Zorgo and his current patient looked at him curiously.
Pugnant’s roof was empty. Vimes turned back and met a pair of puzzled gazes.
‘ ‘Morning, Captain Vimes,’ said the retrophrenologist, a hammer still upraised in one massive hand.
Vimes smiled manically.
‘Just thought—’he began, and then went on,’—I saw an interesting rare butterfly on the roof over there.’
Troll and patient stared politely past him.
‘But there wasn’t,’ said Virnes.
He walked back to the door.
‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ he said, and left.
Zorgo’s patient watched him go with interest.
‘Didn’t he have a crossbow?’ he said. ‘Bit odd, going after interesting rare butterflies with a crossbow.’
Zorgo readjusted the fit of the grid on his patient’s bald head.
‘Dunno,’ he said, ‘I suppose it stops them creating all these damn thunderstorms.’ He picked up the mallet again. ‘Now, what were we going for today? Decisiveness, yes?’
‘Yes. Well, no. Maybe.’
‘Right.’ Zorgo took aim. ‘This,’ he said with absolute truth, ‘won’t hurt a bit.’
It was more than just a delicatessen. It was a sort of dwarf community centre and meeting place. The babble of voices stopped when Angua entered, bending almost double, but started up again with slightly more volume and a few laughs when Carrot followed. He waved cheerfully at the other customers.
Then he carefully removed two chairs. It was just possible to sit upright if you sat on the floor.
‘Very . . . nice,’ said Angua. ‘Ethnic.’
‘I come in here quite a lot,’ said Carrot. ‘The food’s good and, of course, it pays to keep your ear to the ground.’
‘That’d certainly be easy here,’ said Angua, and laughed.
‘Pardon?’
1S6
‘Well, I mean, the ground is . . . so much . . . closer . . .’
She felt a pit opening wider with every word. The noise level had suddenly dropped again.
‘Er,’ said Carrot, staring fixedly at her. ‘How can I put this? People are talking in Dwarfish . . . but they’re listening in Human.’
‘Sorry.’
Carrot smiled, and then nodded at the cook behind the counter and cleared his throat noisily.
‘I think I might have a throat sweet somewhere —’ Angua began.
‘I was ordering breakfast,’ said Carrot.
‘You know the menu off by heart?’
‘Oh, yes. But it’s written on the wall as well.’
Angua turned and looked again at what she’d thought were merely random scratches.
‘It’s Oggham,’ said Carrot. ‘An ancient and poetic runic script whose origins are lost in the mists of time but it’s thought to have been invented even before the Gods.’
‘Gosh. What does it say?’
Carrot really cleared his throat this time.
‘Soss, egg, beans and rat 12p Soss, rat and fried slice l0p Cream-cheese rat 9p Rat and beans 8p Rat and ketchup 7p Rat 4p’
‘Why does ketchup cost almost as much as the rat?’ said Angua.
‘Have you tried rat without ketchup?’ said Carrot. ‘Anyway, I ordered you dwarf bread. Have you ever eaten dwarf bread?’
‘No.’
‘Everyone should try it once,’ said Carrot. He appeared to consider this. ‘Most people do,’ he added.[16]
Three and a half minutes after waking up, Captain Samuel Vimes, Night Watch, staggered up the last few steps to the roof of the city’s opera house, gasped for breath and threw up allegro ma non troppo.
Then he leaned against the wall, waving his crossbow vaguely in front of him.
There wasn’t anyone else on the roof. There were just the leads, stretching away, drinking up the morning sunlight. It was already almost too hot to move.
When he felt a bit better he poked around among the chimneys and skylight. But there were a dozen ways down, and a thousand places to hide.
He could see right into his room from here. Come to that, he could see into the rooms of most of the city.
Catapult . . . no . . .
Oh, well. At least there’d been witnesses.
He walked to the edge of the roof, and peered over.
‘Hello, there,’ he said. He blinked. It was six storeys down, and not a sight to look at on a recently emptied stomach.
‘Er . . . could you come up here, please?’ he said.
‘ ‘Ight oo are.’
Vimes stood back. There was a scrape of stone and a gargoyle pulled itself laboriously over the parapet, moving like a cheap stop-motion animation.
He didn’t know much about gargoyles. Carrot had said something once about how marvellous it was, an urban troll species that had evolved a symbiotic relationship with gutters, and he had admired the way they funnelled run-off water into their ears and out through fine sieves in their mouths. They were probably the strangest species on the Disc.[17] You didn’t get many birds nesting on buildings colonized by gargoyles, and bats tended to fly around them.
‘What’s your name, friend?’
‘ ‘ornice-oggerooking-Oardway.’
Vimes’ lips moved as he mentally inserted all those sounds unobtainable to a creature whose mouth was stuck permanently open. Cornice-overlooking-Broad-way. A gargoyle’s personal identity was intimately bound up with its normal location, like a limpet.
‘Well now, Cornice,’ he said, ‘do you know who I am?’
‘Oh,’ said the gargoyle sullenly.
Vimes nodded. It sits up here in all weather straining gnats through its ears, he thought. People like that don’t have a crowded address book. Even whelks get out more.
‘I’m Captain Vimes of the Watch.’
The gargoyle pricked up its huge ears.
‘Ar. Oo erk or Ister Arrot?’
Vimes worked this one out, too, and blinked.
‘You know Corporal Carrot?’
‘Oh, Ess. Air-ee-un owes Arrot.’
Vimes snorted. I grew up here, he thought, and when I walk down the street everyone says, ‘Who’s that glum bugger?’ Carrot’s been here a few months and everyone knows him. And he knows everyone. Everyone likes him. I’d be annoyed about that, if only he wasn’t so likeable.
‘You live right up here,’ said Vimes, interested despite the more pressing problem on his mind, ‘how come you know Arrot . . . Carrot?’
‘Ee cuns uk ere um-imes an awks oo ugg.’
‘Uz ee?’
‘Egg.’
‘Did someone else come up here? Just now?’
‘Egg-‘
‘Did you see who it was?’
‘Oh. Ee oot izh oot on i ed. Ang et ogg a ire-erk. I or ing un ah-ay a-ong Or-oh-Erns Eet.’
Holofernes Street, Vimes translated. Whoever it was would be well away by now.
‘Ee ad a ick,’ Cornice volunteered. A ire-erk htick.’
A what?’
‘Ire-erk. Oo oh? Ang! Ock! Arks! Ockekts! Ang!’
‘Oh, fireworks.’
‘Egg. Aks ot I ed.’
A firework stick? Like . . . like a rocket stick?’
‘Oh, ih-ee-ot! A htick, oo oint, ik koes ANG!’
‘You point it and it goes bang?’
‘Egg!’
Vimes scratched his head. Sounded like a wizard’s staff. But they didn’t go bang.
‘Well . . . thanks,’ he said. ‘You’ve been . . . eh-ee elkfhull.’
He turned back towards the stairs.
Someone had tried to kill him.
And the Patrician had warned him against investigating the theft from the Assassins’ Guild. Theft, he said.
Up until then, Vimes hadn’t even been certain there had been a theft.
And then, of course, there are the laws of chance. They play a far greater role in police procedure than narrative causality would like to admit. For every murder solved by the careful discovery of a vital footprint or a cigarette end, a hundred failed to be resolved because the wind blew some leaves the wrong way or it didn’t rain the night before. So many crimes are solved by a happy accident – by the random stopping of a car, by an overheard remark, by someone of the right nationality happening to be within five miles of the scene of the crime without an alibi . . .
Even Vimes knew about the power of chance.
His sandal clinked against something metallic.
And this,’ said Corporal Carrot, ‘is the famous commemorative arch celebrating the Battle of Crumhorn. We won it, I think. It’s got over ninety statues of famous soldiers. It’s something of a landmark.’
‘Should have put up a stachoo to the accountants,’ said a doggy voice behind Angua. ‘First battle in the universe where the enemy were persuaded to sell their weapons.’
‘Where is it, then?’ said Angua, still ignoring Gaspode.
Ah. Yes. That’s the problem,’ said Carrot. ‘Excuse me, Mr Scant. This is Mr Scant. Official Keeper of the Monuments. According to ancient tradition, his pay is one dollar a year and a new vest every Hogswatchday.’
There was an old man sitting on a stool at the road junction, with his hat over his eyes. He pushed it up.
Afternoon, Mr Carrot. You’ll be wanting to see the triumphal arch, will you?’
‘Yes, please.’ Carrot turned back to Angua. ‘Unfortunately, the actual practical design was turned over to Bloody Stupid Johnson.’
The old man eventually produced a small cardboard box from a pocket, and reverentially took off the lid.