‘Replica, eh?’ he said. ‘Sure it’s not the real one?’
‘Sir! There is only one real Scone. We call it the “thing and the whole of the thing”.’
‘Well, if it’s a good replica, who’d know?’
‘Any dwarf would, sir,’
‘Only joking.’
There was a hamlet down there, where two rivers met. There would be boats.
This was working. The slopes behind him were white and free of dark shapes. No matter how good they were, let them try to outswim a boat…
Hard-packed snow crunched under his feet. He staggered past the few rough hovels, saw the jetty, saw the boats, fought with the frozen rope that moored the nearest one, grabbed an oar and pushed himself out into the current.
There was still no movement on the hills.
Now, at last, he could take stock. It was a bigger boat than one man could handle, but all he had to do was fend off the banks. That’d do for tonight. In the morning he could leave it somewhere, perhaps ask someone to get a message through to the tower, and then he’d buy a horse and…
Behind him, under the tarpaulin in the bows, something started to growl.
They really were very clever.
In a castle not far away the vampire Lady Margolotta sat quietly, leafing through Twurp’s Peerage.
It wasn’t a very good reference book for the countries on this side of the Ramtops, where the standard work was The Almanac de Gothick, in which she herself occupied almost four pages,* but if you needed to know who thought they were who in AnkhMorpork it was invaluable.
Her copy was now bristling with bookmarks. She sighed and pushed it away.
Beside her was a fluted glass containing a red liquid. She took a sip and made a face. Then she stared at the candlelight, and tried to think like Lord Vetinari.
How much did he suspect? How much news got back? The clacks tower had only been up for a month, and it was being roundly denounced
*Vampires evolve tong names. It’s something to do to pass the long years.
throughout Bonk as an intrusion. But it seemed to be doing a good if stealthy local traffic.
Who would he send?
His choice would tell her everything, she was sure. Someone like Lord Rust or Lord Selachii … ? Well, she’d think a lot less of him. From all that she had heard, and Lady Margolotta heard a lot of things, the AnkhMorpork diplomatic corps as a whole could not find its backside with a map. Of course, it was good business for a diplomat to appear stupid, right up to the moment where he’d stolen your socks, but Lady Margolotta had met some of AnkhMorpork’s finest and no one could act that well.
The growing howling outside began to get on her nerves. She rang for her butler.
‘Yeth, mithtreth?’ said Igor, materializing out of the shadows.
‘Go and tell the children of the night to make vonderful music somevhere else, Vill you? I have a headache.’
‘Indeed, mithtreth.’
Lady Margolotta yawned. It had been a long night. She’d think better after a good day’s sleep.
As she went to blow out the candle she glanced again at the book. There was a marker in the Vs.
But … surely even the Patrician couldn’t know that much …
She hesitated and then pulled the bellrope above the coffin. Igor reappeared, in the way of Igors.
‘Those keen young men at the clacks tower Vill be avake, von’t they?’
‘Yeth, mithtreth.’
‘Send a clacks to our agent asking for everything about Commander Vimes of the Vatch, vill you?’
‘Ith he a diplomat, mithtreth?’
Lady Margolotta lay back. ‘No, Igor. He’s the reason for diplomats. Close the lid, vill you?’
Sam Vimes could parallel-process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases, such as ‘and they can deliver it tomorrow’ or ‘so I’ve invited them for dinner’ or ‘they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply’.
Lady Sybil was aware of this. Sam could coherently carry an entire conversation while thinking about something completely different.
‘I’ll tell Willikins to pack winter clothes,’ she said, watching him. ‘It’ll be pretty cold up there at this time of year.’
‘Yes. That’s a good idea.’ Vimes continued to stare at a point just above the fireplace.
‘We’ll have to host a party ourselves, I expect, so we ought to take a cartload of typical AnkhMorpork food. Show the flag, you know. Do you think I should take a cook along?’
‘Yes, dear. That would be a good idea. No one outside the city knows how to make a knuckle sandwich properly.’
Sybil was impressed. Ears operating entirely on
automatic had nevertheless triggered the mouth into making a small but pertinent contribution.
She said, ‘Do you think we ought to take the alligator with us?’
‘Yes, that might be advisable.’
She watched his face. Small furrows formed on Vimes’s brow as the ears nudged the brain. He blinked.
‘What alligator?’
‘You were miles away, Sam. In Uberwald, I expect.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Why’s he sending me, Sybil?’
‘I’m sure Havelock shares with me a conviction that you have hidden depths, Sam.’
Vimes sank gloomily into his armchair. It was, he felt, a persistent flaw in his wife’s otherwise practical and sensible character that she believed, against all evidence, that he was a man of many talents. He knew he had hidden depths. There was nothing in them that he’d like to see float to the surface. They contained things that should be left to lie.
There was also a nagging worry that he couldn’t quite pin down. Had he been able to, he might have expressed it like this: policemen didn’t go on holiday. Where you got policemen, as Lord Vetinari was wont to remark, you got crime. So if he went to Bonk, however you pronounced the damn place, there would be a crime. It was something the world always laid on for policemen.
‘It’ll be nice to see Serafine again,’ said Sybil.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Vimes.
In Bonk he would not, officially, be a policeman. He did not like this at all. He liked this even less than all the other things.
On the few occasions he’d been outside AnkhMorpork and its surrounding fiefdom he’d either been going to other local cities where the AnkhMorpork badge carried some weight or he had been in hot pursuit, that most ancient and honourable of police procedures. From the way Carrot talked, in Bonk his badge would merely figure as extra roughage on someone’s menu.
His brow wrinkled again. ‘Serafine?’
‘Lady Serafine von Uberwald,’ said Sybil. ‘Sergeant Angua’s mother? You remember me telling you last year? We were at finishing school together. Of course, we all knew she was a werewolf, but nobody would ever dream of talking about that sort of thing in those days. Well, you just didn’t. There was all that business over the ski instructor, of course, but I’m certain in my own mind that he must have fallen down some crevasse or other. She married the Baron, and they live just outside Beyonk. I write to her with a little news every Hogswatch. A very old Werewolf family.’
‘A good pedigree,’ said Vimes absently.
‘You know you wouldn’t like Angua to hear you say that, Sam. Don’t worry so. You’ll have a chance to relax, I’m sure. It’ll be good for you.’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘It’ll be like a second honeymoon,’ said Sybil.
‘Yes indeed,’ said Vimes, remembering that what with one thing and another they’d never really had a first one.
‘On that, er, subject,’ said Sybil, a little more hesitantly, ‘you remember I told you I was going to see old Mrs Content?’
‘Oh, yes, how is she?’ Vimes was staring at the fireplace again. It wasn’t just old schoolfriends. Sometimes it seemed Sybil kept in touch with anyone she’d ever met. Her Hogswatch card list ran to a second volume.
‘Quite well, I believe. Anyway, she agrees that-‘
There was a knocking at the door.
She sighed. ‘It’s Willikins’ evening off,’ she said. ‘You’d better answer it, Sam. I know you want to.’
‘I’ve told them not to disturb me unless it’s serious,’ said Vimes, getting up.
‘Yes, but you think all crime is serious, Sam.’
Carrot was on the doorstep. ‘It’s a bit … political, sir,’ he said.
‘What’s so political at a quarter to ten at night, captain?’
‘The Dwarf Bread Museum’s been broken into, sir,’ said Carrot.
Vimes looked into Carrot’s honest blue eyes.
‘A thought occurs to me, captain,’ he said slowly. ‘And the thought is: a certain item has gone missing.’