to.'

'How did the others die?'

'Er, victims of circumstance, sir.'

'Well, then... your secret is safe with me. Good morning, Miss Littlebottom.'

Cheery looked stunned.

The King gave her a brief smile. 'Ah, the rights of the individual, a famous Ankh-Morpork invention, or so they say. Thank you, Dee, his excellency was just leaving. You may send in the Copperhead delegation.'

As Vimes was ushered out he saw another party of dwarfs assembled in the anteroom. One or two of them nodded at him as they were herded in.

Dee turned back to Vimes. 'I hope you didn't tire his majesty.'

'Someone else has already been doing that, by the look of it.'

'These are sleepless times,' said the Ideas Taster.

'Scone turned up yet?' said Vimes innocently.

'Your excellency, if you persist in this attitude a complaint will go to your Lord Vetinari!'

'He does so look forward to them. Was it this way out?'

It was the last word said until Vimes and his guards were back in the coach and the doors to daylight were opening ahead of them.

Out of the corner of his eye Vimes saw that Cheery was shaking.

'Certainly hits you, doesn't it, the cold air after the warmth underground...' he ventured.

Cheery grinned in relief. 'Yes, it does,' she said.

'Seemed quite a decent sort,' said Vimes. 'What was that he muttered when I said I hadn't been trained?'

'He said, 'Who has?', sir.'

'It sounded like it. All that arguing... it's not a case of sitting on the throne and saying, 'Do this, do that,' then.'

'Dwarfs are very argumentative, sir. Of course, many wouldn't agree. But none of the big dwarf clans are happy about this. You know how it is the Copperheads didn't want Albrecht, and the Schmaltzbergers wouldn't support anyone called Glodson, the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs were split both ways, and Rhys comes from a little coalmining clan near Llamedos that isn't important enough to be on anyone's side...'

'You mean he didn't get to be king because everyone liked him but because no one disliked him enough?'

'That's right, sir.'

Vimes glanced at the crumpled letters that the King had thrust into his hand. By daylight he could see the faint scribble on one corner. There were just two words.

MIDNIGHT, SEE?

Humming to himself, he tore the piece of paper off and rolled it into a ball.

'And now for the damn vampire,' he said.

'Don't worry, sir,' said Cheery. 'What's the worst she can do? Bite your head off?'

'Thank you for that, corporal. Tell me... those robes some of the dwarfs were wearing. I know they wear them on the surface so they're not polluted by the nasty sunlight, but why wear. them down there?'

'It's traditional, sir. Er, they were worn by the... well, it's what you'd call the knockermen, sir.'