The Fifth Elephant

The door opened. The Ideas Taster stepped through, carrying a dwarfish axe. It was a mining axe, with a pick point on one side, in order to go prospecting, and a real axe blade on the other, in case anyone tried to stop you.

'Call the guards in, Dee,' said the King. 'And his excellency's young dwarf. These things should be seen, see.'

Oh, good grief, thought Vimes, watching Dee's face as the others shuffled in. There must be a manual. Every copper knows how this goes. You let 'em know you know they've done something wrong, but you don't tell 'em what it is and you certainly don't tell 'em how much you know, and you keep 'em off balance, and you just talk quietly and—

'Place your hands upon the Scone, Dee.'

Dee spun around. 'Sire?'

'Place your hands upon the Scone. Do as I say. Do it now.'

—you keep the threat in view but you never refer to it, oh no. Because there's nothing you can do to them that their imagination isn't already doing to themselves. And you keep it up until they break, or in the case of my old dame school, until they feel their boots get damp.

And it doesn't even leave a mark.

'Tell me about the death of Lorigfinger, the candle captain,' said the King, after Dee, with a look of hollow apprehension, had touched the Scone.

The words rushed out. 'Oh, as I told you, sire, he—'

'If you do not keep your hands pressed upon the Scone, Dee, I will see to it that they are fixed there. Tell me again.'

'I... he... took his own life, sire. Out of shame.'

The King picked up his axe and turned it so that the long point faced outwards.

'Tell me again.'

Now Vimes could hear Dee's breathing, short and fast.

'He took his own life, sire!'

The King smiled at Vimes. 'There's an old superstition, your excellency, that since the Scone contains a grain of truth it will glow red hot if a lie is told by anyone touching it. Of course, in these more modern times, I shouldn't think anyone believes it.' He turned to Dee.

'Tell me again,' he whispered.

As the axe moved slightly the reflected light of the candles flashed along the blade.

'He took his own life! He did!'

'Oh, yes. You said. Thank you,' said the King. 'And do you recall, Dee, when Slogram sent false word of Bloodaxe's death in battle to Ironhammer, causing Ironhammer to take his own life in grief, where was the guilt?'

'It was Slogram's, sir,' said Dee promptly. Vimes suspected the answer had come straight from some rote- remembered teaching.

'Yes.'

The King let the word hang in the air for a while, and then went on: 'And who gave the order to kill the craftsman in Ankh-Morpork?'

'Sire?' said Dee.

'Who gave the order to kill the craftsman in Ankh-Morpork?' The King's tone did not change. It was the same comfortable, sing-song voice. He sounded as though he would carry on asking the question for ever.

'I know nothing about—'

'Guards, press his hands firmly against the Scone.'

They stepped forward. Each one took an arm.

'Again, Dee. Who gave the order?'

Dee writhed as if his hands were burning. 'I... I...'

Vimes could see the skin whiten on the dwarf's hands as he strained to lift them from the stone.

But it's a fake. I'd swear he destroyed the real one, so he knows it's a fake, surely? It's just a lump of plaster, probably still damp in the middle! Vimes tried to think. The original Scone had been in the cave, hadn't it? Was it? If it wasn't, where had it been? The werewolves thought they had a fake, and it certainly hadn't left his sight since. He tried to think through the fog of fatigue.

He'd half wondered, once, whether the original Scone had been the one in the Dwarf Bread Museum. That would have been the way to keep it safe. No one would try to steal something that everyone knew was a fake. The whole thug was the Fifth Elephant, nothing was what it seemed, it was all a fog.

Which one was real?

'Who gave the order, Dee?' said the King.

'Not me! I said they must take all necessary steps to preserve secrecy!'

'To whom did you say this?'

'I can give you names!'

'Later, you will. I promise you, boyo,' said the King. 'And the werewolves?'

'The Baroness suggested it! That is true!'

'Uberwald for the werewolves. Ah, yes... 'joy through strength'. I expect they promised you all sorts of things. You may take your hands off the Scone. I do not wish to distress you further. But why? My predecessors spoke highly of you, you are a dwarf of power and influence... and then you let yourself become a paw of the werewolves. Why?'

'Why should they be allowed to get away with it?' Dee snapped, his voice breaking with the strain.

The King looked across at Vimes. 'Oh, I suspect the werewolves will regret that they—' he began.

'Not them! The... ones in Ankh-Morpork! Wearing make-up and dresses and... and abominable things!' Dee pointed a finger at Cheery. 'Ha'ak! How can you even look at it! You let her,' and Vimes had seldom heard a word sprayed with so much venom, 'her flaunt herself, here! And it's happening everywhere because people have not been firm, not obeyed, have let the old ways slide! Everywhere there are reports. They're eating away at everything dwarfish with their... their soft clothes and paint and beastly ways. How can you be King and allow this? Everywhere they are doing it and you do nothing! Why should they be allowed to do this?' Now Dee was sobbing. 'I can't!'

Vimes saw that Cheery, to his amazement, was blinking back tears.

'I see,' said the King. 'Well, I suppose that is an explanation.' He nodded to the guards. 'Take... her away. Some things must wait a day or two.'

Cheery saluted, suddenly. 'Permission to go with her, sire?'

'What on earth for, young... young dwarf?'

'I expect she'd like someone to talk to, sire. I know I would.'

'Indeed? I see your commander has no objection. Off you go, then.'

The King leaned back when the guards had left with their prisoner and the prisoner's new counsellor.

'Well, your excellency?'

'This is the real Scone?'

'You are not certain?'

'Dee was!'

'Dee... is in a difficult state of mind.' The King looked at the ceiling. 'I think I will tell you this because, your excellency, I really do not want you going through the rest of your time here asking silly questions. Yes, this is the true Scone.'

'But how could—'

'Wait! So was the one that is, yes, ground to dust in the cave by Dee in her... madness,' the King went on. 'So were the... let me see... five before that. Still untouched by time after fifteen hundred years? What romantics we dwarfs are! Even the very best dwarf bread crumbles after a few hundred.'

'Fakes?' said Vimes. 'They were all fakes?'

Suddenly the King was holding his mining axe again. 'This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new