‘You’ve only got one arrow,’ said a guard.
There was a click from beside Vimes. Sam had raised his bow, too.
‘There’s two now, and since my lad here is in training he might hit you anywhere,’ said Vimes. ‘Drop your swords on the floor! Get out of the door! Run away! Do it now! Don’t come back!’
There was a moment of hesitation, just a moment, and then the men ran for it.
‘Fred will watch our backs,’ said Vimes. ‘Come on…’
All the Watch Houses were pretty much the same. Stone steps led down to the cellars. Vimes hurried down them, swung open a heavy door-And stopped.
Cells never smelled that good at the best of times. At the best of times, even at Treacle Mine Road, hygiene consisted of a bucket per cell and as much sloppingout as Snouty felt inclined to do. But, at the worst of times, the cells below Treacle Mine
-266-
Road never smelled of blood.
The beast stirred.
In this room there was a big wooden chair. In this room there was, by the chair, a rack. The chair was bolted to the floor. It had wide leather straps. The rack held clubs and hammers. In this room, that was all the furnishings.
The floor was dark and sticky. Down the length of it, a gully ran to a drain.
Boards had been nailed over the tiny window at street level.
This wasn’t a place where light was welcomed. And all the walls, and even the ceiling, were padded heavily with sacks stuffed with straw. Sacks had even been nailed to the door. This was a very thorough cell. Not even sound was meant to escape.
A couple of torches did nothing at all for the darkness except make it dirty.
Behind him, Vimes heard Nancyball throw up.
In a strange kind of dream, he walked across the floor and bent down to pick up something that gleamed in the torchlight.
It was a tooth.
He stood up again.
A closed wooden door led off on one side of the cellar; on the other, a wider tunnel almost certainly led to the cells. Vimes took a torch out of its holder, handed it to Sam and pointed along the tunnel-There were footsteps accompanied by a jingle of keys heading towards the door, and a light growing brighter underneath it.
The beast tensed…
Vimes dragged the largest club out of the rack and stepped swiftly to the wall beside the door. Someone was coming, someone who knew about this room, someone who called
themselves a copper…
Getting a firm twohanded grip, Vimes raised the club-
-267-
And looked across the stinking room, and saw young Sam watching him, young Sam with his bright shiny badge and face full of… strangeness.
Vimes lowered the club, leaned it delicately against the wall, and pulled the leather cosh from his pocket.
Shackled, not quite understanding, the beast was dragged back into the night…
A man stepped through the door, whistling under his breath, took a few steps into the room, saw young Sam, opened his mouth and then fell fast asleep. He was a big man, and hit the cobbles heavily. He had a leather hood over his head, and was naked to the waist. A big ring of keys hung from his belt.
Vimes darted into the corridor behind the door, ran around a corner, burst into a small, brightly lit room, and grabbed a man he found in there.
This one was a lot smaller, and suppressed a scream as Vimes dragged him up out of his chair.
‘And what does daddy do at work all day, mister?’ Vimes roared.
The little man was suddenly clairvoyant. One look at Vimes’s eyes told him how short his future might be.
I’in just a clerk! A clerk! I just write things down!’ he protested. He held up a pen by way of desperate demonstration.
Vimes looked at the desk. There were compasses there, and other geometer’s tools, symbols of Swing’s insane sanity. There were books, and folders stuffed with paperwork. And there was a yardlong steel ruler. He grabbed it in his spare hand and slammed it on the desktop. The heavy steel made a satisfying noise.
‘And?’ he said, his face a few inches from the struggling man.
‘And I measure people! It’s all in the captain’s book! I just measure people! I don’t do anything wrong! I’in not a bad man!’
-268-
Again the ruler slammed into the desk. But this time Vimes had twisted it, and the steel edge chopped into the wood.
‘Want me to cut you down to size, mister?’ The little man’s eyes rolled.
‘Please!’
‘Is there another way out of here?’ Vimes slapped the rule down on the desk.
The flicker of eyes was enough. Vimes saw a doorway in the wall, almost lost in the wooden panelling.
‘Good. Where does it come out?’
‘Er-‘
Now Vimes was nose to nose with the man who, in police
parlance, was helping him with his inquiries.
‘You’re all alone here,’ he said. ‘You have no friends here. You sat and took notes for a torturer, a bloody torturer! And I see a desk, and it’s got a desk drawer, and if you ever, ever want to hold a pen again you’ll tell me everything I want to know-‘
‘Warehouse!’ the man gasped. ‘Next door!’
‘Right, sir. Thank you, sir. You’ve been very helpful,’ said Vimes, lowering the limp body to the floor. ‘Now, sir, I’in just handcuffing you to this desk for a moment, sir, for your protection.’
‘Who… who from?’
‘Me. I’ll kill you if you try to run away, sir.’
Vimes hurried back to the main chamber. The torturer was still out cold. Vimes hauled him up into the chair, with great effort, and pulled off his hood, and recognized the face. The face, yes, but not the person. That is, it was the kind of face you saw a lot of in Ankh-Morpork: big, bruised, and belonging to someone who’d never quite learned that hitting people long after they’d lost consciousness was a wicked thing to do. He
wondered if the man actually liked beating people to death.
-269-
They often didn’t think about it. It was just a job.
Well, he wasn’t about to ask him. He buckled him in, with every strap, even the one that went across the forehead, pulling the last one tight just as the man came round. The mouth opened, and Vimes stuffed the hood into it.
Then he took the key ring and locked the main door. That should ensure a little extra privacy.
He met young Sam coming the other way as he headed for the cells. The boy’s face was white in the gloom.
‘Found anyone?’ said Vimes.
‘Oh, sarge…’
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, sarge… sarge…’ Tears were running down the
lanceconstable’s face.
Vimes reached out and steadied himself. Sam felt as though there were no bones left in his body. He was trembling.
‘There’s a woman in the last cell, and she… sarge… oh, sarge
“Try taking deep breaths,’ said Vimes. ‘Not that this air is fit to breathe.’
‘And there’s a room right at the end, sarge… oh, sarge…
Nancyball fainted again, sarge
‘You didn’t,’ said Vimes, patting him gently on the back.
‘But there’s-‘
‘Let’s rescue what we can, shall we, lad?’
‘But we were on the hurryup wagon, sarge!’
‘What?’ said Vimes, and then it dawned. Oh, yes…
‘But we didn’t hand anyone over, lad,’ he said. ‘Remember?’
‘But I’ve been on it before, sarge! All the lads have! We just handed people over and went back to the Watch House for cocoa, sarge!’
-270-
‘Well, you’d had orders…’ said Vimes, for what good that did.
‘We didn’t know!’
Not exactly, thought Vimes. We didn’t ask. We just shut our minds to it. People went in through that front door and some of the poor devils came out through the secret door, not always in one box.
They hadn’t measured up.
Nor did we.
He heard a low, visceral sound from the boy. Sam had spotted the torturer in the chair. He shook himself away from Vimes, ran over to the rack, and snatched up a club.
Vimes was ready. He grabbed the boy, swung him round, and twisted the thing out of his hand before murder was done.
‘No! That’s not the way! This is not the time! Hold it back!
Tame it! Don’t waste it! Send it back! It’ll come when you call!’
‘You know he did those things!’ shouted Sam, kicking at his legs. ‘You said we had to take the law into our own hands!’
Ah, thought Vimes. This is just the time for a long debate about the theory and practice of justice. Here comes the shortened version.
‘You don’t bash a man’s brains out when he’s tied to a chair!’
‘He did!’
‘And you don’t. That’s because you’re not him!’
‘But they-‘