Night Watch

him. The men with the lilac, I have to say, fought like tigers. Not skilfully, I'll admit, but when they saw that their leader was down they took the other side to pieces. Astonishing.

“And then, afterwards, I took a look at John Keel. It was John Keel. How could there be any question about that? Blood on him of course. There was blood everywhere. His wounds looked somewhat old, I thought. And death, as we know, changes people. Yet I remember wondering: this much? So I put it down as half a mystery and today…sergeant…we find the other half of a mystery. It's wonderful, isn't it, how alike men can be? I can imagine that even your Sergeant Colon would not realise anything. After all, he saw Keel die and he watched you grow up—”

“Where is this leading?” Vimes demanded.

“Nowhere, commander. What could I prove? And to what end would I prove it?”

“Then I'm saying nothing.”

“I cannot imagine what you could say,” said Vetinari. “No. I agree. Let us leave the dead alone. But for you, commander, as a little gift on the occasion of the birth of—”

“There's nothing I want,” said Vimes quickly. “You can't promote me any further. There's nothing left to bribe me with. I've got more than I deserve. The Watch is working well. We don't even need a new bloody dartboard—”

“In memory of the late John Keel—” Vetinari began.

“I warned you—”

“—I can give you back Treacle Mine Road.”

Only the high-pitched squeak of bats, hunting around the poplars, broke the silence that followed.

Then Vimes muttered: “A dragon burned it years ago. Some dwarfs live in the cellars now…”

“Yes, commander. But dwarfs…well, dwarfs are so refreshingly open about money. The more money the city offers, the less dwarf there is. The stable's still there, and the old mining tower. Stout stone walls all around. It could all be put back, commander. In memory of John Keel, a man who in a few short days changed the lives of many and, perhaps, saved some sanity in a mad world. Why, in a few months you could light the lamp over the door…”

Again, all that could be heard was the bats.

Perhaps they could even bring back the smell, Vimes thought. Perhaps there could be a window above the privy that'd spring open if you thumped it just right. Perhaps they could teach new coppers to learn old tricks—

“We could do with the space, it's true,” he conceded, with some effort.

“I can see you like the sound of it already,” said Vetinari. “And if you care to come along to my office tomorrow, we can settle the—”

“There's a trial tomorrow,” said Vimes sharply.

“Ah, yes. Of course. And it will be a fair one,” said the Patrician.

“It'd better be,” said Vimes. “I want this bastard to hang, after all.”

“Well, then,” said Vetinari, “afterwards we could—”

“Afterwards I'm going home to my family for a while,” said Vimes.

“Good! Well said,” said Vetinari, not missing a beat. “You have a gift, I have noticed, for impressive oratory.” And Vimes heard the gentle note of warning as he added, “At this time, commander, and in this place.”

“That's sergeant-at-arms, thank you,” said Vimes. “For now.”

He grabbed Carcer's shirt collar, and dragged him to justice.

On the way back to Scoone Avenue, in the dark of night, Vimes walked along the alley behind Clay Lane and stopped when he reckoned he was at a point halfway between the backs of the pawn shop and the shonky shop, and therefore behind the temple.

He threw his cigar stub over the fence. He heard it land on gravel, which moved a little.

And then he went home. And the world turned towards morning.

,

1. The Igor employed by the Watch as forensic specialist and medical aide was quite young (in so far as you could tell with an Igor, since useful limbs and other organs were passed on among Igors as others might hand on a pocket watch) and very modern in his thinking. He had a DA haircut with extended quiff, wore crepe soles and sometimes forgot to lisp.

2. The Uberwald League of Temperance, made up of former vampires who now wore black ribbons to show that they had completely sworn off the sticky stuff, my vord yes, and much preferred a good singsong and a healthy game of table-tennis.

3. Old Tom, the University's venerable clock, tolled not sounds but silences. They were not simply ordinary silences, but intervals of noise-absorbing nonsound that filled the world with loud soundlessness.

4. Who was an orangutan, changed from his former human shape as a result of a long-forgotten magical accident. It was so forgotten, in fact, that now people were forgetting he was an orangutan. This might seem quite hard to do, given that even a small orangutan is quite capable of filling all immediately available space, but to the wizards and most of the citizens he was now just the Librarian, and that was that. In fact, if someone ever reported that there was an orangutan in the Library, the wizards would probably go and ask the Librarian if he'd seen it.

5. Named after Wallace Sonky, a man without whose experiments with thin rubber the pressure on housing in Ankh-Morpork would have been a good deal more pressing.

6. In the same way that ancient forests become coal, ancient swaths of natural sugar cane can become, under the pressure of millennia, what in various parts of the Disc is known as hokey-pokey, pig treacle or rock molasses. But much boiling and purification was necessary to create the thick golden syrup that was the city dweller's honey, and these days Ankh-Morpork's supplies come from the more accessible toffee beds near Quirm.

7. Like creamed, but it goes on for a lot longer.

8. And this was true. Don't bother with the boots, would have been Trooper Gabitass's advice, had he been inclined to part with it. You need to bribe someone on the baggage carts to build up stock and when all's said and done you'll only make a few dollars. Stick to jewellery. It's portable. Trooper Gabitass had seen too many battlefields up close to use the word “glory” without wincing.

9. The Selachii and the Venturi made a point, on occasions like this, to talk only about things on which there was no possibility of disagreement. Given the history of the two families, this had become a very small number of things.