Night Watch

and how to raise that damn boat that River Division kept sinking. And, yes, he wanted to go back, or forwards or across or whatever. He really did. He wanted to go home so much he could taste it. Of course he did. But he couldn't, not yet, and here he was and as Dr Lawn said, you did the job. And currently the job involved survival on the street in the great game of Silly Buggers, and Vimes knew all about that game, oh yes. And there was a thrill in it. It was the nature of the beast.

And thus he was walking along, lost in thought, when the men jumped him from the mouth of a shadowy alley.

The first one got a foot in the stomach, because the beast does not fight fair. Vimes stepped aside and grabbed the other one. He felt the knife skitter along his breastplate as he lowered his head and tugged the man hard into the helmet.

The man folded up quite neatly on the cobbles.

Vimes spun around to the first man, who was bent almost double, and wheezing, but had nevertheless kept hold of his knife, which he waved around in front of him like some kind of talisman. The point made erratic figures- of-eight in the air.

“Drop it,” said Vimes. “I won't ask again.”

He sighed, and pulled an object out of his back pocket. It was black and tapered and made of leather filled with lead shot. He'd banned them in the modern Watch but he knew some officers had acquired them, and if he judged the man to be sensible then he didn't know they'd got them. Sometimes an argument had to be ended quickly, and there were worse alternatives.

He brought the blackjack down on the man's arm, with a certain amount of care. There was a whimper and the knife bounced off the cobbles.

“We'll leave your chum to sleep it off,” he said. “But you are coming to see the doctor, Henry. Are you coming quietly?”

A few minutes later Dr Lawn opened his back door and Vimes brushed past, the body over his shoulders.

“You minister to all sorts, right?” said Vimes.

“Within reason, but—”

“This one's an Unmentionable,” said Vimes. “Tried to kill me. Needs some medicine.”

“Why's he unconscious?” said the doctor. He was wearing a huge rubber apron, and rubber boots.

“Didn't want to take his medicine.”

Lawn sighed, and with a hand that held a mop he waved Vimes towards an inner door. “Bring him right into the surgery,” he said. “I'm afraid I'm cleaning up after Mr Salciferous in the waiting room.”

“Why, what did he do?”

“He burst.”

Vimes, his natural inquisitiveness suddenly curbed, carried the body into Lawn's inner sanctum. It looked little different from when Vimes had last seen it, but then he'd barely been capable of taking in details. There was the table, and a workbench, and all along one wall were racks of bottles. No two bottles were the same size. In one or two of them, things floated.

On another wall were the instruments.

“When I die,” said Lawn, inspecting the patient, “I'm going to instruct them to put a bell on my tombstone, just so's I can have the pleasure of not getting up when people ring. Put him down, please. Looks like concussion.”

“That was me hitting him,” said Vimes helpfully.

“You broke his arm too?”

“That's right.”

“You made a very neat job of it. Easy to set it and plaster him up. Is there something wrong?”

Vimes was still staring at the instruments. “You use all these?” he said.

“Yes. Some of them are experimental, though,” said Lawn, busying himself at his work table.

“Well, I'd hate you to use this on me,” said Vimes, picking a strange instrument like a couple of paddles tied with string. Lawn sighed.

“Sergeant, there are no circumstances where the things you're holding could possibly be used on you,” he said, his hands working busily. “They are…of a feminine nature.”

“For the seamstresses?” said Vimes, putting the pliers down in a hurry.

“Those things? No, the ladies of the night take pride these days in never requiring that sort of thing. My work with them is more of, shall we say, a preventative nature.”

“Teaching them to use thimbles, that sort of thing?” said Vimes.

“Yes, it's amazing how far you can push a metaphor, isn't it…”

Vimes prodded the paddles again. They were quite alarming.

“You're married, sergeant?” said Lawn. “Was Rosie right?”

“Er…yes. My wife is, er, elsewhere, though.” He picked the things up and dropped them hastily again, with a clatter.

“Well, it's just as well to be aware that giving birth isn't like shelling peas,” said the doctor.

“I should bloody well hope not!”

“Although I have to say the midwives seldom refer anything to me. They say men shouldn't fish around where they don't belong. We might as well be living in caves.”

Lawn looked down at his patient. “In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this?”

Vimes investigated the moneybag on the man's belt.

“Will six dollars do it?” he said.

“Why would the Unmentionables attack you, sergeant? You're a policeman.”

“I am, but they aren't. Don't you know about them?”

“I've patched up a few of their guests, yes,” said Lawn, and Vimes noted the caution. It didn't pay to know too much in this town. “People with curious dislocations, hot wax burns…that sort of thing—”

“Well, I had a little brush with Captain Swing last night,” Vimes said, “and he was as polite as hell to me about it, but I'd bet my boots he knows that this lad and his friend came after me. That's his style. He probably wanted to see what I'd do.”

“He's not the only one interested in you,” said Lawn. “I got a message that Rosie Palm wants to see you. Well, I assume she meant you. ‘That ungrateful bastard’ was the actual term she used.”

“I think I owe her some money,” said Vimes, “but I've no idea how much.”

“Don't ask me,” said Lawn, smoothing the plaster with his hand. “She generally names her price up front.”

“I mean the finder's fee, or whatever it was!”

“Yes, I know. Can't help you there, I'm afraid,” said Lawn.

Vimes watched him working for a while, and said, “Know anything about Miss Battye?”

“The seamstress? She hasn't been here long.”

“And she's really a seamstress?”

“For the sake of precision,” said Dr Lawn, “let us say she's a needlewoman. Apparently she heard there was a lot of work for seamstresses in the big city and had one or two amusing misunderstandings before someone told her exactly what was meant. One of them involved me removing a crochet hook from a man's ear last week. Now she just hangs out with the rest of the girls.”

“Why?”

“Because she's making a fortune, that's why,” said the doctor. “Hasn't it ever occurred to you, sergeant, that sometimes people go to a massage parlour for a real massage, for example? There's ladies all over this city with discreet signs up that say things like ‘Trousers repaired while you wait’ and a small but significant number of men make the same mistake as Sandra. There's lots of men work here in the city and leave their wives back home and sometimes, you know, a man feels these…urges. Like, for a sock without holes and a shirt with more than one button. The ladies pass on the work. Apparently it's quite hard to find a really good needlewoman in this city. They don't like being confused with, er, seamstresses.”

“I just wondered why she hangs around street corners after curfew with a big sewing basket…” said