Jingo

“Hmm. Looks like fresh blood here, at the spine, where they're stitched together…”

“His, sir,” said Angua.

Vimes nodded. You never argued with Angua about blood.

“But none of the actual pages have blood on them…” said Vimes. “Which is a bit odd. Messy business, decapitation. People tend to… spray. So the top page—”

“—has been taken away, sir,” said Carrot, grinning and nodding. “But that's not the funny part, sir. See if you can guess, sir!”

Vimes glared at him and then moved the lamp closer. “Very faint impression of writing on the top page…” he muttered. “Can't make it out…”

“We can't either, sir. We know he wrote in pencil, sir. There was one on the table.”

“Very faint traces,” said Vimes. “Blokes like Snowy write as though they're chipping stone.” He flicked the notebook. “Someone tore out… not just the page he'd written on but several below it as well.”

“Clever, eh, sir? Everyone knows—”

“—you can read the suspicious note by looking at the marks on the page below,” said Vimes. He tossed the book on to the table again. “Hmm. There's a message there, yes…”

“Perhaps he was blackmailing whoever's behind all this?” said Angua.

“That's not his style,” said Vimes. “No, what I meant was—”

There was a knock on the door, and Fred Colon entered.

“Brung you a mug of coffee,” he said, “and there's a bunch of wo— Klatchians to see you downstairs, Mr Vimes. Probably come to give you a medal and gabble at you in their lingo. And if you're on for late supper, Mrs Goriffs doing goat and rice and foreign gravy.”

“I suppose I'd better go down and see them,” said Vimes. “But I haven't even had time for a wash—”

“That's evidence of your heroic endeavours,” said Colon stoutly.

“Oh, all right.”

Unease began about halfway down the stairs. Vimes had never run into a group of citizens wishing to give him a medal and so he did not have a lot of experience on this score, but the group waiting for him in a tight cluster near the sergeant's desk did not look like a committee of welcome.

They were Klatchian. At least, they were wearing foreign-looking clothes and one or two of them had caught more sun than you generally got in Ankh-Morpork. The feeling crept over Vimes that Klatch was a very big place in which his city and the whole of the Sto Plains would be lost, and so there must be room in it for all kinds of peoples, including this short chap in the red fez who was practically vibrating with indignation.

“Are you the man Vimes?” the enfezzed one demanded.

“Well, I'm Commander Vimes—”

“We demand the release of the Goriff family! And we won't take any excuses!”

Vimes blinked. “Release?”

“You have locked them up! And confiscated their shop!”

Vimes stared at the man, and then he looked across the room at Sergeant Detritus.

“Where did you put the family, sergeant?”

Detritus saluted. “In der cells, sir.”

“Aha!” said the man in the fez. “You admit it!”

“Excuse me, who are you?” said Vimes, blinking with tiredness.

“I don't have to tell you and you can't beat it out of me!” said the man, sticking out his chest.

“Oh, thank you for telling me,” said Vimes. “I do hate wasted effort.”

“Oh, hello, Mr Wazir,” said Carrot, appearing behind Vimes. “Did you get the note about that book?”

There was one of those silences that happen when everyone has to reprogramme their faces.

Then Vimes said, “What?”

“Mr Wazir sells books in Widdy Street,” said Carrot. “Only I asked him for some books on Klatch, you see, and one of the ones he gave me was The Perfumed Allotment, or, The Garden of Delights. And I didn't mind because the Klatchians invented gardens, sir, so I thought it might be a very useful cultural insight. Get inside the Klatchian mind, as it were. Only it, er, it… er… well, it wasn't about gardening… er…” He started to blush.

“Yes, yes, all right, bring it back if you like,” said Mr Wazir, looking a little derailed.

“I just thought you ought to know in case you hadn't… in case you sold… well… it could shock the impressionable, you know, a book like that…”

“Yes, fine—”

“Corporal Angua was so shocked she couldn't stop laughing.” Carrot went on.

“I will have your money sent round directly,” said Wazir. His expression turned vengeful again. He glared at Vimes.

“Books are unimportant at this time! We demand you release my countrymen now!”

“Detritus, why the hell did you put them in the cells?” said Vimes wearily.

“What else we got, sir? Dey're not locked in and dey got clean blankets.”

“There's your explanation,” said Vimes. “They're our guests.”

“In the cells!” said Wazir, relishing the word.

“They're free to go whenever they like,” said Vimes.

“I'm sure they are now,” said Wazir, contriving to indicate that only his arrival had prevented officially sanctioned bloodshed. “You can be sure the Patrician will hear about this!”

“He hears about everything else,” said Vimes. “But if they leave here, who is going to protect them?”

“We are! Their fellow countrymen!”

“How?”

Wazir almost stood to attention. “By force of arms, if necessary.”

“Oh, good,” said Vimes. “Then there'll be two mobs —”

“Bingeley-bingeley beep!”

“Damn!” Vimes slapped at his pocket. “I don't want to know I haven't got any appointments!”

“You have one at eleven pee em. The Rats Chamber, at the palace,” said the Dis-organizer.

“Don't be stupid!”

“Please yourself.”

“And shut up.”

“I was just trying to help.”

“Shut up.” Vimes turned back to the Klatchian bookseller.

“Mr Wazir, if Goriff wants to leave with you, we won't stop him—”

“Aha! You may well try!”

Vimes told himself that there was no reason at all why a Klatchian couldn't be a pompous little troublemaker. But he felt uneasy about it, like a man edging along the side of a very deep crevasse.

“Sergeant Colon?”

“Yessir?”

“See to this, will you?”

“Yessir!”

“Diplomatically.”

“Right, sir!” Colon tapped the side of his nose. “Is this politics, sir?”

“Just… just go and fetch the Goriff family and they can…” Vimes waved a hand vaguely. “They can do whatever they like.”

He turned and walked up the stairs.

“Someone has to protect my people's rights!” shouted Wazir.

They heard Vimes stop halfway up the stairs. The board creaked under his weight for a second. Then he continued upwards, and several of the watchmen started breathing again.