Night Watch

everything twice.”

“Maybe I'll shout, then,” said Vimes. “Vimes!”

Lance-Constable Vimes shivered to attention.

“We're going to take a stroll, lad,” said Vimes. “Time you knew what's what,” he nodded to Knock, took his younger self by the shoulder, and marched out.

“What d'you think, sarge?” said Coates, coming up behind Knock as the sergeant glared at the departing back.

“He likes you,” said Knock bitterly. “Oh, yes. Apple of his eye, you are. You're his ol' pal. You're being bumped up to lance-corporal.”

“Think he'll last?”

“I'll give him a couple of weeks,” said Knock. “I've seen 'em like that before. Big men in little towns, coming here, thinking they're the bee's nose. We soon cut 'em down to size. What d'you think?”

“Dunno, sarge,” said Coates. “Still thinking.”

“Knows his coppering, mind you,” said Knock. “Bit too cocky though. He'll learn. He'll learn. There's ways. We'll show him. Take him down a peg. Teach him how we do things around here—”

Vimes always preferred to walk by himself. And now there were two of him, walking by himself. It was a strange sensation, and gave him the impression that he was looking through a mask.

“No, not like that,” he said. “I always have to teach people to walk. You swing the foot, like this. Get it right and you can keep going all day. You're not in a hurry. You don't want to miss things.”

“Yes, sarge,” said young Sam.

It was called proceeding. Vimes proceeded along Treacle Mine Road, and felt—magnificent. Of course there were lots of things to worry about, but right here and now all he had to do was patrol, and it felt fine. Not much paperwork in the old Watch; in fact, come to think of it he'd probably doubled it. All he had to do right now was his duty, as he'd been taught it. He had nothing to do but be himself.

Young Sam wasn't saying much. That was good sense.

“I see you've got a bell there, lad,” said Vimes, after a while.

“Yes, sarge.”

“Regulation bell?”

“Yes, sarge. Sergeant Knock gave it to me.” I'll bet he did, thought Vimes.

“When we get back, just you swap it for someone else's. Doesn't matter whose. No one'll say anything.”

“Yes, sarge.” Vimes waited. “Why, sarge? A bell's a bell.”

“Not that one,” said Vimes. “That's three times the weight of the normal bell. They give it to rookies to see what they do. Did you complain?”

“No, sarge.”

“That's the way. Keep quiet, and pass it on to some other sucker when we get back. That's the coppers' way. Why did you come into the job, lad?”

“My mate Iffy joined last year. He said you got free food and a uniform and you could pick up the extra dollar here and there.”

“That'd be Iffy Scurrick stationed over in the Dolly Sisters house, then,” said Vimes. “And you've been picking up the odd dollar, have you?”

They walked in silence for a moment. Then Sam said: “Have I got to give that dollar back, sarge?”

“Are you worth a dollar?” said Vimes.

“I gave it our mum, sarge.”

“Did you tell her how you got it?”

“I didn't want it!” Sam blurted out. “But Corporal Quirke said—”

“Was he worth listening to?”

“Dunno, sarge.”

“You don't know? I bet your mum didn't bring you up to think like that,” said Vimes. No, she bloody well didn't, he thought. She'd tan your hide, copper or not, if she knew it was a dodgy dollar.

“No, sarge. But they're all at it, sarge. I don't mean the lads, sarge, but you only have to look round the city. Our rent's going up, taxes go up, there's these new taxes all the time, and it's all just cruel, sarge, it's cruel. Winder sold us all to his mates, and that's a fact, sir.”

“Hmm,” said Vimes. Oh, yes. Tax farming. What a clever invention. Good old Winder. He'd flogged the right to collect taxes to the highest bidders. What a great idea, nearly as good as banning people from carrying weapons after dark. Because a) you saved the cost of tax collectors and the whole revenue system b) you got a wagonload of cash up front. And c) the business of tax gathering then became the business of groups of powerful yet curiously reticent people who kept out of the light. However, they employed people who not only went out in the light but positively blocked it, and it was amazing what those people found to tax, up to and including Looking At Me, Pal. What was it Vetinari had said once? “Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces”? Well, the tax farmers were very unsophisticated in the way they went about recouping their investment.

He remembered those da—these days. The city had never seemed poorer, but by the gods there was a lot of tax being paid.

Hard to explain to a kid like Sam why poncing a dollar when you got the chance was a bad thing to do.

“Put it like this, lance-constable,” as they turned the corner. “Would you let a murderer off for a thousand dollars?”

“No, sir!”

“A thousand dollars'd set your mum up in a nice place in a good part of town, though.”

“Knock it off, sarge, I'm not like that.”

“You were when you took that dollar. Everything else is just a haggling over the price.”

They walked in sullen silence. Then:

“Am I going to get the sack, sarge?” said the lance-constable.

“For a dollar? No.”

“I'd just as soon be sacked, sarge, thanks all the same,” said young Sam defiantly. “Last Friday we had to go and break up some meeting over near the University. They were just talking! And we had to take orders from some civilian, and the Cable Street lads were a bit rough and…it's not like the people had weapons or anything. You can't tell me that's right, sarge. And then we loaded some of 'em into the hurry-up, just for talking. Mrs Owlesly's boy Elson never came home the other night, too, and they say he was dragged off to the palace just for saying his lordship's a loony. Now people down our street are looking at me in a funny way.”

Ye gods, I remember, thought Vimes. I thought it was all going to be chasing men who gave up after the length of a street and said “It's a fair cop, guv'nor”. I thought I'd have a medal by the end of the week.

“You want to be careful what you say, lad,” he said.

“Yeah, but our mum says it's fair enough if they take away the troublemakers and the weirdies but it's not right them taking away ordinary people.”

Is this really me? Vimes thought. Did I really have the political awareness of a head louse?

“Anyway, he is a loony. Snapcase is the man we ought to have.”

…and the self-preservation instincts of a lemming?

“Kid, here's some advice. In this town, right now, if you don't know who you're talking to—don't talk.”

“Yes, but Snapcase says—”

“Listen. A copper doesn't keep flapping his lip. He doesn't let on what he knows. He doesn't say what he's thinking. No. He watches and listens and he learns and he bides his time. His mind works like mad but his face is a blank. Until he's ready. Understand?”

“All right, sarge.”

“Good. Can you use that sword you have there, lad?”