The Fifth Elephant

'Yes,' said Lady Sybil weakly. 'Why not, after all?'

'What about me, ladyship?' Detritus rumbled.

Igor had certainly risen to the occasion, applying to a number of suits found in the embassy wardrobes the same pioneering surgical skills that he used on unfortunate loggers and other people who may have strayed too close to a bandsaw. It had taken him just ninety minutes to construct something around Detritus. It was definitely evening dress. You couldn't get away with it in daylight. The troll looked like a wall with a bow tie.

'How does it all feel?' said Lady Sybil, playing for safety.

'It are rather tight around der— What's dis bit called?'

'I really have no idea,' said Lady Sybil.

'It makes me lurch a bit,' said Detritus. 'But I feel very diplomatic.'

'Not the crossbow, however,' said Lady Sybil.

'She got her axe,' said Detritus accusingly.

'Dwarf axes are accepted as a cultural weapon,' said Lady Sybil. 'I don't know the etiquette here, but I suppose you could get away with a club.' After all, she added to herself, it's not as though anyone would try to take it off you.

'Der crossbow ain't cultural?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'I could put, like, glitter on it.'

'Not enough, I'm afraid— Oh, Sam...'

'Yes, dear?' said Vimes, coming down the stairs.

'That's just your Watch dress uniform! What about your ducal regalia?'

'Can't find it anywhere,' said Vimes innocently. 'I think the bag must have fallen off the coach in the pass, dear. But I've got a helmet with feathers in it and Igor's buffed up the breastplate until he could see his face in it, although I'm not sure why.' He quailed at her expression. 'Duke is a military term, dear. No soldier would ever go to war in tights. Not if he thought he might be taken prisoner.'

'I find this highly suspicious, Sam.'

'Detritus will back me up on this,' said Vimes.

'Days right, sir,' the troll rumbled. 'You distinctly said to say dat '

'Anyway, we'd better be goi— Good grief, is that Cheery?'

'Yes, sir,' said Cheery nervously.

Well, thought Vimes, she comes from a family where people go off in strange clothes to face explosions far away from the sun.

'Very nice,' he said.

Lamps were lit all along the tunnel to what Vimes had come to think of as Downtown Bonk. Dwarf guards waved the coach through after a mere glance at the Ankh-Morpork crest. The ones around the giant elevator were more uncertain. But Sam Vimes had learned a lot from watching Lady Sybil. She didn't mean to act like that, but she'd been born to it, into a class that had always behaved this way: you went through the world as if there was no possibility that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that's exactly what didn't happen.

There were others in the elevator as it rumbled downwards. Mostly they were diplomats that Vimes didn't recognize, but there was also, now, in a roped-off corner, a quartet of dwarf musicians playing pleasant yet slightly annoying music that ate its way into Vimes's head as the interminable descent went on.

When the doors opened he heard Sybil gasp.

'I thought you said it was like a starry night down here, Sam!'

'Er, they've certainly turned the wick up...'

Candles by the thousand burned in brackets all around the walls of the huge cavern, but it was the chandeliers that caught the eye. There were scores of them, each at least four storeys high. Vimes, always ready to look for the wires behind the smoke and mirrors, made out the dwarfs working inside the gantries and the baskets of fresh candles being lowered through holes in the ceiling. If the Fifth Elephant wasn't a myth, at least one whole toe must be being burned tonight.

'Your grace!' Dee was advancing through the crowds.

'Ah, Ideas Taster,' said Vimes as the dwarf approached, 'do allow me to introduce you to the Duchess of Ankh... Lady Sybil.'

'Uh... er... yes... indeed... so delighted to make your acquaintance,' Dee murmured, caught off guard by the charm offensive. 'But, er...'

Sybil had picked up the code. Vimes loathed the word 'Duchess', so if he was using it then he wanted her to out-dutch everyone. She enveloped Dee's pointy head in delighted Duchessness.

'Mister Dee, Sam has told me so much about you!' she trilled. 'I understand you're quite the right-hand man —'

'—dwarf—' hissed Vimes.

'—dwarf to his majesty! Please, you must tell me how you have achieved such a delightful lighting effect here!'

'Er, lots of candles,' Dee muttered, glaring at Vimes.

'I think Dee wishes to discuss some political matters with me, dear,' said Vimes smoothly, putting his hand on the dwarf's shoulder. 'If you'll just take the others down, I'll join you shortly, I'm sure.' And he knew that no power in the world was going to prevent Sybil sweeping on down to the reception. That woman could sweep. Things stayed swept after she'd gone past.

'You brought a troll, you brought a troll!' muttered Dee.

'And he's an Ankh-Morpork citizen, remember,' said Vimes. 'Covered by diplomatic immunity and a rather bad suit.'

'Even so—'

'There is no 'even so',' said Vimes.

'We are at war with the trolls!'

'Well, that's what diplomacy is all about, isn't it?' said Vimes. 'A way to stop being at war? Anyway, I understand it's been going on for five hundred years, so obviously no one is trying very hard.'

'There will be complaints at the very highest level!'

Vimes sighed. 'More?' he said.

'Some are saying Ankh-Morpork is deliberately flaunting its wickedness before the King!'

'The King?' said Vimes pleasantly. 'He's not exactly King yet, is he? Not until the coronation, which involves a certain... object...'

'Yes, but of course that is a mere formality.'

Vimes moved closer. 'But it isn't, is it?' he said quietly. 'It is the thing and the whole of the thing. Without the magic, there is no king. Just someone like you, unaccountably giving orders.'

'Someone called Vimes teaches me about royalty?' said Dee miserably.

'And without the thing, all the bets are off,' said Vimes. 'There will be a war. Explosions underground.'

There was a tinny little sound as he took out his watch and opened it. 'My word, it's midnight,' he said.

'Follow me,' Dee muttered.

'Am I being taken to see something?' said Vimes.

'No, your excellency. You are being taken to see where something is not.'

'Ah. Then I want to bring Corporal Littlebottom.'

'That? Absolutely not! That would be a desecration of—'

'No, it wouldn't,' said Vimes. 'And the reason is, she won't come with us because we're not going, are we? You're certainly not taking the representative of a potentially hostile power into your confidence and revealing that your house of cards is missing a card on the bottom layer, are you? Of course not. We are not having this conversation. For the next hour or so we'll be nibbling titbits in this room. I haven't even just said this, and you didn't hear me. But Corporal Littlebottom is the best scene-of-crime officer I've got, and so I want her to come along with us.'

'You've made your point, your excellency. Graphically, as always. Fetch her, then.'