Itym: Ae Coache House (belonging to an inoffensive businessman, who’d seen his new carriage go up in flames).
Itym: Ae smalle vegettable shape (with pin-point accuracy).
Vimes wondered about that. He’d bought some apples in there once, and there didn’t appear to be anything about it that a dragon could possibly take offence at.
Still, very considerate of the dragon, he thought as he made his way to the Watch House. When you think of all the timber yards, hayricks, thatched roofs and oil stores it could have hit by chance, it’s managed to really frighten everyone without actually harming the city.
Rays of early morning sunlight were piercing the drifts of smoke as he pushed open the door. This was home. Not the bare little room over the candlemaker’s shop in Wixon’s Alley, where he slept, but this nasty brown room that smelt of unswept chimneys, Sgt Colon’s pipe, Nobby’s mysterious personal problem and, latterly, Carrot’s armour polish. It was almost like home.
No-one else was there. He wasn’t entirely surprised. He clumped up to his office and leaned back in his chair, whose cushion would have been thrown out of its basket in disgust by an incontinent dog, pulled his helmet over his eyes, and tried to think.
No good rushing about. The dragon had vanished in all the smoke and confusion, as suddenly as it had come. Time for rushing about soon enough. The important thing was working out where to rush to …
He’d been right. Wading bird! But where did you start looking for a bloody great dragon in a city of a million people?
He was aware that his right hand, entirely unbidden, had pulled open the bottom drawer, and three of his fingers, acting on sealed orders from his hindbrain, had lifted out a bottle. It was one of those bottles that emptied themselves. Reason told him that sometimes he must occasionally start one, break the seal, see amber liquid glistening all the way up to the neck. It was just that he couldn’t remember the sensation. It was as if the bottles arrived two-thirds empty . . .
He stared at the label. It seemed to be Jimkin Bear-hugger’s Old Selected Dragon’s Blood Whiskey. Cheap and powerful, you could light fires with it, you could clean spoons. You didn’t have to drink much of it to be drunk, which was just as well.
It was Nobby who shook him awake with the news that there was a dragon in the city, and also that Sgt Colon had had a nasty turn. Vinies sat and blinked owlishly while the words washed around him. Apparently having a fire-breathing lizard focusing interestedly on one’s nether regions from a distance of a few feet can upset the strongest constitution. An experience like that could leave a lasting mark on a person.
Vimes was still digesting this when Carrot turned up with the Librarian swinging along behind him.
“Did you see it? Did you see it?” he said.
“We all saw it,” said Vimes.
“I know all about it!” said Carrot triumphantly. “Someone’s brought it here with magic. Someone’s stolen a book out of the Library and guess what it’s called?”
“Can’t even begin to,” said Vimes weakly.
“It’s called The Summoning of Dragons!”
“Oook,” confirmed the Librarian.
“Oh? What’s it about?” said Vimes. The Librarian rolled his eyes.
“It’s about how to summon dragons. By magic!”
“Oook.”
“And that’s illegal, that is!” said Carrot happily. “Releasing Feral Creatures upon the Streets, contrary to the Wild Animals (Public-”
Vimes groaned. That meant wizards. You got nothing but trouble with wizards.
“I suppose,” he said, “there wouldn’t be another copy of this book around, would there?”
“Oook.” The Librarian shook his head.
“And you wouldn’t happen to know what’s in it?” Vimes sighed.
“What? Oh. Four words,” he said wearily. “First word. Sounds like. Bend. Bough? Sow, cow, how . . . How. Second word. Small word. The, a, to . . . To. Yes, understood, but I meant in any kind of detail? No. I see.”
“What’re we going to do now, sir?” said Carrot anxiously.
“It’s out there,” intoned Nobby. “Gone to ground, like, during the hours of daylight. Coiled up in its secret lair, on top of a great hoard of gold, dreamin’ ancient reptilian dreams fromma dawna time, waitin’ for the secret curtains of the night, when once more it will sally forth-” He hesitated and added sullenly, “What’re you all looking at me like that for?”
“Very poetic,” said Carrot.
“Well, everyone knows the real old dragons used to go to sleep on a hoard of gold,” said Nobby. ‘ ‘Well known folk myth.”
Vimes looked blankly into the immediate future. Vile though Nobby was, he was also a good indication of what was going through the mind of the average citizen. You could use him as a sort of laboratory rat to forecast what was going to happen next.
“I expect you’d be really interested in finding out where that hoard is, wouldn’t you?” said Vimes experimentally.
Nobby looked even more shifty than usual. “Well, Cap’n, I was thinking of having a bit of a look around. You know. When I’m off duty, of course,” he added virtuously.
“Oh, dear,” said Captain Vimes.
He lifted up the empty bottle and, with great care, put it back in the drawer.
…
The Elucidated Brethren were nervous. A kind of fear crackled from brother to brother. It was the fear of someone who, having cheerfully experimented with pouring the powder and wadding the ball, has found that pulling the trigger had led to a godawful bang and pretty soon someone is bound to come and see who’s making all the noise.
The Supreme Grand Master knew that he had them, though. Sheep and lamb, sheep and lamb. Since they couldn’t do anything much worse than they had already done they might as well press on and damn the world, and pretend they’d wanted it like this all along. Oh, the joy of it …
Only Brother Plasterer was actually happy.
“Let that be a lesson to all oppressive vegetable sellers,” he kept saying.
“Yes, er,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “Only, the thing is, there’s no chance of us sort of accidentally summoning the dragon here, is there?”
“I-that is, we-have it under perfect control,” said the Supreme Grand Master smoothly. “The power is ours. I can assure you.”
The Brothers cheered up a little bit.
“And now,” the Supreme Grand Master continued, “there is the matter of the king.”
The Brothers looked solemn, except for Brother Plasterer.
“Have we found him, then?” he said. “That’s a stroke of luck.”
“You never listen, do you?” snapped Brother Watchtower. “It was all explained last week, we don’t go around finding anyone, we make a king.”
“I thought he was supposed to turn up. ‘Cos of destiny.”
Brother Watchtower sniggered. “We sort of help Destiny along a bit.”
The Supreme Grand Master smiled in the depths of his robe. It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don’t need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they’re progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they’ll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing.
“Bloody hell, that’s clever,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “How do we do that, then?”
“Look, the Supreme Grand Master said what we do, we find some handsome lad who’s good at taking orders, he kills the dragon, and Bob’s your uncle. Simple. Much more intelligent than waitin’ for a so-called real king.”
“But-” Brother Plasterer seemed deep in the toils of cerebration, “if we control the dragon, and we do control the dragon, right? Then we don’t need anyone killing it, we just stop summoning it, and everyone’ll be happy, right?”
“Ho yes,” said Brother Watchtower nastily, “I can just see it, can you? We just trot out, say ‘Hallo, we won’t set fire to your houses any more, aren’t we nice’, do we? The whole point about the thing with the king is that he’ll be a, a sort of-”
“Undeniably potent and romantic symbol of absolute authority,” said the Supreme Grand Master smoothly.
“That’s it,” said Brother Watchtower. “A potent authority.”
“Oh, I see,” said Brother Plasterer. “Right. Okay. That’s what the king’ll be.”
“That’s it,” said Brother Watchtower.
“No-one going to argue with a potent authority, are they?”
“Too right,” said Brother Watchtower.
“Stroke of luck, then, finding the true king right now,” said Brother Plasterer. “Million to one chance, really.”
“We haven’t found the right king. We don’t need the right king,” said the Supreme Grand Master wearily. “For the last time! I’ve just found us a likely lad who looks good in a crown and can take orders and knows how to flourish a sword. Now just listen …”
Flourishing, of course, was important. It didn’t have much to do with wielding. Wielding a sword, the Supreme Grand Master considered, was simply the messy business of dynastic surgery. It was just a matter of thrust and cut. Whereas a king had to flourish one. It had to catch the light in just the right way, leaving watchers in no doubt that here was Destiny’s chosen. He’d taken a long time preparing the sword and shield. It had been very expensive. The shield shone like a dollar in a sweep’s earhole but the sword, the sword was magnificent . . .