Vimes recognized the stance. He used it himself, when he had to. ‘What do you mean, Fred?’ he said.
‘Not a thing, sir. Figure of speech, sir.’
Vimes sat back.
This morning, he thought, I knew what the day held. I was going to see about that damn coat of arms. Then there was my usual meeting with Vetinari. I was going to read some reports after lunch, maybe go and see how they’re getting on with the new Watch House in Chittling Street, and have an early night. Now Fred’s suggesting . . . what?
‘Listen, Fred, if there is to be a new ruler, it won’t be me.’
‘Who’ll it be, sir?’ Colon’s voice still held that slow, deliberate tone.
‘How should I know? It could be . . .’
The gap opened ahead of him and he could feel his thoughts being sucked into it. ‘You’re talking about Captain Carrot, aren’t you, Fred?’
‘Could be, sir. I mean none of the guilds’d let some other guild bloke be ruler now, and everyone likes Captain Carrot, and, well . . . rumour’s got about that he’s the hair to the throne, sir.’
‘There’s no proof of that, Sergeant.’
‘Not for me to say, sir. Dunno about that. Dunno what is proof,’ said Colon, with just a hint of defiance. ‘But he’s got that sword of his, and the birthmark shaped like a crown, and . . . well, everyone knows he’s king. It’s his krisma.’
Charisma, thought Vimes. Oh, yes. Carrot has charisma. He makes something happen in people’s heads. He can talk a charging leopard into giving up and handing over its teeth and doing good work in the community, and that would really upset the old ladies.
Vimes distrusted charisma. ‘No more kings, Fred.’
‘Right you are, sir. By the way, Nobby’s turned up.’
‘The day gets worse and worse, Fred.’
‘You said you’d talk to him about all these funerals, sir . . .’
‘The job goes on, I suppose. All right, go and tell him to come up here.”
Vimes was left to himself.
No more kings. Vimes had difficulty in articulating why this should be so, why the concept revolted in his very bones. After all, a good many of the patricians had been as bad as any king. But they were . . . sort of… bad on equal terms. What set Vimes’s teeth on edge was the idea that kings were a different kind of human being. A higher lifeform. Somehow magical. But, huh, there was some magic, at that. Ankh-Morpork still seemed to be littered with Royal this and Royal that, little old men who got paid a few pence a week to do a few meaningless chores, like the Master of the King’s Keys or the Keeper of the Crown Jewels, even though there were no keys and certainly no jewels.
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: ‘Kings. What a good idea.’ Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
There was a knock at the door. It should not be possible for a knock to sound surreptitious, yet this knock achieved it. It had harmonics. They told the hindbrain: the person knocking will, if no one eventually answers, open the door anyway and sidle in, whereupon he will certainly nick any smokes that are lying around, read any correspondence that catches his eye, open a few drawers, take a nip out of such bottles of alcohol as are discovered, but stop short of major crime because he is not criminal in the sense of making a moral decision but in the sense that a weasel is evil – it is built into his very shape. It was a knock with a lot to say for itself.
‘Come in, Nobby,’ said Vimes, wearily.
Corporal Nobbs sidled in. It was another special trait of his that he could sidle forwards as well as sideways.
He saluted awkwardly.
There was something absolutely changeless about Corporal Nobbs, Vimes told himself. Even Fred Colon had adapted to the changing nature of the City Watch, but nothing altered Corporal Nobbs in any way. It wouldn’t matter what you did to him, there was always something fundamentally Nobby about Corporal Nobbs.
‘Nobby . . .’
‘Yessir?’
‘Er . . . take a seat, Nobby.’
Corporal Nobbs looked suspicious. This was not how a dressing-down was supposed to begin.
‘Er, Fred said you wanted to see me, Mr Vimes, on account of timekeeping . . .’
‘Did I? Did I? Oh, yes. Nobby, how many grandmothers’ funerals have you really been to?’
‘Er . . . three . . .’ said Nobby, uncomfortably.
Three?’
‘It turned out Nanny Nobbs weren’t quite dead the first time.’
‘So why have you taken all this time off?’
‘Don’t like to say, sir . . .’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re gonna go spare, sir.’
‘Spare?’
‘You know, sir … throw a wobbler.’
‘I might, Nobby.’ Vimes sighed. ‘But it’ll be nothing to what’ll get heaved if you don’t tell me . . .’
‘Thing is, it’s the tricentre – tricera – this three-hundred-year celebration thing next year, Mr Vimes . . .’
‘Yes?’
Nobby licked his lips. ‘I dint like to ask for time offspecial. Fred said you were a bit sensitive about it all. But . . . you know I’m in the Peeled Nuts, sir. . .’
Vimes nodded. ‘Those clowns who dress up and pretend to fight old battles with blunt swords,’ he said.
‘The Ankh-Morpork Historical Re-creation Society, sir,’ said Nobby, a shade reproachfully.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Well . . . we’re going to recreate the Battle of Ankh-Morpork for the celebrations, see. That means extra practice.’
‘It all begins to make sense,’ said Vimes, nodding wearily. ‘You’ve been marching up and down with your tin pike, eh? In my time?’
‘Er … not exactly, Mr Vimes . , . er . . . I’ve been riding up and down on my white horse, to tell the truth
‘Oh? Playing at being a general, eh?’
‘Er … a bit more’n a general, sir . . .’
‘Goon.’
Nobby’s adam’s apple bobbed nervously. ‘Er . . . I’m going to be King Lorenzo, sir. Er … you know . . . the last king, the one your . . . er . . .’
The air froze.
‘You … are going to be . . .’ Vimes began, unpeeling each word like a sullen grape of wrath.
‘I said you’d go spare,’ said Nobby. ‘Fred Colon said you’d go spare, too.’
‘Why are you?’
‘We drew lots, sir.’
‘And you lost?’
Nobby squirmed. Er … not exactly lost, sir. Not precisely lost. More sort of won, sir. Everyone wanted to play him. I mean, you get a horse and a good costume and everything, sir. And he was a king, when all’s said and done, sir.’
‘The man was a vicious monster!’
‘Well, it was all a long time ago, sir,’ said Nobby anxiously.
Vimes calmed down a little. ‘And who drew the straw to play Stoneface Vimes?’
‘Er. . .er. . .’
‘Nobby!’
Nobby hung his head. ‘No one, sir. No one wanted to play him, sir.’ The little corporal swallowed, and then plunged onwards with the air of a man determined to get it all over with. ‘So we’re making a man out of straw, sir, so he’ll burn nicely when we throw him on the bonfire in the evening. There’s going to be fireworks, sir,’ he added, with dreadful certainty.
Vimes’s face shut down. Nobby preferred it when people shouted. He had been shouted at for most of his life. He could handle shouting.
‘No one wanted to be Stoneface Vimes,’ Vimes said coldly.
‘On account of him being on the losing side, sir.’
‘Losing? Vimes’s Ironheads won. He ruled the city for six months.’
Nobby squirmed again. ‘Yeah, but . . . everyone in the Society says he didn’t ought to of, sir. They said it was just a fluke, sir. After all, he was outnumbered ten to one, and he had warts, sir. And he was a bit of a bastard, sir, when all’s said and done. He did chop off a king’s head, sir. You got to be a bit of a nasty type to do that, sir. Saving your presence, Mr Vimes.’
Vimes shook his head. What did it matter, anyway? (But it did matter, somewhere.) It had all been a long time ago. It didn’t matter what a bunch of deranged romantics thought. Facts were facts.
‘All right, I understand,’ he said. ‘It’s almost funny, really. Because there’s something else I’ve got to tell you, Nobby.’