Night Watch

“Couple of murders ring a bell?” said Vimes.

If injured innocence was money, Carcer's face was his fortune. “I don't know anything about—”

“I'm not up here to play games, Carcer. Knock it off.”

“You going to take me alive, your grace?”

“You know, I don't want to. But people think it's neater all round if I do.”

There was a clattering of tiles away on the left, and a thud as a huge siege bow was rested on the ridge of a nearby roof. The head of Detritus rose behind it.

“Sorry about dat, Mister Vimes, hard to climb up in dat hail. Jus' stand back.”

“You're going to let it shoot me?” said Carcer. He tossed the knife away. “An unarmed man?”

“Trying to escape,” said Vimes. But this was starting to go bad. He could feel it.

“Me? I'm just standing here, haha.”

And there it was. That bloody laugh, on top of that damn grin. It was never far away. “Haha” didn't come close to doing it the injustice it deserved. It was more a sort of modulation to the voice, an irritatingly patronizing chortle that suggested that all this was somehow funny and you hadn't got the joke.

Trouble was, you couldn't shoot someone for having an annoying laugh. And he was just standing there. If he ran, you could shoot him. Admittedly, it would be Detritus doing the shooting, and while with that bow it was technically possible to shoot to wound, the people you were wounding would probably be in the building next door.

But Carcer was just waiting there, insulting the world by his existence.

In fact he wasn't merely standing there now. In one movement he'd swung himself on to the lower slopes of the Library's dome. The glass panes—at least, the glass panes that had survived the freak hail—creaked in the iron framework.

“Stop right there!” Vimes bellowed. “And come down!”

“Now where could I go?” said Carcer, grinning at him. “I'm just waiting for you to arrest me, right? Hey, I can see your house from up here!”

What's under the dome? thought Vimes. How high are the bookcases? There's other floors in the Library, aren't there? Like galleries? But you can definitely look up at the dome from the ground floor, right? If you were careful, could you swing on to a gallery from the edge of the dome? It'd be risky, but if a man knew he was going to swing anyway…

Picking his way with care, he reached the edge of the dome. Carcer climbed up a little further.

“I warn you, Carcer—”

“Only high spirits, Mister Grace, haha! Can't blame a man for trying to enjoy his last few minutes of freedom, can you?”

I can see your house from up here…

Vimes hauled himself on to the dome. Carcer cheered.

“Well done, your Vimes!” he said, easing himself towards the top.

“Don't mess me about, Carcer. It'll go badly for you!”

“Badder than it's going to go anyway?” Carcer glanced down through a smashed pane. “Long way down, Mister Vimes. I reckon a man'd die instantly falling all that way, wouldn't he?”

Vimes glanced down, and Carcer leapt.

It didn't go the way he'd planned. Vimes had been tensed for something like this. After a complicated moment, Carcer was lying on the iron latticework, one arm under him, the other outflung and being banged heavily on the metal by Vimes. The knife it had held skidded away down the dome.

“Gods, you must think I'm stupid,” Vimes growled. “You wouldn't throw away a knife. Carcer, if you didn't have another one!”

Vimes's face was close to the man's now, close enough to look into the eyes above that chirpy grin and watch the demons waving.

“You're hurting me, and that's not allowed!”

“Oh, I wouldn't want anything to happen to you, Carcer,” said Vimes. “I want to see you in front of his lordship. I just want to hear you admit something for once. I just want to see that bloody cheeky grin wiped off your face. Sergeant Detritus!”

“Sah!” shouted the troll, from his distant ridge.

“Make a signal. I want people up here now. Me and Carcer are just going to stay nice and quiet here, so's he doesn't try any tricks.”

“Right, sir.” With another distant clatter of doomed tiles, the troll disappeared from view.

“You shouldn't have sent Captain Carrot away,” muttered Carcer. “He doesn't like watchmen bullying innocent civilians—”

“It is true that he has yet to master some of the finer details of de facto street policing,” said Vimes, maintaining his grip. “Anyway, I'm not hurting you, I'm protecting you. Wouldn't like you to fall all that way.”

Thunder rumbled again. The sky wasn't just storm-black now. There were pinks and purples in the clouds, as though they were bruised. Vimes could see the clouds moving like snakes in a sack, to an endless sullen rumbling. He wondered if the wizards had been messing about with the weather.

Something was happening to the air. It tasted of burned metal and flints. A weathercock on top of the dome began to spin round and round.

“I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes.”

“What?” said Vimes, looking down suddenly. Carcer was smiling cheerfully.

“I said I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes. I know a clever copper like you'd think I'd got two knives.”

“Yeah, right,” said Vimes. He could feel his hair trying to stand on end. Little blue caterpillars of light were crackling over the ironwork of the dome, and even over his armour.

“Mister Vimes?”

“What?” Vimes snapped. Smoke was rising from the weathercock's bearings.

“I got three knives, Mister Vimes,” said Carcer, bringing his arm up.

The lightning struck.

Windows blew out and iron gutters melted. Roofs lifted into the air and settled again. Buildings shook.

But this storm had been blowing in from far across the plains, pushing the natural background magic ahead of it. It dumped it now, all in one go.

They said afterwards that the bolt of lightning hit a clock-maker's shop in the Street of Cunning Artificers, stopping all the clocks at that instant. But that was nothing. In Baker Street a couple who had never met before became electrically attracted to one another and were forced to get married after two days for the sake of public decency. In the Assassins' Guild, the chief armourer became hugely, and since he was in the armoury at the time, tragically attractive to metal. Eggs fried in their baskets, apples roasted on the greengrocers' shelves. Candles lit themselves. Cartwheels exploded. And the ornate tin bath of the Archchancellor of Unseen University was lifted neatly off the floor, sizzled across his study and then flew off the balcony and on to the lawn in the octangle several storeys below, without spilling more than a cupful of suds.

Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully paused with his long-handled scrubbing brush hovering halfway down his back, and stared around.

Tiles smashed to the ground. Water boiled in the ornamental fountain near by.

Ridcully ducked as a stuffed badger, the origin of which was never ascertained, flew across the lawn and smashed through a window.

He winced as he was hit by a brief and inexplicable shower of small cogwheels, which pattered down all around him.

He stared as half a dozen watchmen dashed into the octangle and headed up the steps to the Library.