‘A shave! There’s hot water in the jug.’
When she had left he hauled himself upright and tottered into his bathroom. There was, indeed, a jug of hot water on the marble washstand.
He looked at the face in the mirror. Unfortunately, it was his. Perhaps if he shaved it first… ? And then he could wash the bits that were left.
Fragments of the night before kept on respectfully drawing themselves to his attention. lt was a shame about that guard, but sometimes you just coudln’t stand and argue
He shouldn’t have done that with his badge. It wasn’t like the old days. He had responsibilities. He should’ve stayed on and made things just a little less
‘No. That never worked.
He managed to get the lather on his face. The Riot Act! Good grief… He stopped his razor thoughtfully. Rust’s milky eyes stared out of his memory. Bastard! Men like that thought, they really thought, that the Watch was a kind of sheepdog, to nip at the heels of the flock, bark when spoken to and never, ever, bite the shepherd…
Oh yes. Vimes knew in his bones who the enemy was.
Except
No badge, no Watch, no job…
Another memory arrived, late.
Lather still dripping down his shirt, he pulled Vetinari’s sealed letter out of his pocket and slit it open with the razor.
There was a blank sheet of paper inside. Hie turned it over, and there was nothing on the other side either. Mystified, he glanced at the envelope.
Sir Samuel Vimes, Knight.
Nice of him to be so precise about it, Vimes thought. What was the point of a message with no message? Some people might absentmindedly have slipped the wrong piece of paper in an envelope, but Vetinari wouldn’t. What was the point of sending him a note telling him he was a knight, for gods’ sake, he knew that embarrassing fact well enough–
Another little memory burst open as silently as a mouse passing wind in a hurricane.
Who’d said it? Any gentleman
Vimes stared. Well, he was a gentleman, wasn’t he? It was official.
And then he didn’t shout, and he didn’t run out of the room. He finished shaving, had a wash and put on a change of underwear, very calmly.
Downstairs, Sybil had cooked him a meal. She wasn’t a very good cook. This was fine by Vimes, because he wasn’t a very good eater. After a lifetime of street meals his stomach wasn’t set up right. What it craved was little crunchy brown bits, the food group of the gods, and Sybil reliably always left the pan too long on the dragon.
She eyed him carefully as he chewed his fried egg and stared into the middle distance. Her manner was that of someone with a portable safety net watching a man on the high wire.
After a while, while she watched him crack open a sausage, he said, ‘Do we have any books on chivalry, dear?’
‘Hundreds, Sam.’
‘Is there any one which tells you what… you know, what it’s all about? I mean, what you have to do if you’re a knight, say? Responsibilities and so on?’
‘Most of them, I should think.’
‘Good. I think I shall do a little reading.’ Vimes hit the bacon with his fork. It shattered very satisfactorily.
Afterwards, he went into the library. Twenty minutes later, he came back out for a pencil and some paper.
Ten minutes after that, Lady Sybil took him a cup of coffee. He was hidden behind a pile of books, and apparently deep in Life of Chivalrie. She crept out and went into her own study, where she settled down to update her dragon–breeding records.
It was an hour later when she heard him step out into the hall.
He was humming under his breath, tunelessly, with the faraway look of preoccupation that means that some Big Thought has required the shutting down of all non–essential processes. He was also re–radiating the field of angered innocence that was, to her, part of his essential Vimesness.
‘Are you going out, Sam?’
‘Yes. I’m just going to kick some arse, dear.’
‘Oh, good. Just be sure you wrap up well, then.’
The Goriff family trudged along silently beside Carrot.
‘I’m sorry about your shop, Mr Goriff,’ he said.
Goriff shifted the load he was carrying. ‘We can start other shops,’ he said.
‘We’]] certainly keep an eye on it,’ said Carrot. ‘And
when all this is over, you can come back.’
‘Thank you.’
His son said something in Klatchian. There was a brief family arguent.
‘I appreciate your strength of feeling,’ said Carrot, going red, ‘although I must say I think your language was a little strong.’
‘My son is sorry,’ said Goriff automatically. ‘He did not remember that you speak Kl–’
‘No, I’m not! Why should we run away?’ said the boy. ‘We live here! I’ve never seen Klatch!’
‘Oh, well, that will be something to look forward to,’ said Carrot. ‘I hear it has many fine––’
‘Are you stupid?’ said Janil. He shook himself free of his father’s grasp and confronted Carrot. ‘I don’t care! I don’t want all this stuff about the moon rising over the Mountains of the Sun! I get that at home all the time! I live here!’
‘Now, you really ought to listen to your parents–’
‘Why? My dad works all the time and now he’s being pushed out! What good’s that? We ought to stay here and defend what’s ours!’
‘Ah, well, you shouldn’t take the law into your own hands––’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s our job––’
‘But you’re not doing it!’
There was a rattle of Klatchian from Mr Goriff.
‘He says I’ve got to apologize,’ said Janil sullenly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I,’ said Carrot.
The boy’s father gave him that complicated shrug used by adults in a situation involving adolescents.
‘You’ll be back, I know it,’ said Carrot.
‘We shall see.’
They went down the quay towards a waiting boat. It was a Klatchian ship. People lined the rails, people who were getting out with what they could carry before they could only get out with what they wore. The watchmen found themselves under hostile scrutiny.
‘Surely Rust isn’t already forcing Klatchians out of their homes?’ said Angua.
‘We can tell which way the wind is blowing,’ said Goriff calmly.
Carrot sniffed the salt air. ‘It’s blowing from Klatch,’ he said.
‘For you, perhaps,’ said Goriff.
A whip cracked behind them and they stood aside as several coaches rumbled by. A blind at the window
was pulled aside momentarily. Carrot caught a brief glimpse of a face, all gold teeth and black beard, before the cloth twitched back.
‘That’s him, isn’t it?’
There was a faint grunt from Angua. She had her eyes closed, as she always did when she was letting her nose do the seeing.. .
‘Cloves,’ she murmured, and then grabbed Carrot’s arm.
‘Don’t run after it! There’s armed men on that ship! What will they think when they see a soldier running towards them?’
‘I’m not a soldier!’
‘How long do you think they’ll spend working out the difference?’
The coach pushed through the press of people on the dock. The crowd surged back around it.
‘There’s boxes being unloaded – I can’t quite see . . said Carrot, shading his eyes. ‘Look, I’m sure they’ll understand if–’
71–hour Ahmed stepped out on to the dock and looked back towards the watchmen. There was a momentary sparkle as he grinned. They saw his hand reach over his shoulder and come back holding the curved sword.
‘I can’t just let him get away,’ said Carrot. ‘He’s a suspect! Look, he’s laughing at us!’
‘With diplomatic impunity,’ said Angua. ‘But there’s a lot of armed men down there.’
‘My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure,’ said Carrot.
‘Really? Well, there’s eleven of them.’
71–hour Ahmed threw his sword in the air. It spun a couple of times, making a whum–whum noise, and then his hand shot out and caught it by the handle as it fell.
‘That’s what Mr Vimes was doing,’ said Carrot, through gritted teeth. ‘Now he’s taunting us–’
‘You will be killed if you go on the ship,’ said Goriff behind him. ‘I know that man.’
‘You do? How?’
‘He is feared in the whole of Klatch. That is 71–hour Ahmed!’
‘Yes, why is–’
‘You haven’t heard of him? And he is a D’reg!’ Mrs Goriff pulled at her husband’s arm.
‘D’reg?’ said Angua.
‘A warlike desert tribe,’ said Carrot. ‘Very fierce. Honourable, though. They say that if a D’reg is your friend he’s your friend for the rest of your life.’
‘And if he’s not your friend?’
‘That’s about five seconds.’
He drew his sword. ‘Nevertheless,’ he added, ‘we can’t let––’
‘I have said too much. We must go,’ said Goriff. The family picked up their bundles.
‘Look, there might be another way to find out about him,’ said Angua. She pointed at the carriage.