The Guild council, assembled hurriedly outside Dr Cruces’ office. His deputy, Mr Downey, knocked tentatively at the door.
‘Come.’
The council filed in.
‘Cruces’ office was the biggest room in the building. It always seemed wrong to visitors that the Assassins’ Guild had such light, airy, well-designed premises, more like the premises of a gentlemen’s club than a building where death was plotted on a daily basis.
Cheery sporting prints lined the walls, although the quarry was not, when you looked closely, stags or foxes. There were also group etchings – and, more recently, new-fangled iconographs – of the Guild, rows of smiling faces on black-clad bodies and the youngest members sitting cross-legged in front, one of them making a face.[6]
Down one side of the room was the big mahogany table where the elders of the Guild sat in weekly session. The other side of the room held Cruces’ private library, and a small workbench. Above the bench was an apothecary cabinet, made up of hundreds of little drawers. The names on the drawer labels were in Assassins’ code, but visitors from outside the Guild were generally sufficiently unnerved not to accept a drink.
Four pillars of black granite held up the ceiling. They had been carved with the names of noted Assassins from history. Cruces had his desk foursquare between them. He was standing behind it, his expression almost as wooden as the desk.
‘I want a roll-call,’ he snapped. ‘Has anyone left the Guild?’
‘No, sir.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘The guards on the roofs in Filigree Street say no-one came in or went out, sir.’
And who’s watching them?’
‘They’re watching one another, sir.’
‘Very well. Listen carefully. I want the mess cleaned up. If anyone needs to go outside the building, I want everyone watched. And then the Guild is going to be searched from top to bottom, do you understand?’
‘What for, doctor?’ said a junior lecturer in poisons.
‘For . . . anything that is hidden. If you find anything and you don’t know what it is, send for a council member immediately. And don’t touch it.’
‘But doctor, all sorts of things are hidden—’
‘This will be different, do you understand?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good. And no-one is to speak to the wretched Watch about this. You, boy . . . bring me my hat.’ Dr Cruces sighed. ‘I suppose I shall have to go and tell the Patrician.’
‘Hard luck, sir.’
The captain didn’t say anything until they were crossing the Brass Bridge.
‘Now then, Corporal Carrot,’ he said, ‘you know how I’ve always told you how observation is important?’
‘Yes, captain. I have always paid careful attention to your remarks on the subject.’
‘So what did you observe?’
‘Someone’d smashed a mirror. Everyone knows Assassins like mirrors. But if it was a museum, why was there a mirror there?’
‘Please, sir?’
‘Who said that?’
‘Down here, sir. Lance-Constable Cuddy.’
‘Oh, yes. Yes?’
‘I know a bit about fireworks, sir. There’s a smell you get after fireworks. Didn’t smell it, sir. Smelled something else.’
‘Well . . . smelled, Cuddy.’
‘And there were bits of burned rope and pulleys.’
‘I smelled dragon,’ said Vimes.
‘Sure, captain?’
‘Trust me.’ Vimes grimaced. If you spent any time in Lady Ramkin’s company, you soon found out what dragons smelled like. If something put its head in your lap while you were dining, you said nothing, you just kept passing it titbits and hoped like hell it didn’t hiccup.
‘There was a glass case in that room,’ he said. ‘It was smashed open. Hah! Something was stolen. There was a bit of card in the dust, but someone must have pinched it while old Cruces was talking to me. I’d give a hundred dollars to know what it said.’
‘Why, captain?’ said Corporal Carrot.
‘Because that bastard Cruces doesn’t want me to know.’
‘I know what could have blown the hole open,’ said Angua.
‘What?’
‘An exploding dragon.’
They walked in stunned silence.
‘That could do it, sir,’ said Carrot loyally. ‘The little devils go bang at the drop of a helmet.’
‘Dragon,’ muttered Vimes. ‘What makes you think it was a dragon, Lance-Constable Angua?’
Angua hesitated. ‘Because a dog told me’ was not, she judged, a career-advancing thing to say at this point.
‘Woman’s intuition?’ she suggested.
‘I suppose,’ said Vimes, ‘you wouldn’t hazard an intuitive guess as to what was stolen?’
Angua shrugged. Carrot noticed how interestingly her chest moved.
‘Something the Assassins wanted to keep where they could look at it?’ she said.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Vimes. ‘I suppose next you’ll tell me this dog saw it all?’
‘Woof?’
Edward d’Eath drew the curtains, bolted the door and leaned on it. It had been so easy!
He’d put the bundle on the table. It was thin, and about four feet long.
He unwrapped it carefully, and there . . . it . . . was.
It looked pretty much like the drawing. Typical of the man – a whole page full of meticulous drawings of crossbows, and this in the margin, as though it hardly mattered.
It was so simple! Why hide it away? Probably because people were afraid. People were always afraid of power. It made them nervous.
Edward picked it up, cradled it for a while, and found that it seemed to fit his arm and shoulder very snugly.
You’re mine.
And that, more or less, was the end of Edward d’Eath. Something continued for a while, but what it was, and how it thought, wasn’t entirely human.
It was nearly noon. Sergeant Colon had taken the new recruits down to the archery butts in Butts Treat.
Vimes went on patrol with Carrot.
He felt something inside him bubbling over. Something was brushing the tips of his corroded but nevertheless still-active instincts, trying to draw attention to itself. He had to be on the move. It was all that Carrot could do to keep up.
There were trainee Assassins in the streets around the Guild, still sweeping up debris.
Assassins in daylight,’ snarled Vimes. ‘I’m amazed they don’t turn to dust.’
‘That’s vampires, sir,’ said Carrot.
‘Hah! You’re right. Assassins and licensed thieves and bloody vampires! You know, this was a great old city once, lad.’
Unconsciously, they fell into step . . . proceeding.
‘When we had kings, sir?’
‘Kings? Kings? Hell, no!’
A couple of Assassins looked around in surprise.
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Vimes. A monarch’s an absolute ruler, right? The head honcho—’
‘Unless he’s a queen,’ said Carrot.
Vimes glared at him, and then nodded.
‘OK, or the head honchette—’
‘No, that’d only apply if she was a young woman. Queens tend to be older. She’d have to be a . . . a honcharina? No, that’s for very young princesses. No. Um. A honchesa, I think.’
Vimes paused. There’s something in the air in this city, he thought. If the Creator had said, ‘Let there be light’ in Ankh-Morpork, he’d have got no further because of all the people saying ‘What colour?’
‘The supreme ruler, OK,’ he said, starting to stroll forward again.
‘OK.’
‘But that’s not right, see? One man with the power of life and death.’
‘But if he’s a good man—’ Carrot began.
‘What? What? OK. OK. Let’s believe he’s a good man. But his second-in-command – is he a good man too? You’d better hope so. Because he’s the supreme ruler, too, in the name of the king. And the rest of the court . . . they’ve got to be good men. Because if just one of them’s a bad man the result is bribery and patronage.’
‘The Patrician’s a supreme ruler,’ Carrot pointed out. He nodded at a passing troll. ‘G’day, Mr Carbuncle.’
‘But he doesn’t wear a crown or sit on a throne and he doesn’t tell you it’s right that he should rule,’ said Vimes. ‘I hate the bastard. But he’s honest. Honest like a corkscrew.’
‘Even so, a good man as king—’
‘Yes? And then what? Royalty pollutes people’s minds, boy. Honest men start bowing and bobbing just because someone’s grandad was a bigger murdering bastard than theirs was. Listen! We probably had good kings, once! But kings breed other kings! And blood tells, and you end up with a bunch of arrogant, murdering bastards! Chopping off queens’ heads and fighting their cousins every five minutes! And we had centuries of that! And then one day a man said “No more kings!” and we rose up and we fought the bloody nobles and we dragged the king off his throne and we dragged him into Sator Square and we chopped his bloody head off! Job well done!’
‘Wow,’ said Carrot. ‘Who was he?’
‘Who?’
‘The man who said “No More Kings”.’
People were staring. Vimes’ face went from the red of anger to the red of embarrassment. There was little difference in the shading, however.
‘Oh . . . he was Commander of the City Guard in those days,’ he mumbled. ‘They called him Old Stoneface.’