Guards! Guards!

If you let your mind dwell on rooms like this, you could end up being oddly sad and full of a strange, diffuse compassion which would lead you to believe that it might be a good idea to wipe out the whole human race and start again with amoebas.

Beside the drift of paperwork was a book. Vimes twisted painfully and looked at the spine. It said: Diseases of the Dragon, by Sybil Deidre Olgivanna Ramkin.

He turned the stiff pages in horrified fascination. They opened into another world, a world of quite stupefying problems. Slab Throat. The Black Tups. Dry Lung. Storge. Staggers, Heaves, Weeps, Stones. It was amazing, he decided after reading a few pages, that a swamp dragon ever survived to see a second sunrise. Even walking across a room must be reckoned a biological triumph.

The painstakingly-drawn illustrations he looked away from hurriedly. You could only take so much innards.

There was a knock at the door.

'I say? Are you decent?' Lady Ramkin boomed cheerfully.

'Er-'

'I’ve brought you something jolly nourishing.'

Somehow Vimes imagined it would be soup. Instead it was a plate stacked high with bacon, fried potatoes and eggs. He could hear his arteries panic just by looking at it.

'I've made a bread pudding, too,' said Lady Ramkin, slightly sheepishly. 'I don't normally cook much, just for myself. You know how it is, catering for one.'

Vimes thought about the meals at his lodgings. Somehow the meat was always grey, with mysterious tubes in it.

'Er,' he began, not used to addressing ladies from a recumbent position in their own beds. 'Corporal Nobbs tells me…'

'And what a colourful little man Nobby is!' said Lady Ramkin.

Vimes wasn't certain he could cope with this.

'Colourful?' he said weakly.

'A real character. We've been getting along famously.'

'You have?'

'Oh, yes. What a great fund of anecdotes he has.'

'Oh, yes. He's got that all right.' It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he'd decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as Nobby.

'Er,' he said, and then found he couldn't leave this strange new byway, 'you don't find his language a bit, er, ripe?'

'Salty,' corrected Lady Ramkin cheerfully. 'You should have heard my father when he was annoyed. Anyway, we found we've got a lot in common. It's an amazing coincidence, but my grandfather once had his grandfather whipped for malicious lingering.'

That must make them practically family, Vimes thought. Another stab of pain from his stricken side made him wince.

'You've got some very bad bruising and probably a cracked rib or two,' she said. 'If you roll over I'll put some more of this on.'' Lady Ramkin flourished a jar of yellow ointment.

Panic crossed Vimes's face. Instinctively, he raised the sheets up around his neck.

'Don't play silly buggers, man,' she said. 'I shan't see anything I haven't seen before. One backside is pretty much like another. It's just that the ones I see generally have tails on. Now roll over and up with the nightshirt. It belonged to my grandfather, you know.''

There was no resisting that tone of voice. Vimes thought about demanding that Nobby be brought in as a chaperon, and then decided that would be even worse.