‘Thanks, Detritus,’ said Vimes. He looked at the paper written in the troll’s big round hand.
‘ist Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street,’ he said. ‘Good grief!’
‘You know it, sir?’
‘Should do. I was born in that street,’ said Vimes. ‘It’s down below the Shades. Easy . . . Easy . . . Yes , . . Now I remember. There was a Mrs Easy down the road. Skinny woman. Did a lot of sewing. Big family. Well, we were all big families, it was the only way to keep warm . . .’
He frowned at the paper. It wasn’t as if it were any particular lead. Maidservants were always going off to see their mothers, every time there was the least little family upset. What was it his granny had used to say? ‘Yer son’s yer son till he takes a wife, but yer daughter’s yer daughter all yer life.’ Sending a Watchman around would almost certainly be a waste of everyone’s time . . .
‘Well, well . . . Cockbill Street,’ he said. He stared at the paper again. You might as well rename the place Memory Lane. No, you couldn’t waste Watch resources on a wild-goose chase like that. But he might look in. On his way past. Some time today.
‘Er … Littlebottom?’
‘Sir?’
‘On your . . . your lips. Red. Er. On your lips
‘Lipstick, sir.’
‘Oh … er. Lipstick? Fine. Lipstick.’
‘Constable Angua gave it to me, sir.’
“That was kind of her,’ said Vimes. ‘I expect.’
It was called the Rats Chamber. In theory this was because of the decoration; some former resident of the palace had thought that a fresco of dancing rats would be a real decorative coup. There was a pattern of rats woven in the carpet. On the ceiling rats danced in a circle, their tails intertwining at the centre. After half an hour in that room, most people wanted a wash.
Soon, then, there would be a big rush on the hot water. The room was filling up fast.
By common consent the chair was taken and amply filled by Mrs Rosemary Palm, head of the Guild of Seamstresses[15], as one of the most senior guild leaders.
‘Quiet, please! Gentlemen!’
The noise level subsided a little.
‘Dr Downey?’ she said.
The head of the Assassins’ Guild nodded. ‘My friends, I think we are all aware of the situation’ he began.
‘Yeah, so’s your accountant!’ said a voice in the crowd. There was a ripple of nervous laughter but it didn’t last long, because you don’t laugh too loud at someone who knows exactly how much you’re worth dead.
Dr Downey smiled. ‘I can assure you once again, gentlemen – and ladies – that I am aware of no engagement regarding Lord Vetinari. In any case, I cannot imagine that an Assassin would use poison in this case. His lordship spent some time at the Assassins’ school. He knows the uses of caution. No doubt he will recover.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’ said Mrs Palm.
‘No one lives forever,’ said Dr Downey, in the calm voice of a man who personally knew this to be true. Then, no doubt, we’ll get a new ruler.’
The room went very silent.
The word ‘Who?’ hovered silently above every head.
‘Thing is … the thing is . . .’ said Gerhardt Sock, head of the Butchers’ Guild, ‘it’s been . . . you’ve got to admit it… it’s been . . . well, think about some of the others …”
The words ‘Lord Snapcase, now … at least this one isn’t actually insane’ flickered in the group consciousness.
‘I have to admit,’ said Mrs Palm, ‘that under Vetinari it has certainly been safer to walk the streets’
‘You should know, madam,’ said Mr Sock. Mrs Palm gave him an icy look. There were a few sniggers.
‘I meant that a modest payment to the Thieves’ Guild is all that is required for perfect safety,’ she finished.
‘And, indeed, a man may visit a house of ill’
‘Negotiable hospitality,’ said Mrs Palm quickly.
‘Indeed, and be quite confident of not waking up stripped stark naked and beaten black and blue,’ said Sock.
‘Unless his tastes run that way,’ said Mrs Palm. ‘We aim to give satisfaction. Very accurately, if required.’
‘Life has certainly been more reliable under Vetinari,’ said Mr Potts of the Bakers’ Guild.
‘He does have all street-theatre players and mime artists thrown into the scorpion pit,’ said Mr Boggis of the Thieves’ Guild.
‘True. But let’s not forget that he has his bad points too. The man is capricious.’
‘You think so? Compared to the ones we had before he’s as reliable as a rock.’
‘Snapcase was reliable,’ said Mr Sock gloomily. ‘Remember when he made his horse a city councillor?’
‘You’ve got to admit it wasn’t a bad councillor. Compared to some of the others.’
‘As I recall, the others at that time were a vase of flowers, a heap of sand and three people who had been beheaded.’
‘Remember all those fights? All the little gangs of thieves fighting all the time? It got so that there was hardly any energy left to actually steal things,’ said Mr Boggis.
‘Things are indeed more . . . reliable now.’
Silence descended again. That was it, wasn’t it? Things were reliable now. Whatever else you said about old Vetinari, he made sure today was always followed by tomorrow. If you were murdered in your bed, at least it would be by arrangement.
‘Things were more exciting under Lord Snapcase,’ someone ventured.
‘Yes, right up until the point when your head fell off.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Mr Boggis, ‘that the job makes people mad. You take some chap who’s no worse than any of us and after a few months he’s talking to moss and having people flayed alive.’
‘Vetinari isn’t mad.’
‘Depends how you look at it. No one can be as sane as he is without being mad.’
‘I am only a weak woman,’ said Mrs Palm, to the personal disbelief of several present, ‘but it does seem to me that there’s an opportunity here. Either there’s a long struggle to sort out a successor, or we sort it out now. Yes?’
The guild leaders tried to look at one another while simultaneously avoiding everyone else’s glances. Who’d be Patrician now? Once there’d have been a huge multi-sided power struggle, but now . . .
You got the power, but you got the problems, too. Things had changed. These days, you had to negotiate and juggle with all the conflicting interests. No one sane had tried to kill Vetinari for years, because the world with him in it was just preferable to one without him.
Besides . . . Vetinari had tamed Ankh-Morpork. He’d tamed it like a dog. He’d taken a minor scavenger among scavengers and lengthened its teeth and strengthened its jaws and built up its muscles and studded its collar and fed it lean steak and then he’d aimed it at the throat of the world.
He’d taken all the gangs and squabbling groups and made them see that a small slice of the cake on a regular basis was better by far than a bigger slice with a dagger in it. He’d made them see that it was better to take a small slice but enlarge the cake.
Ankh-Morpork, alone of all the cities of the plains, had opened its gates, to dwarfs and trolls (alloys are stronger, Vetinari had said). It had worked. They made things. Often they made trouble, but mostly they made wealth. As a result, although Ankh-Morpork still had many enemies, those enemies had to finance their armies with borrowed money. Most of it was borrowed from Ankh-Morpork, at punitive interest. There hadn’t been any really big wars for years. Ankh-Morpork had made them unprofitable.
Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: ‘Do not fight, or we will kill you.’ The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: ‘If you fight, we’ll call in your mortgages. And incidentally, that’s my pike you’re pointing at me. I paid for that shield you’re holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.’
And now the whole machine, which whirred away so quietly that people had forgotten it was a machine at all and thought that it was just the way the world worked, had given a lurch.
The guild leaders examined their thoughts and decided that what they did not want was power. What they wanted was that tomorrow should be pretty much like today.
‘There’s the dwarfs,’ said Mr Boggis. ‘Even if one of us – not that I’m saying it would be one of us, of course – even if someone took over, what about the dwarfs? We get someone like Snapcase again, there’s going to be chopped kneecaps in the streets.’