“Good, sarge. It's getting darker,” said Colon grimly. He pulled out his truncheon.
Vimes walked around to the back of the building, nodded at the watchmen waiting there, and locked the door with his stolen key ring. It was a narrow door, anyway. Anyone inside would surely go for the big doors at the front, where they could spread out quickly and an ambush wasn't so easy.
He checked on the warehouse. But that was an unlikely exit for the same reason. Besides, he'd locked the door to the cellar, hadn't he?”
Young Sam grinned at him. “That's why you left the torturer tied up, eh, sarge?” he said.
Damn! That hadn't occurred to him. He'd been so angry with the clerk he'd forgotten all about the brute in the chair.
Vimes hesitated. But burning was a horrible death. He reached for his knife, and remembered it was back in its sheath on his sword belt. Smoke was already drifting up the passage into the warehouse.
“Give me your knife, Sam,” he said. “I'll just go and…check on him.”
The lance-constable handed over the knife with some reluctance.
“What're you going to do, sarge?”
“You just get on with your job, lance-constable, and I'll do mine…”
Vimes slipped down into the passage. I'll cut one strap, he thought. They're fiddly to undo. And then…well, he'll have a chance, even in the smoke. That's more than anyone else got.
He crept through the office and into the chamber.
One torch was still alight, but the flame was just a nimbus in the yellow haze. The man was trying to rock the heavy chair, but it had been secured firmly to the floor.
Some thought had gone into that chair. The straps on the buckles were hard to reach. Even if a prisoner got one hand free, and that hand had not yet felt the professionalism of the torturer, they'd have a job to get out of the chair in a hurry.
He reached down to cut a strap, and heard a key in the lock.
Vimes stepped swiftly into the darker shadows.
The door opened, letting in the noise of distant shouting and the crackle of burning timber. It sounded as though the Unmentionables were making a run for the clear air of the street.
Findthee Swing stepped delicately into the room, and locked the door behind him. He stopped when he saw the seated figure, and examined it carefully. He walked to the office doorway and looked inside. He peered into the cells, but by then Vimes had moved soundlessly around a wall.
He heard Findthee sigh. There was the familiar sound of moving steel, followed by a small, organic sort of noise, and a cough.
Vimes reached down for his sword. But it was up on the road, too, wasn't it…
Down here, the song in his head came back louder, with the background clink of metal that was always part of it
He shook his head, as if that'd dislodge the memory. He had to
Vimes ran into the room and made a leap.
It seemed to him that he stayed in the air a long time. There was the torturer, blood on his shirt. There was Swing, just sliding the blade back into the stick. And Vimes, airborne, armed with just a knife.
I'm going to get out of this, he thought. I know, because I remember this. I remember Keel coming out and saying it was all over.
But that was the real Keel. This is me.
Swing jerked aside with surprising speed, trying to tug his blade out again. Vimes hit the sacks on the wall, and had the sense to roll away immediately. The blade slashed down beside him, spilling straw on to the floor.
He'd expected Swing to be a bad swordsman. That ridiculous stick suggested it. But he was a street swordsman—no finesse, no fancy tricks, just some talent at moving the blade quickly and sticking it where you hoped it wasn't going to go.
Fire crackled in the corner of the ceiling. Dripping spirit or sheer heat had worked itself through the heavy floorboards. A couple of the sacks began to blossom thick white smoke, which rolled above the men in a spreading cloud.
He circled the chair, watching Swing intently.
“I believe you are making a gravemistake,” said Swing.
Vimes concentrated on avoiding the sword.
“Hard times demand hard measures. Every leader knows that…” said Swing.
Vimes dodged, but continued circling, knife at the ready.
“History needs its butchers as well as its shepherds, sergeant.”
Swing jabbed, but Vimes had been watching his eyes, and swayed away in time. The man wasn't pleading. He didn't understand what had been done to require it. But he could see Vimes's face. There was no emotion in it at all.
“You must understand that in times of nationalemergency we cannot be too concerned with the so-called rights of—”
Vimes darted sideways and along the haze-filled corridor to the office. Swing lurched after him. The blade sliced Vimes on the back of the leg. He sprawled on to the clerk's desk, knife skittering from his fingers.
Swing circled to find a stabbing point. He drew back the sword…
Vimes's hand came up holding the steel ruler. The smack of its flat steel knocked the sword right out of the captain's grasp.
Vimes pulled himself upright as though in a dream, following on the curve of the stroke.
He turned the ruler as the backstroke began and it whispered through the air edge-first, leaving the hazy smoke rolling and coiling behind it. The tip caught Swing across the neck.
Behind Vimes the white smoke tumbled out of the corridor. The ceiling of the bloody chamber was falling in.
But he stayed, watching Swing with the same blank, intent expression. The man had raised his hands to his throat, blood spurting from between his fingers. He rocked, gasping for a breath that couldn't come, and fell backwards.
Vimes tossed the ruler on top of him and limped away.
Outside, there was the thunder of moving barricades.
Swing opened his eyes. The world around him was grey, except for the black-clad figure in front of him.
He sought, as he always did, to learn more about the new person by carefully examining their features.
“Um, your eyes are…er…your nose is…your chin.” He gave up.
YES, said Death, I'M A BIT OF A TRICKY ONE. THIS WAY MR. SWING.
Lord Winder was, thought Vetinari, impressively paranoid. He'd even put a guard on the top of the whisky distillery that overlooked the palace grounds. Two guards, in fact.
One of them was clearly visible as you rose over the parapet, but the other was lurking in the shadows by the chimneys.
The late Hon. John Bleedwell had spotted only the first one.
Vetinari watched impassively as the young man was dragged away. If you were an Assassin, being killed in the pursuit of your craft was all part of the job, albeit the last part. You couldn't complain. And it meant there was only one guard now, the other one taking Bleedwell, who had lived up to his name, downstairs.
Bleedwell had worn black. Assassins always did. Black was cool and, besides, it was the rules. But only in a
