“Really be what?”
“Dragons. Where they could really fulfil their potential. Some other dimension or something. Where the gravity isn’t so strong, or something.”
“I thought when I saw it,” said Vimes, “I thought, you can’t have something that flies and has scales like that.”
They looked at each other.
“We’ve got to find it in its lair,” said Lady Ramkin.
“No bloody flying newt sets fire to my city,” said Vimes.
“Just think of the contribution to dragon lore,” said Lady Ramkin.
“Listen, if anyone ever sets fire to this city, it’s going to be me. ”
“It’s an amazing opportunity. There’s so many questions …”
“You’re right there.” A phrase of Carrot’s crossed Vimes’s mind. “It can help us with our enquiries,” he suggested.
“But in the morning,” said Lady Ramkin firmly.
Vimes’s look of bitter determination faded.
“I shall sleep downstairs, in the kitchen,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “I usually have a camp bed made up down there when it’s egg-laying time. Some of the females always need assistance. Don’t you worry about me.”
“You’re being very helpful,” Vimes muttered.
“I’ve sent Nobby down to the city to help the others set up your headquarters,” said Lady Ramkin.
Vimes had completely forgotten die Watch House. “It must have been badly damaged,” he ventured.
“Totally destroyed,” said Lady Ramkin. “Just a patch of melted rock. So I’m letting you have a place in Pseudopolis Yard.”
“Sorry?”
“Oh, my father had property all over the city,” she said. “Quite useless to me, really. So I told my agent to give Sergeant Colon the keys to the old house in Pseudopolis Yard. It’ll do it good to be aired.”
“But that area-I mean, there’s real cobbles on the streets-the rent alone, I mean, Lord Vetinari won’t-”
“Don’t you worry about it,” she said, giving him a friendly pat. “Now, you really ought to get some sleep.”
Vimes lay in bed, his mind racing. Pseudopolis Yard was on the Ankh side of the river, in quite a high-rent district. The sight of Nobby or Sergeant Colon walking down the street in daylight would probably have the same effect on the area as the opening of a plague hospital.
He dozed, gliding in and out of a sleep where giant dragons pursued him waving jars of ointment . . .
And awoke to the sound of a mob.
…
Lady Ramkin drawing herself up haughtily was not a sight to forget, although you could try. It was like watching continental drift in reverse as various subcontinents and islands pulled themselves together to form one massive, angry protowoman.
The broken door of the dragon house swung on its hinges. The inmates, already as highly strung as a harp on amphetamines, were going mad. Little gouts of flame burst against the metal plates as they stampeded back and forth in their pens. “Hwhat,” she said, “is the meaning of this?” If a Ramkin had ever been given to introspection she’d have admitted that it wasn’t a very original line.
But it was handy. It did the job. The reason that cliches become cliches is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.
The mob filled the broken doorway. Some of it was waving various sharp implements with the up-and-down motion proper to rioters.
“Worl,” said the leader, “it’s the dragon, innit?”
There was a chorus of muttered agreement.
“Hwhat about it?” said Lady Ramkin.
“Worl. It’s been burning the city. They don’t fly far. You got dragons here. Could be one of them, couldn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“S’right.”
“QED. “[15]
“So what we’re going to do is, we’re going to put ’em down.”
“S’right.”
“Yeah.”
“Pro bono publico. ”
Lady Ramkin’s bosom rose and fell like an empire. She reached out and grabbed the dunging fork from its hook on the wall.
“One step nearer, I warn you, and you’ll be sorry,” she said.
The leader looked beyond her to the frantic dragons.
“Yeah?” he said, nastily. “And what’ll you do, eh?”
Her mouth opened and shut once or twice. “I shall summon the Watch!” she said at last.
The threat did not have the effect she had expected. Lady Ramkin had never paid much attention to those bits of the city that didn’t have scales on.
“Well, that’s too bad,” said the leader. “That’s really worrying, you know that? Makes me go all weak at the knees, that does.”
He extracted a lengthy cleaver from his belt. ‘ ‘And now you just stand aside, lady, because-”
A streak of green fire blasted out of the back of the shed, passed a foot over the heads of the mob, and burned a charred rosette in the woodwork over the door.
Then came a voice that was a honeyed purr of sheer deadly menace.
“This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off. ”
Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows.
A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one arm. His other hand held it by the tail.
The rioters watched it, hypnotised.
“Now I know what you’re thinking,” Vimes went on, softly. “You’re wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y’know, I ain’t so sure myself …”
He leaned forward, sighting between the dragon’s ears, and his voice buzzed like a knife blade:
“What you’ve got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?”
They swayed backwards as he advanced.
“Well?” he said. “Are you feeling lucky?”
For a few moments the only sound was Lord Mount-joy Quickfang Winterforth IV’s stomach rumbling ominously as fuel sloshed into his flame chambers.
“Now look, er,” said the leader, his eyes fixed hypnotically on the dragon’s head, “there’s no call for anything like that-”
“In fact he might just decide to flare off all by himself,” said Vimes. “They have to do it to stop the gas building up. It builds up when they get nervous. And, y’know, I reckon you’ve made them all pretty nervous now.”
The leader made what he hoped was a vaguely conciliatory gesture, but unfortunately did it with the hand that was still holding a knife.
“Drop it,” said Vimes sharply, “or you’re history.”
The knife clanged on the flagstones. There was a scuffle at the back of the crowd as a number of people, metaphorically speaking, were a long way away and knew nothing about it.
“But before the rest of you good citizens disperse quietly and go about your business,” said Vimes meaningfully, “I suggest you look hard at these dragons. Do any of them look sixty feet long? Would you say they’ve got an eighty-foot wingspan? How hot do they flame, would you say?”
“Dunno,” said the leader.
Vimes raised the dragon’s head slightly. The leader rolled his eyes.
“Dunno, sir,” he corrected.
“Do you want to find out?”
The leader shook his head. But he did manage to find his voice.
“Who are you, anyway?” he said.
Vimes drew himself up. “Captain Vimes, City Watch,” he said.
This met with almost complete silence. The exception was the cheerful voice, somewhere in the back of the crowd, which said: “Night shift, is it?”
Vimes looked down at his nightshirt. In his hurry to get off his sickbed he’d shuffled hastily into a pair of Lady Ramkin’s slippers. For the first time he saw they had pink pompoms on them.
And it was at this moment that Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV chose to belch.
It wasn’t another stab of roaring fire. It was just a near-invisible ball of damp flame which rolled over the mob and singed a few eyebrows. But it definitely made an impression.
Vimes rallied magnificently. They couldn’t have noticed his brief moment of sheer horror.
“That one was just to get your attention,” he said, poker-faced. “The next one will be a little lower.”
“Er,” said the leader. “Right you are. No problem. We were just going anyhow. No big dragons here, right enough. Sorry you’ve been troubled.”
“Oh, no,” said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. “You don’t get away that easily!” She reached up on to a shelf and produced a tin box. It had a slot in the lid. It rattled. On the side was the legend: The Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons.
The initial whip-round produced four dollars and thirty-one pence. After Captain Vimes gestured pointedly with the dragon, a further twenty-five dollars and sixteen pence were miraculously forthcoming. Then the mob fled.
“We made a profit on the day, anyway,” said Vimes, when they were alone again.
“That was jolly brave of you!”
“Let’s just hope it doesn’t catch on,” said Vimes, gingerly putting the exhausted dragon back in its pen. He felt quite lightheaded.
Once again he was aware of eyes staring fixedly at him. He glanced sideways into the long, pointed face of Goodboy Bindle Featherstone, rearing up in a pose best described as The Last Puppy in the Shop.