‘I find this highly suspicious, Sam.’
‘Detritus will back me up on this,’ said Vimes.
‘Days right, sir,’ the troll rumbled. ‘You distinctly said to say dat ‘
‘Anyway, we’d better be goi-Good grief, is that Cheery?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Cheery nervously.
Well, thought Vimes, she comes from a family where people go off in strange clothes. to face explosions far away from the sun.
‘Very nice,’ he said.
Lamps were lit all along the tunnel to what Vimes had come to think of as Downtown Bonk. Dwarf guards waved the coach through after a mere glance at the AnkhMorpork crest. The ones around the giant elevator were more uncertain. But Sam Vimes had learned a lot from watching Lady Sybil. She didn’t mean to act like that, but she’d been born to it, into a class that had always behaved this way: you went through the world as if there was no possibility that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that’s exactly what didn’t happen.
There were others in the elevator as it rumbled downwards. Mostly they were diplomats that Vimes didn’t recognize, but there was also, now, in a roped-off corner, a quartet of dwarf musicians playing pleasant yet slightly annoying music that ate its way into Vimes’s head as the interminable descent went on.
When the doors opened he heard Sybil gasp.
‘I thought you said it was like a starry night down here, Sam!’
‘Er, they’ve certainly turned the wick up …’
Candles by the thousand burned in brackets all around the walls of the huge cavern, but it was the chandeliers that caught the eye. There were scores of them, each at least four storeys high. Vimes, always ready to look for the wires behind the smoke and mirrors, made out the dwarfs working inside the gantries and the baskets of fresh candles being lowered through holes in the ceiling. If the Fifth Elephant wasn’t a myth, at least one whole toe must be being burned tonight.
‘Your grace!’ Dee was advancing through the crowds.
,Ah, Ideas Taster,’ said Vimes as the dwarf approached, ‘do allow me to introduce you to the Duchess of Ankh … Lady Sybil.’
‘Uh … er … yes … indeed … so delighted to make your acquaintance,’ Dee-murmured, caught off guard by the charm offensive. ‘But, er. ..’
Sybil had picked up the code. Vimes loathed
the word ‘Duchess’, so if he was using it then he wanted her to out-dutch everyone. She enveloped Dee’s pointy head in delighted Duchessness.
‘Mister Dee, Sam has told me so much about you!’ she trilled. ‘I understand you’re quite the right-hand man-‘
‘-dwarf-‘ hissed Vimes.
‘-dwarf to his majesty! Please, you must tell me how you have achieved such a delightful lighting effect here!’
‘Er, lots of candles,’ Dee muttered, glaring at Vimes.
‘I think Dee wishes to discuss some political matters with me, dear,’ said Vimes smoothly, putting his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. ‘If you’ll just take the others down, I’ll join you shortly, I’m sure.’ And he knew that no power in the world was going to prevent Sybil sweeping on down to the reception. That woman could sweep. Things stayed swept after she’d gone past.
‘You brought a troll, you brought a troll!’ muttered Dee.
‘And he’s an AnkhMorpork citizen, remember,’ said Vimes. ‘Covered by diplomatic immunity and a rather bad suit.’
‘Even so-‘
‘There is no “even so”,’ said Vimes.
‘We are at war with the trolls!’
‘Well, that’s what diplomacy is all about, isn’t it?’ said Vimes. ‘A way to stop being at war? Anyway, I understand it’s been going on for five hundred years, so obviously no one is trying very hard.’
‘There will be complaints at the very highest level!’
Vimes sighed. ‘More?’ he said.
‘Some are saying AnkhMorpork is deliberately flaunting its wickedness before the King!’
‘The King?’ said Vimes pleasantly. ‘He’s not exactly King yet, is he? Not until the coronation, which involves a certain … object …’
‘Yes, but of course that is a mere formality.’
Vimes moved closer. ‘But it isn’t, is it?’ he said quietly. ‘It is the thing and the whole of the thing. Without the magic, there is no king. Just someone like you, unaccountably giving orders.’
‘Someone called Vimes teaches me about royalty?’ said Dee miserably.
‘And without the thing, all the bets are off,’ said Vimes. ‘There will be a war. Explosions underground.’
There was a tinny little-sound as he took out his watch and opened it. ‘My word, it’s midnight,’ he said.
‘Follow me,’ Dee muttered.
‘Am I being taken to see something?’ said Vimes.
‘No, your excellency. You are being taken to see where something is not.’
‘Ah. Then I want to bring Corporal Littlebottom.’
‘That? Absolutely not! That would be a desecration of-‘
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Vimes. ‘And the reason is, she won’t come with us because we’re not going, are we? You’re certainly not taking the representative of a potentially hostile power into
your confidence and revealing that your house of cards is missing a card on the bottom layer, are you? Of course not. We are not having this conversation. For the next hour or so we’ll be nibbling titbits in this room. I haven’t even just said this, and you didn’t hear me. But Corporal Littlebottom is the best scene-of-crime officer I’ve got, and so I want her to come along with us.’
‘You’ve made your point, your excellency. Graphically, as always. Fetch her, then.’
Vimes found Cheery standing back to back, or at least back to knees, with Detritus. They were surrounded by a ring of the curious. Whenever Detritus raised his hand to sip his drink the nearby dwarfs jumped back hurriedly.
‘Where are we going, sir?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Ah. That sort of place.’
‘But things are looking up,’ said Vimes. ‘Dee has discovered a new pronoun, even if he does spit it.’
‘Sam!’ said Lady Sybil, advancing through the throng, ‘they’re going to perform Bloodaxe and Ironhammer! Isn’t that wonderful?’
‘Er. ..’
‘It’s an opera, sir,’ Cheery whispered. ‘Part of the Koboldean Cycle. It’s history. Every dwarf knows it by heart. It’s about how we got laws, and kings … and the Scone, sir.’
‘I sang the part of Ironhammer when we did it at finishing school,’ said Lady Sybil. ‘Not the full five-week version, of course. It’ll be marvellous to see it done here. It’s really one of the great romances of history.’
‘Romances?’ said Vimes. ‘Like … a love story?’ ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Bloodaxe and Ironhammer were both … er … weren’t both …’ Vimes began.
‘They were both dwarfs, sir,’ said Cheery.
‘Ah. Of course.’ Vimes gave up. All dwarfs were dwarfs. If you tried to understand their world from a human point of view it all went wrong. ‘Do, er, enjoy it, dear. I’ve got to … The King wants me to … I’ll just be somewhere else for a while. Politics…’
He hurried away, with Cheery trailing behind him.
Dee led the way through dark tunnels. When the opera began it was a whisper far away, like the sea in an ancient shell.
Eventually they stopped at the edge of a canal, its waters lapping at the darkness. A small boat was tethered there, with a waiting guard. Dee urged them into it.
‘It is important that you understand what you are seeing, your grace,’ said Dee.
‘Practically nothing,’ said Vimes. ‘And I thought I had good night vision.’
There was a clink in the gloom, and then a lamp was lit. The guard was punting the boat under an arch and into a small lake. Apart from the tunnel entrance, the walls rose up sheer.
‘Are we at the bottom of a well?’ said Vimes.
‘That is quite a good way of describing it.’ Dee fished under his seat. He produced a curved metal horn and blew one note which echoed up the rock walls.
After a few seconds another note floated down
from the top. There was a clanking, as of heavy, ancient chains.
‘This is quite a short lift compared to some up in the mountains,’ said Dee, as an iron plate ground across the entrance, sealing it. ‘There’s one half a mile high that will take a string of barges.’
Water boiled beside the boat. Vimes saw the walls begin to sink.
‘This is the only way to the Scone,’ said Dee behind him.
Now the boat was rocking in the bubbling water and the walls were blurred.
‘Water is diverted into reservoirs up near the peaks. Then it is simply a matter of opening and closing sluices, you see?’
‘Yes,’ mumbled Vimes, experiencing vertigo and seasickness in one tight green package.
The walls slowed. The boat stopped shaking. The water lifted them smoothly over the lip of the well and into a little channel, where there was a dock.
‘Any guards below?’ Vimes managed, stepping out on to the blessedly solid stone.