like an icy rivulet. He's actually going to arrest the Patrician. The supreme ruler. He's going to arrest him. This is what he's actually going to do. The boy doesn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'. Oh, wouldn't it be a good idea if he knew the meaning of the word 'survival' . . .
And I can't get my jaw muscles to move.
We're all dead. Or worse, we're all detained at the Patrician's pleasure. And as we all know, he's seldom that pleased.
It was at this precise moment that Sergeant Colon earned himself a metaphorical medal.
'Lance-constable Carrot!' he shouted. 'Attention! Lance-constable Carrot, abou-uta turna! Lance-constable Carrot, qui-uck marcha!''
Carrot brought himself to attention like a barn being raised and stared straight ahead with a ferocious expression of acute obedience.
'Well done, that man,' said the Patrician thoughtfully, as Carrot strode stiffly away. 'Carry on, Captain. And do come down heavily on any silly rumours about dragons, right?'
'Yes, sir,' said Captain Vimes.
'Good man.'
The coach rattled off, the bodyguard running alongside.
Behind him, Captain Vimes was only vaguely aware of the sergeant yelling at the retreating Carrot to stop.
He was thinking.
He looked at the prints in the mud. He used his regulation pike, which he knew was exactly seven feet long, to measure their size and the distance between them. He whistled under his breath. Then, with considerable caution, he followed the alley around the corner; it led to a small, padlocked and dirt-encrusted door in the back of a timber warehouse.
There was something very wrong, he thought.
The prints come out of the alley, but they don't go in. And we don't often get any wading birds in the Ankh, mainly because the pollution would eat their legs away and anyway, it's easier for them to walk on the surface.
He looked up. A myriad washing lines criss-crossed the narrow rectangle of the sky as efficiently as a net.
So, he thought, something big and fiery came out of this alley but didn't come into it.
And the Patrician is very worried about it.
I've been told to forget about it.
He noticed something else at the side of the alley, and bent down and picked up a fresh, empty peanut shell.
He tossed it from hand to hand, staring at nothing.
Right now, he needed a drink. But perhaps it ought to wait.
...
The Librarian knuckled his way urgently along the dark aisles between the slumbering bookshelves.
The rooftops of the city belonged to him. Oh, assassins and thieves might make use of them, but he'd long ago found the forest of chimneys, buttresses, gargoyles and weathervanes a convenient and somehow comforting alternative to the streets.
At least, up until now.
Вы читаете Guards! Guards!
