Feet of Clay

Terry Pratchett

Summary

There's a werewolf with pre-lunar tensiom in Ankh-Morpork. And a dwarf with attitude and a golem who's begun to think for itself.

But for Commander Vimes, Head of Ankh-Morpork City Watch, that's only the start...

As autumn fogs hold Anhk-Morpork in their grip, the City Watch have to track down a murderer who can't be seen.

He's not only got to find out whodunit, but howdunit too. He's not even sure what they dun. But as soon as he knows what the questions are, he's going to want some answers.

Who can you trust when there are mobs on the streets and plotters in the dark and all the clues point the wrong way?

Quotes

Shortly afterwards, and around the corner, a beggar holding out a hopeful hand for alms was amazed to find himself suddenly richer by a whole thirty dollars.

[Footnote: He subsequently got dead-drunk and shanghaied aboard a merchantman bound for strange and foreign parts where he met lots of young ladies who didn't wear many clothes. He eventually died from stepping on a tiger. A good deed goes around the world.]

People look down on stuff like geography and meterology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other.

["Real science":] That is to say, the sort you can use to give something three extra legs and then blow it up.

...[Vimes] hated the very idea of the world being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them. Every time he saw Willikins the butler fold his, Vimes's, clothes, he suppressed a terrible urge to kick the butler's shiny backside as an affront to the dignity of man.

Good old Sybil -- although she did tend to talk about curtains these days, but Sergeant Colon had said this happened to wives and was a biological thing and perfectly normal.

"I suspect, on reflection, that it was foolish of me to choose the roof," said the assassin.

"Probably," said Vimes. He'd spent several hours a few weeks ago sawing through joists and carefully balancing the roof tiles.

"I should have dropped off the wall and used the shrubbery."

"Possibly," said Vimes. He'd set a bear-trap in the shrubbery.

Letters home always gave [Carrot] some trouble. Letters from his parents were always interesting, being full of mining statistics and exciting news about new shafts and promising seams. All he had to write about were murders and such things as that.

Carrot paused. It said a lot about Captain Carrot that, even after almost two years in Ankh-Morpork, he was still uneasy about "d*mned".

Every restaurant and eatery in Ankh-Morpork offered free food to Carrot, in the certain and happy knowledge that he would always insist on paying.

In the Dwarf Bread Museum, in Whirligig Alley, Mr. Hopkinson the curator was somewhat excited. Apart from other considerations, he'd just been murdered. But at the moment he was choosing to consider this as an annoying background detail.

Dwarfs regard baking as part of the art of warfare. When they make rock cakes, no simile is intended.

Death was nonplussed. Most people were, after the initial confusion, somewhat relieved when they died. A subconscious weight had been removed. ... Few people treated it as a simple annoyance that might go away if you complained enough.

I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.

"Corporal Nobbs is sick, sir."

"Oh, I know that."

"I mean off sick, sir."

Sergeant Colon went back to his desk, surreptitiously opened his drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called Animal Husbandry. He'd been a bit worried about the title -- you heard stories about strange folk in the country -- but it turned out to be nothing more than a book about how cattle and pigs and sheep should breed.

Now he was wondering where to get a book that taught them how to read.

Cheery: "I was quite good at alchemy."
Vimes: "Guild member?"
Cheery: "Not any more, sir."
Vimes: "Oh? How did you leave the guild?"
Cheery: "Through the roof, sir."

"Well, we work for a living here, Littlebottom."

"Yes, sir."

"We don't blow things up, Littlebottom."

"No, sir. I don't blow everything up, sir. Some just melts."

"I want someone who can look at the ashtray and tell me what kind of cigars I smoke."

"Pantweed's Slim Panatellas," said Littlebottom automatically.

"Good gods!"

"You've left the packet on the table, sir."

Vimes looked down. "All right," he said. "So sometimes it's an easy answer."

At the next desk a tired dwarf was arguing with a vampire. "Look," he said, "it's not murder. You're dead already, right?"

Vampire: "I can't see why I can't work where I like!"
Policeman: "Yes, but ... in a pencil factory?"

Slab: Jus' say "AarrghaarrghpleeassennononoUGH"

-- Detritus' war on drugs

"What is it?"

"It's a wolf!"

"In a city? What does it find to eat?"

"Oh, why did you have to ask that?"

The yard was full of animals, but even they were crowded out by the smell of a yard full of animals.

"Sometimes heraldry is nothing more than the art of punning."

"And this last one? A bunch of grapes? Bit of a boozer, was he?" said Vimes sourly.

"No. Ah-ha. Word play. Vimes = Vines."

"Ah. The art of bad punning," said Vimes.

Vimes regarded with amazement a serious and positive sentence about Corporal Nobbs that included the word "gentleman."

"Sorry... let me make sure I understand this. Corporal Nobbs... my Corporal Nobbs... is the Earl of Ankh?"

"He would have to satisfy us as to proof of his lineage but, yes, it would appear so."

Vimes stared into the gloom. Thus far in his life, Corporal Nobbs would have been unlikely to satisfy the examiners as to his species.

It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to "serve the community" by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get in sideways.

Commander Vimes, on the other hand, was all for giving criminals a short, sharp shock. It really depended on how tightly they could be tied to the lightning rod.

She was a werewolf. That's all there was to it. You either spent your time trying to make sure people didn't find out or you let them find out and spend your time watching them keep their distance and whisper behind your back, although of course you'd have to turn round to watch that.

Angua: "It beats me why Ankh-Morpork wants to celebrate the fact it had a civil war three hundred years ago."
Carrot: "Why not? We won."
Angua: "Yes, but you lost too."

Most of [the dwarf breads] were the classic cowpat-like shape, an echo of their taste, but there were also buns, close-combat crumpets, deadly throwing toast and a huge dusty array of other shapes devised by a race that went in for food-fighting in a big and above all terminal way.

Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate...

People kept on talking about the true king of Ankh-Morpork, but history taught a cruel lesson. It said -- often in words of blood -- that the true king was the one who got crowned.

Constable Visit[-The-Infidel-With-Explainatory-Pamphlets] was an Omnian, whose country's traditional approach to evangelism was to put unbelievers to torture and the sword. Things had become a lot more civilized these days but Omnians still had a strenuous and indefatigable approach to spreading the Word, and had merely changed the nature of the weapons. Constable Visit spent his days off in company with his co-religionist Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments, ringing doorbells and causing people to hide behind the furniture everywhere in the city.

Detritus, despite a room-temperature IQ, made a good copper and a damn good sergeant. He had that special type of stupidity that was hard to fool.

Detritus was particularly good when it came to asking questions. He had three basic ones. They were the direct ("Did you do it?"), the persistent ("Are you sure it wasn't you what done it?") and the subtle ("It was you what done it, wasn't it?"). Although they were not the most cunning questions ever devised, Detritus' talent was to go on patiently asking them for hours on end, until he got the right answer, which was generally something like: "Yes! Yes! I did it! I did it! Now please tell me what it was I did!"

"Detritus," he said, as kindly as possible. "There's a thirty-foot drop into the river outside the window. There won't be--" He paused. This was the river Ankh, after all. jAny footprints'd be bound to have oozed back by now," he corrected himself. "Almost certainly."

Mere murders happened all the time. And usually even Detritus could solve them. When a distraught woman was standing over a fallen husband holding a right-angled poker and crying "He never should've said that about our Neville!" there was only a limited amount you could do to spin out the cast beyond the next coffee break.

Littlebottom climbed the stairs, took in the [crime] scene, and managed to reach the window in time to be sick.

Through werewolf eyes the world was different.

For one thing, it was in black-and-white. At least, that small part of it which as a human she'd thought of as 'vision' was monochrome -- but who cared that vision had to take a back seat when smell drove instead, laughing and sticking its arm out of the window and making rude gestures at all the other senses?

"You know, sometimes I envy you. It must be nice to be a wolf. Just for a while."

"It has its drawbacks." Like fleas, she thought, as they locked up the museum. And the food. And the constant nagging feeling that you should be wearing three bras at once.

It was easy to be a vegetarian by day. It was preventing yourself from becoming a humanitarian by night that took the real effort.

"Oh, well, if you prefer, I can recognize handwriting," said the imp proudly. "I'm quite advanced."

Vimes pulled out his notebook and held it up. "Like this?" he said.

The imp squinted for a moment. "Yep," it said. "That's handwriting, sure enough. Curly bits, spiky bits, all joined together. Yep. Handwriting. I'd recognize it anywhere."

Anatomy was an important study at the Alchemists' Guilde, owing to the ancient theory that the human body represented a microcosm of the universe, although when you saw one opened up it was hard to imagine which part of the universe was small and purple and went blomp-blomp when you prodded it.

...[alchemists] tended to pick up practical anatomy as you went along, and sometimes scraped it off the walls as well. When new students tried an experiment that was particularly successful in terms of explosive force, the result was often a cross between a major laboratory refit and a game of Hunt-the-other-Kidney.

It is a pervasive and beguiling myth that the people who design instruments of death end up being killed by them. There is almost no foundation in fact. Colonel Shrapnel wasn't blown up, M. Guillotin died with his head on, Colonel Catling wasn't shot. If it hadn't been for the murder of cosh and blackjack maker Sir William Blunt-Instrument in an alleyway, the rumour would never have got started.

The changed fortunes of the Watch had allowed Detritus to have a proper breastplate rather than a piece of elephant battle armour. As was normal practice for the uniform of a sergeant, the armourer had attempted to do a stylized representation of muscles on it. As far as Detritus was concerned, he hadn't been able to get them all in.

"Is dere any trouble?" [Detritus] said.

The crowd backed away.

"None at all, officer," said Mr. Raddley. "You, er, just loomed suddenly, that's all..."

"Dis is correct," said Detritus. "I am a loomer. It often happen suddenly. So dere's no trouble, den?"

"No trouble whatsoever, officer."

"Amazing t'ing, trouble," rumbled Detritus thoughtfully. "Always I go lookin' for trouble, an' when I find it people say it ain't dere."

"He dead?"

"Oh, yes."

"He gonna get better?"

"Better than dead? I doubt it."

Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it does not need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.

Colon: "Do you want me to get a doctor?"
Vimes: "Are you mad? We want him to live!"

"Donut Jimmy? He's a horse doctor!"

"So I understand," said Vimes.

"But why?"

"Because many of his patients survive," said Vimes.

When a human doctor, after much bleeding a cupping, finds that a patient has died out of sheer desperation, he can always say, "Dear me, will of the gods, that will be thirty dollars please," and walk away a free man. That is because human beings are not, technically, worth anything. A good racehorse, on the other hand, may be worth twenty thousand dollars. A doctor who lets one hurry off too soon to that great padlock in the sky may well expect to hear, out of some dark alley, a voice saying something on the lines of "Mr. Chrysoprase is very upset," and find the brief remainder of his life full of incident.

"You appear to be of the dwarf persuasion."

Cheery didn't bother to answer. There was no use denying it. Somehow, people could tell if you were a dwarf just by looking at you.

[Vetinari had] said to Vimes once, in this very room, standing at this very window: "They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today."

It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: "Kings. What a good idea."

Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.

Vimes: "Nobby, how many grandmothers' funerals have you really been to?"
Nobby: "Er... three..."
Vimes: "Three?"
Nobby: "It turned out Nanny Nobbs weren't quite dead the first time."

Nobby shifted uneasily. He didn't like being questioned by policemen, especially since he was one.

Vimes sighed. He was an honest man. He'd always felt that was one of the bigger defects of his personality.

When Nobby had gone Vimes reached behind the desk and picked up a faded copy of Twurp's Peerage or, as he personally thought of it, the guide to the criminal classes. You wouldn't find slum dwellers in these pages, but you would find their landlords. And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

It was easy enough to imagine an ennobled Nobbs. Because where Nobby went wrong was in thinking small. He sidled into places and pinched things that weren't worth much. If only he'd sidled into continents and stolen entire cities, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in the process, he'd have been a pillar of the community.

Vimes: "You said there's been another murder?"
Carrot: "At the Dwarf Bread Museum. Someone killed Mr. Hopkinson with his own bread!"
Vimes: "Made him eat it?"

...Carrot knew everyone. If Carrot were to be dropped into some dense tropical jungle it'd be "Hello, Mr. Runs Swiftly Through The Trees! Good morning, Mr. Talks To The Forest, what a splendid blowpipe! And what a novel place for a feather!"

The owner of the voice made it very clear that he was aware there were degrees of nobility from something above kingship stretching all the way down to commoner, and that as far as Corporal Nobbs was concerned an entirely new category -- commonest, perhaps -- would have to be coined.

"I thought dwarfs hardly recognized the difference between male and female, anyway. Half the dwarfs we bring in here on a No. 23 are female, I know that, and they're the ones that are hardest to subdue..."

"What's a No. 23?"

"'Running Screaming At People While Drunk and Trying to Cut Their Knees off'," said Angua.

"I'm scared of fights! I think songs about gold are stupid! I hate beer! I can't even drink dwarfishly! When I try to quaff I drown the dwarf behind me!"

"Everyone's got troubles in the Watch. Normal people don't become policemen."

"You're normal," said Cheery, shyly. "I like you."

Angua patted her on the head. "You say that now," she said, "but when you've been around here for a while you'll find out that sometimes I can be a bitch..."

-- Literally

...[Igneous] was also a wall, which was the same as a fence only a lot harder and tougher to beat.

Igneous, despite giving the appearance of not being able to count beyond ten without ripping off someone else's arm, and having an intimate involvement in the city's complex hierarchy of crime, was known to pay his bills. If you were going to be successful in the criminal world, you needed a reputation for honesty.

...while it was true that a lot of people came to Ankh-Morpork because it was a city of opportunity, sometimes it was the opportunity not to be hung, skewered or dismantled for whatever crimes you'd left behind in the mountains.

Angua: "Everyone likes Mrs Gammage. They... watch out for her. Help her out in little ways."
Cheery: "How?"
Angua: "Well, I heard that last month someone broke into her hovel and stole some of her stuff..."
Cheery:"That doesn't sound helpful."
Angua: "...and it was all returned next day and a couple of thieves were found in the Shades with not a drop of blood left in their bodies. You know, you get told a lot of bad things about the undead, but you never hear about the marvellous work they do in the community."

-- Regulars at Biers stick together

By now, if it had been a dwarf bar, the floor would be sticky with beer, the air would be full of flying quaff, and people would be singing. They'd probably be singing the latest dwarf tune, Gold, Gold, Gold, or one of the old favourites, like Gold, Gold, Gold, or the all-time biggie, Gold, Gold, Gold.

"What happened to [the bogeyman]?" said Cheery, running to keep up with Angua's stride.

"Existential uncertainty," Angua said. "He doesn't know whether he exists or not... Look, bogeymen go away if you put your head under the blankets. Everyone knows that, don't they? So if you put their head under a blanket..."

"We're going to see someone who's either our murderer or who knows who the murderer is."

Cheery stopped. "But you've got only a sword and I haven't even got that!"

"Don't worry, we won't need weapons."

"Oh, good."

"They wouldn't be any use."

"How many times have you been killed this week?"

"I was minding my own business!" said the unseen complainer.

"Stacking garlic? You're a vampire, aren't you? I mean, let's see what jobs you have been doing ... Post sharpener for a fencing firm, sunglasses tester for Argus opticians ... Is it me, or is there some underlying trend here?"

Vimes relaxed. This wasn't going to be another one of those painful conversations about the state of his soul and the necessity of giving it a wash and brush-up before eternal damnation set in. This was going to be about something important.

"Ceno was a rather liberal god, sir. Not big on commandments."

"Sounds almost decent, as gods go."

Visit looked disapproving. "The Cenotines died through five hundred years of waging some of the bloodiest wars on the continent, sir."

"Spare the thunderbolts and spoil the congregation, eh?" said Vimes.

"I'm trying to be civilized," she said. "I could confiscate you right now. The charge would be Being Obstructive When It's Been A Long Day and I've Had Enough."

They thought themselves part of the march of history, the tide of progress and the wave of the future. They were men who felt that The Time Had Come. Regimes can survive barbarian hordes, crazed terrorists and hooded secret societies, but they're in real trouble when prosperous and anonymous men sit around a big table and think thoughts like that.

"...Sergeant Detritus will be around constantly so that if anyone nods off he'll kick arse, sir, and you'll know when he does that 'cos the poor bugger'll come right through the wall."

Colon read the scroll slowly, his lips moving when he came to difficult words like "and" and "the".

...Vimes was a policeman. No one lived a completely blameless life. It might be just possible, by lying very still in a cellar somewhere, to get through a day without committing a crime. But only just. And, even then, you were probably guilty of loitering.

[Angua] always had a soft spot for the underdog.

So did Vimes. You had to. Not because they were pure or noble, because they weren't. You had to be on the side of underdogs because they weren't overdogs.

Thieving without a license was punishable by death for the first offence. [Footnote: The Ankh-Morpork view of crime and punishment was that the penalty for the first offence should prevent the possibility of a second offence.]

It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away.

When Carrot had arrived the entire Watch's petty cash had been kept on a shelf in a tin marked "Stronginthearm's Armour Polish for Gleaming Cohorts" and, if money was needed for anything, all you had had to do was go and find Nobby and force him to give it back.

This always happens in any police chase anywhere. A heavily-laden lorry will always pull out of a side alley in front of the pursuit.

If vehicles aren't involved, then it'll be a man with a rack of garments. Or two men with a large sheet of glass.

There's probably some kind of secret society behind all this.

Sergeant Colon glanced at the desk. "Foreign writing," he said, in a voice which suggested that it was nothing like as good as decent home writing, and probably smelled of garlic.

"Well ... you know the kiss of life?" said Carrot. "I mean first aid? I know you know, Nobby. You came with me when they had that course at the YMPA."

"I only went 'cos you said you got a free cup of tea and a biscuit," said Nobby sulkily. "Anyway, the dummy ran away when it was my turn."

Colon in particular had great difficulty with the idea that you went on investigating after someone had confessed. ... You didn't go around disbelieving people. You disbelieved people only when they said they were innocent. Only guilty people were trustworthy. Anything else struck at the whole basis of policing.

That's why we all hate 'em, he thought. Those expressionless eyes watch us, those bigfaces turn to follow us, and doesn't it just look as if they're making notes and taking names? If you heard that one had bashed in someone's head over in Quirm or somewhere, wouldn't you just love to believe it?

A voice inside, a voice which generally came to him only in the quiet hours of the night or, in the old days, half-way down a whisky bottle, added: Given how we use them, maybe we're scared because we know we deserve it...

Corporal Nobbs looked despondently into his glass. People often did this in the Mended Drum, when the immediate thirst had been slaked and for the first time they could get a good look at what they were drinking.

"...what good'd a lot of moneneney do me, hey?"

The clientele looked puzzled. This seemed to be a question on the lines of "Alcohol, is it nice?", or "Hard work, do you want to do it?"

"I've got a right to arm bears, me. See here? It says 'Earl', right? That's me. You could, you could, you could have my head up over the door."

"Could be," said the barman, eyeing the crowd.

Someone grabbed Nobby by the throat. Colon didn't recognize the grabber. He was just one of the scarred, ill shaven regulars whose function it was, around about this time of an evening, to start opening bottles with his teeth or, if the evening was going really well, with somebody else's teeth.

Mr. Cheese the [bar] owner was a good listener. He listened to things like "Make that a double" and "Keep them coming". He also said the right things, like "Credit? Certainly, officer".

Vimes sat gloomily behind a glass of lemonade. He wanted one drink, and knew precisely why he wasn't going to have one. One drink ended up arriving in a dozen glasses.

One reason that Mr. Cheese had allowed his pub to become practically the city's fifth Watch House was the protection this offered. Watchmen were quiet drinkers, on the whole. They just went from vertical to horizontal with the minimum amount of fuss, without starting any major fights, and without damaging the fixtures overmuch. And no one ever tried to rob him. Watchmen got really intense about having their drinking disturbed.

The boldest of the three [robbers] moved suddenly, grabbed Angua and pulled her upright. "We walk out of here unharmed or the girl gets it, all right?" he snarled.

Someone sniggered.

"I hope you're not going to kill anyone," said Carrot.

"That's up to us!"

"Sorry, was I talking to you?" said Carrot.

"What's this, then?"

"His imperial lordship's bar bill," said the barman.

"Don't be daft, no one can drink that much ... 'm not payin'!"

"I'm including breakages, mind you."

"Yeah? Like what?"

The barman pulled a heavy hickory stick from its hiding place under the bar. "Arms? Legs? Suit yourself," he said.

As her tutors had said, there were two signs of a good alchemist: the Athletic and the Intellectual. A good alchemist of the first sort was someone who could leap over the bench and be on the far side of a safely thick wall in three seconds, and a good alchemist of the second sort was someone who knew exactly when to do this.

Her books on alchemy were marvellous objects, every page a work of the engraver's art, but they nowhere contained instructions like "Be sure to open a window." They did have instructions like "Adde Aqua Quirmis to the Zinc untile Rising Gas Yse Vigorously Evolved," but never added "Don't Doe Thys Atte Home" or even "And Say Fare-thee-Welle to Thy Eyebrows."

"Err ... excuse me ... but are you and Captain Carrot..."

Angua waited politely.

"...Er..."

"Oh, yes," said Angua, taking pity. "We're er."

"I stay at Mrs. Cake's boarding house because you need your own space in a city like this." And an understanding landlady sympathetic to those with special needs, she added to herself. Like doorhandles that a paw could operate, and a window left open on moonlit nights.

"There's not a lot you can say about mining. 'I mine in my mine and what's mine is mine.'"

"I thought dwarfs loved gold," said Angua.

"They just say that to get it into bed."

"It's like that in the Watch, too," said Angua. "You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There's no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You'll soon learn the language. Basically it's how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were sick. Just think egotesticle."

...Foul Ole Ron was the first person ever to own a Thinking-Brain Dog.

There's a dwarfish saying: "All trees are felled at ground-level" -- although this is said to be an excessively bowdlerized translation for a saw which more literally means, "When his hands are higher than your head, his groin is level with your teeth."

"You tellin' me we paid for Happy Hour in the Drum?"

"Not so much Happy Hour," said Colon miserably. "More sort of Estatic One-Hundred-and-Fifty Minutes."

And [Vimes] distrusted the kind of person who'd take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, "Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fell on hard times," and the unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man's boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he'd been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!

"Bingely beepy bleep!"

"Oh, no..."

"This is your six ay-emm wake-up call! Good morning!! Here are your appointments for today, Insert Name Here!!"

Sergeant Detritus' approach to these matters was almost instinctively correct. He had the palace staff lined up in front of him and was shouting at them at the top of his voice.

And [Detritus has] mastered policing as it is practised by the majority of forces in the universe, which is, basically, screaming angrily at people until they give in.

The only reason that [Detritus is] not a one-troll reign of terror is the ease with which his thought processes can be derailed by anyone who tries something fiendishly cunning, like an outright denial.

"Snapcase was reliable," said Mr. Sock gloomily. "Remember when he made his horse a city councillor?"

"You've got to admit it wasn't a bad councillor, compared to the others."

"As I recall, the others at the time were a vase of flowers, a heap of sand and three people who had been beheaded."

Thousands of years ago the old [Ankh-Morpork] empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: "Do not fight, or we will kill you." The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: "If you fight, we'll call in your mortgages. And incidentally, that's my pike you're poinging at me. I paid for that shield you're holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor."

"I accept that the question of resurrecting the Ankh-Morpork succession has been raised several times recently," said Mr. Slant.

"Yes. By madmen," said Mr. Boggis. "It's part of the symptoms. Put underpants on head, talk to trees, drool, decide that Ankh-Morpork needs a king..."

What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that?

He'd been pretty good at [hopscotch]. Of course, they'd played it by Ankh-Morpork rules. Instead of kicking a stone they'd kicked William Scuggins.

"We looked in his cold room and you know what? You know what? You know what he's been selling as meat?"

"Tell me," said Carrot.

"Pork and beef!"

"Oh, dear."

"And lamb!"

"Tch, tch."

"Hardly any rat at all!"

-- Dwarf food scandal

There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.

"Was there anything else on the dinner menu?"

"Vole-au-vents and Cream of Rat," said Gimlet. "All hygienically prepared."

"How do you mean, 'hygienically prepared'?" said Carrot.

"The chef is under strict orders to wash his hands afterwards."

The assembled dwarfs nodded. This was certainly pretty hygienic. You didn't want people going around with ratty hands.

"I don't think the mascara works," Angua said. "The lipstick's fine but the mascara ... I don't think so."

"I think I need practice."

"You sure you want to keep the beard?"

"You don't mean ... shave?" Cheery backed away.

"All right, all right. What about the iron helmet?"

"It belonged to my grandmother!"

"I haven't got any posh clothes," said Nobby.

"Ah, that's where you score, Nobby," said Colon. "Uniforms is okay. Adds a bit of tone, in fact. Especially if you look dashing," he said, ignoring the evidence that Nobby was, in fact, merely runny.

There'd be many women who'd be happy to be the mother-in-law of the Earl of Ankh even if it meant having Nobby Nobbs into the bargain.

Colon beamed at [Nobby] with the rather worried expression of a mad doctor who has bolted on the head, applied the crackling lightning to the electrodes, and is now watching his creation lurch down to the village.

Vetinari: "You have the mind of a true policeman, Vimes."
Vimes: "Thank you, sir."
Vetinari: "Really? Was it a compliment?"

"The big trouble," [Carrot] added, "is that everyone wants someone else to read their minds for them and then make the world work properly."

"D*mn!" said Carrot, a difficult linguistic feat.

"I mean, I've nothing against females. I'm pretty certain my stepmother is one."

"Carrot, I think you've got something wrong with your head," said Angua.

"What?"

"I think you may have got it stuck up your bum."

There were a few seconds of shocked silence while they both considered the image of a dwafish strip-tease dancer. Both minds rebelled.

He'd heard rumors -- who hadn't? -- that working in the Watch was the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork. He'd have to admit that, if you wanted to hide a secret heir to the throne, you couldn't possibly hide him more carefully than under the face of C.W. St.J. Nobbs.

Faint air movements wafted towards him a smell that out-smelled even the river. It proclaimed that ahead of Vimes was a ding-a-ling so big he'd been upgraded to a clang-a-lang.

...unfortunately, and against all common sense, sometimes people inconsiderately throw their bound enemies into rooms entirely bereft of nails, handy bits of sharp stone, sharp-edged shards of glass or even, in extreme cases, enough pieces of old junk and tools to make a fully functional armoured car.

He must be over one of the numerous streams which flowed through the city, although they had of course been built over centuries before and were now used ... for those purposes to which humanity had always put clean, fresh water; i.e., making it as turbid and undrinkable as possible.

Wee Mad Arthur: "Would there be any money in this?"
Colon: "What about your public duty?"
Wee Mad Arthur: "Aye, so there's no money in this?"

Nobby grinned happily in the middle of the crowd. He couldn't remember when he had enjoyed himself so much with all his clothes on.

"It's astonishing. Frankly astonishing. The man actually has charisn'tma."

"Your meaning?"

"I mean he's so dreadful he fascinates people."

"And his table manners! Did you notice them?"

"No."

"Ex-actly!"

Grunting and struggling, the crowd opened up like a watercourse in front of the better class of prophet.

"One of these killed that old priest!"

"Sorry?" said Carrot. "If it's just a thing, how can it commit murder? A sword is a thing" -- he drew his own sword; it made an almost silken sound -- "and of course you couldn't possibly blame a sword if someone thrusts it at you, sir."

The man went cross-eyed as he tried to focus on the sword.

And, again, Angua felt that touch of bewilderment. Carrot wasn't threatening the man. He wasn't threatening the man. He was merely using the sword to demonstrate a ... well, a point.

[The rioter] turned. An attractive watchwoman behind him gave him a friendly smile. That was to say, her mouth was turned up at the corners and all her teeth were visible.

The crowd looked at him with the kind of expression people always wore when they looked at Carrot. It was the face-cracking realization that he really did believe what he was saying.

When people were offering you money it was no time to debate their sanity.

"You're being reasonable again!" snapped Angua. "You're deliberately seeing everyone's point of view! Can't you try to be unfair even once?"

"You do well for yourselves here, I must say," said Mrs Palm. "A canteen--"

She stopped as she stepped through the door.

"People eat in here?" she said.

"Well, grumble about the coffee, mostly," said Carrot.

It is traditionally the belief of policemen that they can tell what a substance is by sniffing it and then gingerly tasting it, but this practice had ceased in the Watch evern since Constable Flint had dipped his finger into a blackmarket consignment of ammonium chloride cut with radium, said "Yes, this is definitely Slab wurble wurble sclup," and had to spend three days tied to his bed until the spiders went away.

"It's disgusting!" said Carrot. "Fancy them even thinking that you'd poison the Patrician!"

"I'm offended that they think I'd be daft enough to keep the poison in my desk drawer," said Vimes, lighting a cigar.

"Right," said Carrot. "Did they think you were some kind of fool who'd keep evidence like that where anyone could find it?"

"Exactly," said Vimes, leaning back. "That's why I've got it in my pocket."

"I was talking about policing, not alcohol. There's lots of people will help you with the alcohol business, but there's no one out there arranging little meetings where you can stand up and say, 'My name is Sam and I'm a really suspicious bastard.'"

Vimes: "What is it I'm always telling you?"
Carrot: "Er ... er ... Never trust anybody, sir?"
Vimes: "No, not that."
Carrot: "Er ... er ... Everyone's guilty of something, sir?"
Vimes: "Not that, either."
Carrot: "Er ... er ... Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk, sir?"

Vimes: "I'm pretty sure I'm always saying something else that's very relevant here. Something pithy about police work."
Carrot: "Can't remember anything right now, sir."
Vimes: "Well, I'll damn well make up something and start saying it a lot from now on."

It is not a good idea to spray finest brandy across the room, especially when your lighted cigar is in the way.

Colon: "Arms tired. Another ten seconds and I'm gonna be a chalk outline..."
Wee Mad Arthur: "Nah, no one's got that much chalk."

"And now it's gone round the corner" -- there was a crash of splintering wood -- "and now it's got into the building. I expect it'll come up the stairs, but it looks like yer'll be okay."

"Why?"

"'Cos all you gotta do is let go of the roof, see?"

"I'lll drop to my death!"

"Right! Nice clean way to go. None of that 'arms-and-legs-bein'-ripped-off' stuff first."

Colon tried to swing his legs like a pendulum. Every muscle in his arm screamed at him. He knew he was overweight. He'd always meant to take exercise one day. He just hadn't been aware that it was going to be today.

The cattle watched the golem, with that guarded expression which cattle have that means they're waiting for the next thought to turn up.

"Right," he said. "We've done it the modern way, now let's try policing like grandfather used to do it. It's time to--"

"Prod buttock, sir?" said Carrot, hurriedly.

"Close," said Vimes, taking a deep drag and blowing out a smoke ring, "but no cigar."

The street was full of animals, milling around uncertainly. When animals are in a state of uncertainty they get nervous, and the street was already, as it were, paved with anxiety.

Sergeant Colon had not hitherto had a great deal of experience of animals, except in portion sizes.

This little piggy looked like the little piggy that killed the boarhounds, disembowelled the horse and ate the huntsman.

"And then it went into the poultry merchant's, grabbed Mr. Terwillie, and--" the man stopped, aware there was a lady present, even if she was making snorting noises while trying not to laugh, and continued in a mumble "--made use of some sage and onion. If you know what I mean..."

Beef cattle have a religion. They are deeply spiritual animals. They believe that good and obedient cattle go to a better place when they die, through a magic door. They don't know what happens next, but they've ehard that it involves really good eating and, for some reason, horseradish.

Detritus: "I could shoot it through der head wid my bow, Mr. Vimes."
Vimes: "This is a crowded street, Sergeant. It might hit an innocent person, even in Ankh-Morpork."
Detritus: "Sorry, sir. But if it did we could always say they bin guilty of somethin', sir?"

The crowds were melting away ahead of the bull. A ton of pedigree bull does not experience traffic congestion, at least not for any length of time.

"Why are you all covered in crap, Fred?"

"Well, sir, you know that creek that you're up without a paddle? It started there and it's got worse, sir."

"Permission to go and have a bath, sir?"

"No, but you could stand back a few more feet."

You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergant stood there and said, "We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of." There was always a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear.

Nobby was vaguely aware of animals as being food in a primary stage and left it at that.

Angua: "Why do you assume females are weaker? You wouldn't worry about me taking on a vicious bar crowd by myself."
Carrot: "I'd give aid where necessary."
Angua: "To me or to them?"

"I knew you'd come! I've got a bow and I'm not afraid to use it!" The crossbow's point moved uncertainly, proving him a liar.

Carrot: "The candles killed two other people."
Carry: "Who?"
Carrot: "An old lady and a baby in Cockbill Street."
Carry: "Were they important?"
Carrot: "I was almost feeling sorry for you. Right up to that point. You're a lucky man, Mr. Carry."
Carry: "You think so?"
Carrot: "Yes. We got to you before Commander Vimes did."

...many dwarf battle cries didn't bother with words. They went straight for emotions in sonic form.

Angua: "What did she yell?"
Carrot: "It's the most menacing dwarf battle cry there is! Once it's been shouted someone has to be killed!"
Angua: "What's it mean?"
Carrot: "Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!"

Carrot shook himself free. "It's murder," he said. "We're Watchmen. We can't just ... watch! It killed him!"

"It's an it and so's he--"

"Commander Vimes said someone has to speak for the people with no voices!"

He really believes it, Angua thought. Vimes put words in his head.

Carry: "I didn't think anyone was going to get hurt."
Vimes: "Right, right. You made poisoned candles because they gave a better light, I expect."

[Vimes] ran into the alley. Sergeant Colon followed, on the basis that it was fine to run into an alley containing an armed man provided you were behind someone else.

There was a commotion in the gaping doorway and Vimes ran in, sword drawn. "Oh, gods ... Sergeant Detritus!"

Detritus appeared behind him. "Sah!"

"Crossbow bolt through the head, if you please!"

"If you say so, sir..."

"Its head, Sergeant! Mine is fine!"

"We can rebuild him," said Carrot hoarsely. "We have the pottery."

-- And it won't cost $6 million, either

"Corporal Littlebottom, I order you not to fall off!"

"No one told me she was a were--" Cheri moaned.

"Look at it like this, Corporal," said Vimes, as patiently as he could. "If she hadn't been a werewolf you would by now be the world's largest novelty candle, all right?"

Igneous the troll opened the door of his pottery a fraction. He'd intended the fraction to be no more than about one-sixteenth, but someone immediately pushed hard and turned it into rather more than one and three-quarters.

"Slab," [Detritus] growled, walking back to the trembling Igneous. "You tellin' me about blasphemy, you sedimentr'y coprolith? You doin' what Captain Carrot say right now or you goin' out of here in a sack!"

"Dis is police brutality..." Igneous muttered.

"No, dis is just police shoutin'!" yelled Detritus. "You want to try for brutality it okay wit' me!"

Igneous tried to appeal to Carrot. "It not right, he got a badge, he puttin' me in fear, he can't do dis," he said.

Carrot nodded. There was a glint in his eye that Igneous should have noticed. "That's correct," he said. "Sergeant Detritus?"

"Sir?"

"It's been a long day for all of us. You can go off duty."

"Yessir!" said Detritus, with considerable enthusiasm.

"You really intend to prefer charges?"

"I'd prefer violence," said Vimes loudly. "Charges is what I'm going to have to settle for."

"You are in favour of the common people?" said Dragon mildly.

"The common people?" said Vimes. "They're nothing special. They're no different from the rich and powerful except they've got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit."

"Undead Or Alive, You Are Coming With Me."

It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the wrong place and guess who's back? They returned more times than raw broccoli.

Vetinari: "Many fine old manuscripts in that place, I believe. Without price, I'm told."
Vimes: "Yes, sir. Certainly worthless, sir."

"Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you. ... It seems you have managed to retain this even though you are authority. ... That's practically Zen."

Vetinari: "In all, I've had seventeen demands for your badge. Some want parts of your body attached. Why did you have to upset everybody?"
Vimes: "I suppose it's a knack, sir."

Vetinari: "It would be a terrible thing, would it not, if people thought they could take the law into their own hands..."
Vimes: "Oh, no fear of that, sir. I'm holding on tightly to it."

Vetinari: "Who watches the Watch? I wonder?"
Vimes: "Oh, that's easy, sir. We watch one another."

"I'm sure I just gave you an order, Commander. I distinctly felt my lips move."

"I couldn't let our gallant policeman know I'd worked it out for myself, could I? Not when he was making such an effort and having so much fun being ... well, being Vimes. I'm not completely heartless, you know."

Drumknott: "But, my lord, you could have sorted it out diplomatically! Instead he went around upsetting things and making a lot of people very angry and afraid--"
Vetinari: "Yes. Dear me. Tsk, tsk."
Drumknott: "Ah."

Colon: "It's no good, sir. I've been trying to swear him in for half an hour, sir, and we keep ending up arguming about oaths and things."
Vimes: "You willing to be a Watchman, Dorfl?"
Dorfl: "Yes."
Vimes: "Right. That's as good as a swear to me."

"What are your duties?" said Vimes.

"To Serve The Public Trust, Protect The Innocent, And Seriously Prod Buttock, Sir," said Dorfl.

Nobby: "Funny thing, that. You never get bad fortunes in cookies, ever noticed that? They never say stuff like: 'Oh dear, things're going to be really bad.' I mean, they're never misfortune cookies."
Vimes: "That, Corporal, is because of one of the fundamental driving forces of the universe."
Nobby: "What? Like, people who read fortune cookies are the lucky ones?"
Vimes: "No. Because the people who sell fortune cookies want to go on selling them."

"I've got to go on duty," said Nobby. "Captain Carrot wants me to do crime prevention in Peach Pie Street."

"How d'you do that, then?" said Colon.

"Keep away, he said."

"I Wish To Ask You A Question," said the golem.

"Yes?"

"I Smashed The Treadmill But The Golems Repaired It. Why? And I Let The Animals Go But They Just Milled Around Stupidly. Some Of Them Even Went Back To The Slaughter Pens. Why?"

"Welcome to the world, Constable Dorfl."

"Is It Frightening To Be Free?"

"You said it."

"You Say To People, 'Throw Off Your Chains' And They Make New Chains For Themselves?"

"Seems to be a major human activity, yes."

"Excuse Me," said Dorfl.

"We're not listening to you! You're not even really alive!" said a priest.

Dorfl nodded. "This Is Funamentally True," he said.

"See? He admits it!"

"I Suggest You Take Me And Smash Me And Grind The Bits Into Fragments And Pound The Fragments Into Powder And Mill Them Again To The Finest Dust There Can Be, And I Believe You Will Not Find A Single Atom Of Life--"

"Fine! Let's do it!"

"However, In Order To Test This Fully, One Of You Must Volunteer To Undergo The Same Process."

"But the gods plainly do exist," said a priest.

"It Is Not Evident."

A bolt of lightning lanced through the clouds and hit Dorfl's helmet. There was a sheet of flame and then a trickling noise. Dorfl's molten armour formed puddles around his white-hot feet.

"I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument," said Dorfl calmly, from somewhere in the clouds of smoke.

And he's not just an atheist, he's a ceramic atheist! Fireproof!

Angua stared at him. It was the stare Carrot so often attracted. It roamed every feature of his face, looking for the tiniest clue that he was making some kind of joke. Some long, deep joke atthe expense of everyone else. Every sinew in her body knew that he must be, but there was not a clue, not a twitch to prove it.

Angua: "Hey, why don't we paint a big sign saying something like 'The Dwarf Bread Experience'?"
Carrot: "That probably wouldn't work for dwarfs. A dwarf bread experience tends to be short."