“Nine dollars a month,” said Colon. “I saw the pay scales once. Nine dollars a month and two dollars plumes allowance. Only he never claimed that bit. Funny, really.”
“He wasn’t the plumes type,” said Nobby.
“You’re right,” said Colon. “The thing about the captain, see, I read this book once . . . you know we’ve all got alcohol in our bodies . . . sort of natural alcohol? Even if you never touch a drop in your life, your body sort of makes it anyway … but Captain Vimes, see, he’s one of those people whose body doesn’t do it naturally. Like, he was born two drinks below normal.”
“Gosh,” said Carrot.
“Yes … so, when he’s sober, he’s really sober. Knurd, they call it. You know how you feel when you wake up if you’ve been on the piss all night, Nobby? Well, he feels like that all the time. ”
“Poor bugger,” said Nobby. “I never realised. No wonder he’s always so gloomy.”
“So he’s always trying to catch up, see. It’s just that he doesn’t always get the dose right. And, of course-” Colon glanced at Carrot-‘ ‘he was brung low by a woman. Mind you, just about anything brings him low.”
“So what do we do now, Sergeant?” said Nobby.
“And do you think he’d mind if we eat his cake?” said Carrot wistfully. “It’d be a shame to let it go stale.”
Colon shrugged.
The older men sat in miserable silence as Carrot macerated his way through the cake like a bucket-wheel rockcrusher in a chalk pit. Even if it had been the lightest of souffles they wouldn’t have had any appetite.
They were contemplating life without the captain. It was going to be bleak, even without dragons. Say what you liked about Captain Vimes, he’d had style. It was a cynical, black-nailed style, but he’d had it and they didn’t. He could read long words and add up. Even that was style, of a sort. He even got drunk in style.
They’d been trying to drag the minutes out, trying to stretch out the time. But the night had come.
There was no hope for them.
They were going to have to go out on the streets.
It was six of the clock. And all wasn’t well.
“I miss Errol, too,” said Carrot
“He was the captain’s, really,” said Nobby. “Anyway, Lady Ramkin’ll know how to look after him.”
“It’s not as though we could leave anything around, either,” said Colon. “I mean, even the lamp oil. He even drank the lamp oil.”
“And mothballs,” said Nobby. “A whole box of mothballs. Why would anyone want to eat mothballs? And the kettle. And sugar. He was a devil for sugar.”
“He was nice, though,” said Carrot. “Friendly.”
“Oh, I’ll grant you,” said Colon. “But it’s not right, really, a pet where you have to jump behind a table every time it hiccups.”
“I shall miss his little face,” said Carrot.
Nobby blew his nose, loudly.
It was echoed by a hammering on the door. Colon jerked his head. Carrot got up and opened it.
A couple of members of the palace guard were waiting with arrogant impatience. They stepped back when they saw Carrot, who had to bend a bit to see under the lintel; bad news like Carrot travels fast.
“We’ve brung you a proclamation,” said one of them. “You’ve got to-”
“What’s all that fresh paint on your breastplate?” said Carrot politely. Nobby and the sergeant peered around him.
“It’s a dragon,” said the younger of the guards.
“The dragon,” corrected his superior.
” ‘Ere, I know you,” said Nobby. ‘You’re Skully Maltoon. Used to live in Mincing Street. Your mum made cough sweets, din’t she, and fell in the mixture and died. I never have a cough sweet but I think of your mum.”
“Hallo, Nobby,” said the guard, without enthusiasm.
“I bet your old mum’d be proud of you, you with a dragon on your vest,” said Nobby conversationally. The guard gave him a look made of hatred and embarrassment.
“And new plumes on your hat, too,” Nobby added sweetly.
“This here is a proclamation what you are commanded to read,” said the guard loudly. “And post up on street corners also. By order.”
“Whose?” said Nobby.
Sergeant Colon grabbed the scroll in one ham-like fist.
“Where As,” he read slowly, tracing the lettering with a hesitant finger, “It hathe Pleas-Sed the Der-Rer-Aa-Ger-the dragon, Ker-Ii-king of kings and Aa-Ber-Ess-Uh-Ler-” sweat beaded on the broad pink cliff of his forehead-“absolute, that is, Rer-Uh-Ler-Eh-Rer, ruler of-”
He lapsed into the tortured silence of academia, his fingertip jerking slowly down the parchment.
“No,” he said at last. “That’s not right, is it? It’s not going to eat someone?”
“Consume,” said the older guard.
“It’s all part of the social. . . social contract,” said his assistant woodenly. “A small price to pay, I’m sure you will agree, for the safety and protection of the city.”
“From what?” said Nobby. “We’ve never had an enemy we couldn’t bribe or corrupt.”
“Until now,” said Colon darkly.
“You catch on fast,” said the guard. “So you’re going to broadcast it. On pain of pain.”
Carrot peered over Colon’s shoulder.
“What’s a virgin?” he said.
“An unmarried girl,” said Colon quickly.
“What, like my friend Reel?” said Carrot, horrified.
“Well, no,” said Colon.
“She’s not married, you know. None of Mrs Palm’s girls are married.”
“Well, yes,” said Colon.
“Well, then,” said Carrot, with an air of finality. “We’re not having any of that kind of thing, I hope.”
“People won’t stand for it,” said Colon. “You mark my words.”
The guards stepped back, out of range of Carrot’s rising wrath.
“They can please themselves,” said the senior guard. “But if you don’t proclaim it, you can try explaining things to His Majesty.”
They hurried off.
Nobby darted out into the street. “Dragon on your vest!” he shouted. “If your old mum knew about this she’d turn in her vat, you goin’ around with a dragon on your vest!”
Colon wandered back to the table and spread out the scroll.
“Bad business,” he mumbled.
“It’s already killed people,” said Carrot. “Contrary to sixteen separate Acts in Council.”
“Well, yes. But that was just like, you know, the hurly-burly of this and that,” said Colon. “Not that it wasn’t bad, I mean, but people sort of participating, just handing over some slip of a girl and standing round watching as if it’s all proper and legal, that’s much worse.”
“I reckon it all depends on your point of view,” said Nobby thoughtfully.
“What d’you mean?”
“Well, from the point of view of someone being burned alive, it probably doesn’t matter much,” said Nobby philosophically.
“People won’t stand for it, I said,” said Colon, ignoring this. “You’ll see. They’ll march on the palace, and what will the dragon do then, eh?”
“Burn ’em all,” said Nobby promptly.
Colon looked puzzled. “It wouldn’t do that, would it?” he said.
“Don’t see what’s to prevent it, do you?” said Nobby. He glanced out of the doorway. “He was a good lad, that boy. Used to run errands for my grandad. Who’d have thought he’d go around with a dragon on his chest …”
“What are we going to do, Sergeant?” said Carrot.
“I don’t want to be burned alive,” said Sergeant Colon. “My wife’d give me hell. So I suppose we’ve got to wossname, proclaim it. But don’t worry, lad,” he said, patting Carrot on one muscular arm and repeating, as if he hadn’t quite believed himself the first time, “it won’t come to that. People’ll never stand for it.”
…
Lady Ramkin ran her hands over Errol’s body.
“Damned if I know what’s going on in there,” she said. The little dragon tried to lick her face. “What’s he been eating?”
“The last thing, I think, was a kettle,” said Vimes.
“A kettle of what?”
“No. A kettle. A black thing with a handle and spout. He sniffed it for ages, then he ate it.”
Enrol grinned weakly at him, and belched. They both ducked.
“Oh, and then we found him eating soot out of the chimney,” Vimes went on, as their heads rose again over the railings.
They leaned back over the reinforced bunker that was one of Lady Ramkin’s sickbay pens. It had to be reinforced. Usually one of the first things a sick dragon did was lose control of its digestive processes.
“He doesn’t look sick, exactly,” she said. “Just fat.”
“He whines a lot. And you can sort of see things moving under his skin. You know what I think? You know you said they can rearrange their digestive system?”
“Oh, yes. All the stomachs and pancreatic crackers can be hooked up in various ways, you see. To take advantage-”
“Of whatever they can find to make flame with,” said Vimes. “Yes. I think he’s trying to make some sort of very hot flame. He wants to challenge the big dragon. Every time it takes to the air he just sits there whining.”