Jingo

“…he's taking the ceremonial packet of cigars out of his helmet,” said Carrot. “Oh… and he's, he's lighting one…”

The tourist pulled the lever a few times.

“Very historic tradition?”

“Memorable,” murmured Angua.

The crowd had fallen silent. No one wanted to break Vimes's concentration. There was the big gusty silence of a thousand people holding their breath.

“What's he doing now?” said Carrot.

“Can't you see?” said Angua.

“Not with my hands over my eyes. Oh, the poor man…”

“He's… he's just blown a smoke ring…”

“…first one of the day, he always does that…”

“…and now he's set off again… and now he's pulled out the truncheon and he's tossing it up in the air and catching it again, you know the way he does with his sword when he's thinking… He looks quite happy…”

“I think he's going to really treasure this moment of happiness,” said Carrot.

Then the murmur started. The procession had halted behind Vimes. Some of the more impressionable people who weren't sure what they should be doing, and those who had partaken too heavily of the University's rather good sherry, started to fumble around on their person for something to throw up in the air and catch. After all, this was a Traditional Ceremony. If you took the view that you were not going to do things because they were apparently ridiculous, you might as well go home right now.

“He's tired, that's what it is,” said Carrot. “He's been running around overseeing things for days. Night and day watches. You know what a hands-on person he is.”

“Let's hope the Patrician will agree to let him stay that way.”

“Oh, his lordship wouldn't… He wouldn't, would he?”

Laughter was starting. Vimes had started to toss the truncheon from one hand to the other.

“He can make his sword spin three times and still catch it—”

Vimes's head turned. He looked up. His truncheon clattered on to the cobbles and rolled into a puddle, unheeded.

Then he started to run.

Carrot stared at him and then tried to see what the man had been looking at.

“On top of the Barbican…” he said. “In that window… isn't that someone up there? Excuse me, excuse me, sorry, excuse me—” He began to push his way through the crowd.

Vimes was already a small figure in the distance, his red cloack flying out after him.

“Well? There's lots of people watching the parade from high places,” said Angua. “What's so special about —”

“No one should be up there!” said Carrot, starting to run now he was free of the crowd. “It's all sealed up!”

Angua looked around. Every face was turned towards the street theatre, and there was a cart near by. She sighed and strolled behind it wearing an expression of suspicious nonchalance. There was a gasp, a faint but distinctly organic sound, a muffled yelp and then the clank of armour hitting the ground.

Vimes didn't know why he ran. It was a sixth sense. It was when the back of the brain picked up out of the ether that something bad was going to happen, and didn't have time to rationalize, and just took over the spinal cord.

No one could get to the top of the Barbican. The Barbican had been the fortified gateway in the days when Ankh-Morpork didn't regard an attacking army as a marvellous commercial opportunity. Some parts were still in use, but the bulk of it was six or seven storeys of ruin, without stairs that any sensible man would trust. For years it had been used as an unofficial source of masonry for the rest of the city. Bits of it fell off on windy nights. Even gargoyles avoided it.

He was aware that far behind him the noise of the crowd became a lot of shouting. One or two people screamed. He didn't turn round. Whatever was going on, Carrot could take care of it.

Something overtook him. It looked like a wolf would look if one of its ancestors had been a longhaired Klatchistan hunting dog, one of those graceful things that were all nose and hair.

It bounded ahead and through the crumbling gateway.

The creature was nowhere to be seen when Vimes arrived. But the absence was not a matter that grabbed at his attention, because of the more pressing presence of the corpse, lying in a mess of fallen masonry.

One of the things Vimes had always said — that is to say, one of the things he said he always said, and no one disagrees with the commanding officer — was that sometimes small details, tiny little details, things that no one would notice in ordinary circumstances, grab your senses by the throat and scream, “See me!”

There was a lingering, spicy scent in the air. And in the gap between a couple of cobblestones was a clove.

It was five o'clock. Vimes and Carrot sat in the Patrician's outer office, in silence except for the irregular ticking of the dock.

After a while Vimes said: “Let me have a look at that again.”

Carrot obediently pulled out the small square of paper. Vimes looked at it. There was no mistaking what it showed. He tucked it into his own pocket.

“Er… why do you want to keep it, sir?”

“Keep what?” said Vimes.

“The iconograph I borrowed from the tourist.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Vimes.

“But you—”

“I can't see you going very far in the Watch, captain, if you go around seeing things that aren't there.”

“Oh.”

The clock seemed to tick louder.

“You're thinking something, sir. Aren't you?”

“It is a use to which I occasionally put my brain, captain. Strange as it may seem.”

“What are you thinking, sir?”

“What they want me to think,” said Vimes.

“Who's they?”

“I don't know yet. One step at a time.”

A bell tinkled.

Vimes stood up. “You know what I always say,” he said.

Carrot removed his helmet and polished it with his sleeve. “Yes, sir. ‘Everyone's guilty of something, especially the ones that aren't,’ sir.”

“No, not that one…”

“Er… ‘Always take into consideration the fact that you might be dead wrong,’ sir?”

“No, nor that one either.”

“Er… ‘How come Nobby ever got a job as a watchman?’, sir? You say that a lot.”

“No! I meant ‘Always act stupid,’ Carrot.”

“Ah, right, sir. From now on I shall remember that you always said that, sir.”

They put their helmets under their arms. Vimes knocked at the door.

“Come,” said a voice.

The Patrician was standing at the window.

Sitting or standing around the office were Lord Rust and the others. Vimes never quite understood how the civic leaders were chosen. They just seemed to turn up, like a tack on the sole of your shoe.

“Ah, Vimes,” said Vetinari.

“Sir.”

“Let us not beat about the bush, Vimes. How did the man get up there when your people had so thoroughly