‘Where’d we got to?’ said Mrs Cake, still on the other side of the door.
‘You just said, “I don’t know, shall I ask him to go away?” Mrs Cake,’ said Angua. Clothes! That was always the trouble! At least a male werewolf only had to worry about a pair of shorts and pretend he’d been on a brisk run.
‘Right.’ Mrs Cake coughed. ‘ “There’s a young man downstairs asking for you”,’ she said.
‘ “Who is it?”,’ said Angua.
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Yes, oi think that’s all sorted out,’ said Mrs Cake. ‘Sorry, dear. Oi get terrible headaches if’n people don’t fill in the right bits. Are you human, dear?'[12]
‘You can come in, Mrs Cake.’
It wasn’t much of a room. It was mainly brown. Brown oilcloth flooring, brown walls, a picture over the brown bed of a brown stag being attacked by brown dogs on a brown moorland against a sky which, contrary to established meteorological knowledge, was brown. There was a brown wardrobe. Possibly, if you fought your way through the mysterious old coats[13] hanging in it, you’d break through into a magical fairyland full of talking animals and goblins, but it’d probably not be worth it.
Mrs Cake entered. She was a small fat woman, but made up for her lack of height by wearing a huge black hat; not the pointy witch variety, but one covered with stuffed birds, wax fruit and other assorted decorative items, all painted black. Angua quite liked her. The rooms were clean,[14] the rates were cheap, and Mrs Cake had a very understanding approach to people who lived slightly unusual lives and had, for. example, an aversion to garlic. Her daughter was a werewolf and she knew all about the need for ground floor windows and doors with long handles that a paw could operate.
‘He’s got chainmail on,’ said Mrs Cake. She was holding a bucket of gravel in either hand. ‘He’s got soap in his ears, too.’
‘Oh. Er. Right.’
‘Oi can tell ‘im to bugger off if you like,’ said Mrs Cake. ‘That’s what I allus does if the wrong sort comes round.
Especially if they’ve got a stake. I can’t be having with that sort of thing, people messing up the hallways, waving torches and stuff.’
‘I think I know who it is,’ said Angua. ‘I’ll see to it.’
She tucked in her shirt.
‘Pull the door to if you go out,’ Mrs Cake called after her as she went out into the hall. ‘Oi’m just off to change the dirt in Mr Winkins’ coffin, on account of his back giving him trouble.’
‘It looks like gravel to me, Mrs Cake.’
‘Orthopaedic, see?’
Carrot was standing respectfully on the doorstep with his helmet under his arm and a very embarrassed expression on his face.
‘Well?’ said Angua, not unkindly.
‘Er. Good morning. I thought, you know, perhaps, you not knowing very much about the city, really. I could, if you like, if you don’t mind, not having to go on duty for a while . . . show you some of it. . .?’
For a moment Angua thought she’d contracted pre-science from Mrs Cake. Various futures flitted across her imagination.
‘I haven’t had breakfast,’ she said.
‘They make a very good breakfast in Gimlet’s dwarf delicatessen in Cable Street.’
‘It’s lunchtime.’
‘It’s breakfast time for the Night Watch.’
‘I’m practically vegetarian.’
‘He does a soya rat.’
She gave in. ‘I’ll fetch my coat.’
‘Har, har,’ said a voice, full of withering cynicism.
She looked down. Gaspode was sitting behind Carrot, trying to glare while scratching himself furiously.
‘Last night we chased a cat up a tree,’ said Gaspode.
‘You and me, eh? We could make it. Fate has thrown us together, style of fing.’
‘Go away.’
‘Sorry?’ said Carrot.
‘Not you. That dog.’
Carrot turned.
‘Him? Is he bothering you now? He’s a nice little chap.’
‘Woof, woof, biscuit.’
Carrot automatically patted his pocket.
‘See?’ said Gaspode. ‘This boy is Mister Simple, am I right?’
‘Do they let dogs in dwarf shops?’ said Angua.
‘No,’ said Carrot.
‘On a hook,’ said Gaspode.
‘Really? Sounds good to me,’ said Angua. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Vegetarian?’ mumbled Gaspode, limping after them. ‘Oh, my.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Sorry?’ said Carrot.
‘I was just thinking aloud.’
Vimes’ pillow was cold and hard. He felt it gingerly. It was cold and hard because it was not a pillow but a table. His cheek appeared to be stuck to it, and he was not interested in speculating what with.
He hadn’t even managed to take his armour off.
But he did manage to unstick one eye.
He’d been writing in his notebook. Trying to make sense of it all. And then he’d gone to sleep.
What time was it? No time to look back.
He traced out:
Stolen from Afsafsins’ Guild: gonne – > Hammerhock killed.
Smell of fireworks. Lump of lead. Alchemical Symbols. 2nd body in river. A clown. Where was his red nose? Gonne.
He stared at the scrawled notes.
I’m on the path, he thought. I don’t have to know where it leads. I just have to follow. There’s always a crime, if you look hard enough. And the Assassins are in this somewhere.
Follow every lead. Check every detail. Chip, chip away.
I’m hungry.
He staggered to his feet and looked at his face in the cracked mirror over the basin.
Events of the previous day filtered through the dogged gauze of memory. Central to all of them was the face of Lord Vetinari. Vimes grew angry just thinking about that. The cool way he’d told Vimes that he mustn’t take an interest in the theft from—
Vimes stared at his reflection—
—something stung his ear and smashed the glass.
Vimes stared at the hole in the plaster, surrounded by the remains of a mirror frame. Around him, the mirror glass tinkled to the floor.
Vimes stood stock still for a long moment.
Then his legs, reaching the conclusion that his brain was somewhere else, threw the rest of him to the floor.
There was another tinkle and a half bottle of Bear-hugger’s exploded on the desk. Vines couldn’t even remember buying it.
He scrambled forward on hands and knees and pulled himself upright alongside the window.
Images flashed through his mind. The dead dwarf. The hole in the wall . . .
A thought seemed to start in the small of his back and spread upwards to his brain: These were lath and plaster walls, and old ones at that; you could push a finger through them with a bit of effort. As for a lump of metal—
He hit the floor at the same time as a pock coincided with a hole punched through the wall on one side of the window. Plaster dust puffed into the air.
His crossbow was leaning against the wall. He wasn’t an expert but, hells, who was? You pointed it and you fired it. He pulled it towards him, rolled on his back, stuck his foot in the stirrup and hauled on the string until it clicked into place.
Then he rolled back on to one knee and slotted a quarrel into the groove.
A catapult, that’s what it was. It had to be. Troll-sized, perhaps. Someone up on the roof of the opera house or somewhere high . . .
Draw their fire, draw their fire . . . he picked up his helmet and balanced it on the end of another quarrel. The thing to do was crouch below the window and . . .
He thought for a moment. Then he shuffled across the floor to the corner, where there was a pole with a hook on the end. Once upon a time it had been used to open the upper windows, now long rusted shut.
He balanced his helmet on the end, wedged himself into the corner, and with a certain amount of effort moved the pole so that the helmet just showed over the window si . . .
Pock.
Splinters flew up from a point on the floor where it would undoubtedly have severely inconvenienced anyone lying on the boards cautiously raising a decoy helmet on a stick.
Vimes smiled. Someone was trying to kill him, and that made him feel more alive than he had done for days.
And they were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer.
He dropped the pole, picked up the crossbow, spun past the window, fired at an indistinct shape on the opera house roof opposite as if the bow could possibly carry across that range, leapt across the room and wrenched at the door. Something smashed into the doorframe as the door swung to behind him.
Then it was down the back stairs, out of the door, over the privy roof, into Knuckle Passage, up the back steps of Zorgo the Retrophrenologist,[15] into Zorgo’s operating room and over to the window.