‘You couldn’t have known I’d beat him. You left me in the snow. I wasn’t even armed!’
‘Havelock Vetinari would not have sent a fool to Uberwald.’ More smoke, which writhed in the air. ‘At least, not a stupid fool.’
Vimes’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve met him, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And taught him all he knows, right?’
She blew smoke down her nostrils and gave him a radiant smile.
‘I’m sorry? You think 1 taught him? My dear sir … As for vhat I’ve got out of all this … vell, a little breathing space. A little influence. Politics is more interesting than blood, your grace. And much more fun. Beware the reformed vampire, sir – the craving for blood is only a craving, and with care it can be diverted along different channels. Uberwald is going to need politicians. Ah, I believe ve are here,’ she added, although Vimes could.have sworn that she hadn’t so much as glanced out of the window.
The door opened.
‘If my Igor’s still there, do tell him I vill see him Downtown. So nice to have met you. I’m sure ve shall meet again. And do please present my fondest regards to Lord Vetinari.’
The door shut behind Vimes. The coach moved off.
He swore, under his breath.
The hall of the embassy was full of Igors. Several of them touched their forelocks, or at least the line of stitch marks, when they saw him. They were carrying heavy metal containers of varying sizes, on which frost crystals were forming.
‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Igor’s funeral?’ Then it sank in. ‘Oh, my gods … with party loot bags? Everyone gets something to take home?’
‘You could thay that, thur, you could call it that,’ said an Igor. ‘But we think that putting bodieth in the ground ith rather gruethome. All thothe wormth and thingth.’ He tapped the tin box under his arm. ‘Thith way, he’ll be mothtly up and about again in no time,’ he added brightly.
‘Reincarnation on the instalment plan, eh?’ said Vimes weakly.
‘Motht amuthing, thur,’ said the Igor gravely. ‘But it’th amathing what people need. Heartth, liverth, handth … we keep a litht, thur, of detherving catheth. By tonight there will be thome very lucky people in thethe partly’
‘And these parts in some very lucky people?’
‘Well done, thur. I can thee you are a wit. And one day thome poor thoul will have a really nathty brain injury, and’ – he tapped the chilly
box again -‘what goeth around cometh around.’
He nodded at Cheery, and at Vimes. ‘I mutht be going now, thur. Tho much to do, you know how it ith.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Vimes. He thought: the axe of my grandfather. You change the bits around, but there’ll always be an Igor.
‘They’re really rather selfless people, sir,’ said Cheery, when the last Igor had lurched off. ‘They do a lot of good work. Er, they even took his suit and his boots because they’ll be useful to someone.’
‘I know, I know. But-‘
‘I know what you mean, sir. Everyone’s in the drawing room. Lady Sybil said you’d be back. She said anyone with that look in their eye comes back.’
‘We’re all going to the coronation. Might as well see this through. Is that what you’ll be wearing, Cheery?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But it’s just … ordinary dwarf clothes. Trousers and everything.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But Sybil said you’d got a fetching little green number and a helmet with a feather in it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re free to wear whatever you want, you know that.’
‘Yes, sir. And then I thought about Dee. And I watched the King when he was talking to you, and … well, I can wear what I like, sir. That’s the point. I don’t have to wear that dress and I shouldn’t wear it just because other people don’t want me to. Besides, it made me look like a rather stupid lettuce.’
‘That’s all a bit complicated for me, Cheery.’
‘It’s probably a dwarf thing, sir.’
Vimes pushed open the doors to the drawing room. ‘It’s over,’ he said.
‘Did you hurt anyone else?’ said Sybil.
‘Only Wolfgang.’
‘He’ll be back,’ said Angua.
No.
‘You killed him?’
‘No. I put him down. I see you’re up, captain.’
Carrot got to his feet, awkwardly, and saluted. ‘Sorry I haven’t been much use, sir.’
‘You just chose the wrong time to fight fair. Are you well enough to come?’
‘Er, Angua and I want to stay here, if it’s all right with you, sir. We’ve got things to talk about. And, er … do.’
It was the first coronation Vimes had attended. He’d expected it to be … stranger, touched somehow by glory.
Instead it was dull, but at least it was big dull, dullness distilled and cultivated over thousands of years until it had developed an impressive shine, as even grime will if you polish it long enough. It was dull hammered into the shape and form of ceremony.
It had also been timed to test the capacity of the average bladder.
A number of dwarfs read passages from ancient scrolls. There were what sounded like excerpts
from the Koboldean Saga, and Vimes wondered desperately if they were in for another opera, but they were over after a mere hour. There were more readings from different dwarfs. At one point the King, who had been standing alone in the centre of a circle of candlelight, was presented with a leather bag, a small mining axe and a ruby. Vimes didn’t catch the meaning of any of this, but by the sounds it was clear that each item was of huge and satisfying significance to the thousands who were standing behind him. Thousands? No, there must be tens of thousands, he thought. The bowl of the cavern was full of tier upon tier of dwarfs. Maybe a hundred thousand …
… and he was in the front row. No one had said anything. The four of them had simply been led there and left, although the murmurings suggested that the presence of Detritus was causing considerable attention. Senior, long-bearded and richly clothed dwarfs were all around them.
Someone was being taught something. Vimes wondered who the lesson was directed at.
Finally, the Scone was brought in, small and dull and yet carried by twenty-four dwarfs on a large bier. It was laid, reverentially, on a stool.
He could sense the change in the air of the huge cavern, and once again he thought: there’s no magic, you poor devils, there’s no history. I’ll bet my wages the damn thing was moulded with rubber from a vat that had last been used in the preparation of Sonky’s Eversure Dependables, and there’s your holy relic for you …
There were more readings, much shorter this time.
Then the dwarfs who had been participating in the endless and baffling hours withdrew from the centre of the cavern, leaving the King looking as small and alone as the Scone itself.
He stared around him and, although it was surely impossible for him to have seen Vimes among the thousands in the gloom, it did seem that his gaze rested on the AnkhMorpork party for a fraction of a second.
The King sat down.
A sigh began. It grew louder and louder, a hurricane made up of the breath of a nation. It echoed back and forth among the rocks until it drowned out all other sounds.
Vimes had half expected the Scone to explode, or crumble, or flash red-hot. Which was stupid, said a dwindling part of himself – it was a fake, a nonsense, something made in AnkhMorpork for money, something that had already cost lives. It was not, it could not be real.
But in the roaring air he knew that it was, for all who needed to believe, and in a belief so strong that truth was not the same as fact … he knew that for now, and yesterday, and tomorrow, both the thing, and the whole of the thing.
Angua noticed that Carrot was walking better even as they reached the forest below the falls, and the shovel over his shoulder hardly burdened him at all.
There were wolf prints all over the snow.
‘They won’t have stayed,’ she said, as they walked between the trees. ‘They felt things
keenly when he died but … wolves look to the future. They don’t try to remember things.’
‘They’re lucky,’ said Carrot.
‘They’re realistic. It’s just that the future contains the next meal and the next danger. Is your arm all right?’
‘It feels as good as new.’
They found the freezing mass of fur lying at the water’s edge. Carrot pulled it out of the water, scraped off the snow higher up the shingle, and started to dig.
After a while he took off his shirt. The bruises were already fading.
Angua sat and looked over the water, listening to the thud of the spade and the occasional grunt when Carrot hit a tree root. Then she heard the soft slither of something being pulled over snow, a pause, and then the sound of sand and stones being shovelled into a hole.