Dragon slumped in his chair.
‘And then I wondered what was in it for you,’ continued Vimes. ‘Oh, there’s a lot of people involved, I expect, for the same old reasons. But you? Now, my wife breeds dragons. Out of interest, really. Is that what you do? A little hobby to allow the centuries to fly by? Or does blue blood taste sweeter? Y’know, I hope it was some reason like that. Some decent mad selfish one.’
‘Possibly – if someone were so inclined, and I certainly’ make no such admission, ah-ha they might simply be thinking of improving the race,’ said the shape in the shadows.
‘Breeding for receding chins or bunny teeth, that sort of thing?’ said Vimes. ‘Yes, I can see where it’d be more straightforward if you had the whole king business. All those courtly balls. All those little arrangements which see to it that the right kind of gel meets only the right kind of boy. You’ve had hundreds of years, right? And everyone consults you. You know where all the family trees are planted. But it’s all got a bit messy under Vetinari, hasn’t it? All the wrong people are getting to the top. I know how Sybil curses when people leave the pen gates open: it really messes up her breeding programme.’
‘You are wrong about Captain Carrot, ah-ha. The city knows how to work around . . . difficult kings. But would it want a future king who might really be called Rex?’
Vimes looked blank. There was a sigh from the shadows. ‘I am, ah-ha, referring to his apparently stable relationship with the werewolf.’
Vimes stared. Understanding eventually dawned. ‘You think they’d have puppies?’
‘The genetics of werewolves are not straightforward, ah-ha, but the chance of such an outcome would be considered unacceptable. If someone were thinking on those lines.’
‘By gods, and that’s if?’
The shadows were changing. Dragon was still slumped in his chair, but his outline seemed to be blurring.
‘Whatever the, ah-ha, motives, Mr Vimes, there is no evidence other than supposition and coincidence and your will to believe that links me with any attempt on Vetinari’s, ah-ha, life . . .’
The old vampire’s head was sunk even further in his chest. The shadows of his shoulders seemed to be getting longer.
‘It was sick, involving the golems,’ said Vimes, watching the shadows. ‘They could feel what their “king” was doing. Perhaps it wasn’t very sane even to begin with, but it was all they had. Clay of their clay. The poor devils didn’t have anything except their clay, and you bastards took away even that’
Dragon leapt suddenly, bat-wings unfolding. Vimes’s wooden bolt clattered somewhere near the ceiling as he was borne down.
‘You really thought you could arrest me with a piece of wood?’ said Dragon, his hand around Vimes’s neck.
‘No,’ Vimes croaked. ‘I was more. . . poetic. . . than that. All I had … to do … was keep you talking. Feeling . . . weak, are you? The biter bit . . . you might say . . . ?’ He grinned.
The vampire looked puzzled, and then turned his head and stared at the candles. ‘You . . . put something in the candles? Really?’
‘We . . . knew garlic . . . would smell but . . . our alchemist reckoned that. . . if you get. . . holy water. . . soak the wicks . . . water evaporates . . . just leaves holiness.’
The pressure was released. Dragon King of Arms sat back on his haunches. His face had changed, shaping itself forward, giving him an expression like a fox.
Then he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, and this time it was his turn to grin. ‘No, that’s just words. That wouldn’t work . . .’
‘Bet. . . your. . . unlife?’ rasped Vimes, rubbing his neck. ‘A better way . . . than old Carry went, eh?’
‘Trying to trick me into an admission, Mr Vimes?’
‘Oh, I had that,’ said Vimes. ‘When you looked straight at the candles.’
‘Really? Ah-ha. But who else saw me?’ said Dragon.
From the shadows there was a rumble like a distant thunderstorm.
‘I Did,’ said Dorfl.
The vampire looked from the golem to Vimes.
‘You gave one of them a voice?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Dorfl. He reached down and picked up the vampire in one hand. ‘I Could Kill You,’ he said. ‘This Is An Option Available To Me As A Free-Thinking Individual But I Will Not Do So Because I Own Myself And I Have Made A Moral Choice.’
‘Oh, gods,’ murmured Vimes under his breath.
‘That’s blasphemy,’ said the vampire.
He gasped as Vimes shot him a glance like sunlight. ‘That’s what people say when the voiceless speak. Take him away, Dorfl. Put him in the palace dungeons.’
‘I Could Take No Notice of That Command But Am Choosing To Do So Out of Earned Respect And Social Responsibility’
‘Yes, yes, fine,’ said Vimes quickly.
Dragon clawed at the golem. He might as well have kicked at a mountain.
‘Undead or Alive, You Are Coming With Me,’ said Dorfl.
‘Is there no end to your crimes? You’ve made this thing a policeman? said the vampire, struggling as Dorfl dragged him away.
‘No, but it’s an intriguing suggestion, don’t you think?’ said Vimes.
He was left alone in the thick velvety gloom of the Royal College.
And Vetinari will let him go, he reflected. Because this is politics. Because he’s part of the way the city works. Besides, there’s the matter of evidence. I’ve got enough to prove it to myself, but . . .
But I’ll know, he told himself.
Oh, he’ll be watched, and maybe one day when Vetinari is ready a really good assassin will be sent with a wooden dagger soaked in garlic, and it’ll all be done in the dark. That’s how politics works in this city. It’s a game of chess. Who cares if a few pawns die?
I’ll know. And I’ll be the only one who knows, deep down.
His hands automatically patted his pockets for a cigar.
It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone spills a drop of blood in the wrong place and guess who’s back”? They returned more times than raw broccoli.
These were dangerous thoughts, he knew. They were the kind that crept up on a watchman when the chase was over and it was just you and him, facing one another in that breathless little pinch between the crime and the punishment.
And maybe a watchman had seen civilization with the skin ripped off one time too many and stopped acting like a watchman and started acting like a normal human being and realized that the click of the crossbow or the sweep of the sword would make all the world so clean.
And you couldn’t think like that, even about vampires. Even though they’d take the lives of other people because little lives don’t matter and what the hell can we take away from them”?
And you couldn’t think like that because they gave you a sword and a badge and that turned you into something else and that had to mean there were some thoughts you couldn’t think.
Only crimes could take place in darkness.
Punishment had to be done in the light. That was thejob of a good watchman, Carrot always said. To light a candle in the dark.
He found a cigar. Now his hands did the automatic search for matches.
The volumes were piled up against the walls. The candlelight picked up gold lettering and the dull gleam of leather. There they were, the lineages, the books of heraldic minutiae, the Who’s Whom of the centuries, the stock books of the city. People stood on them to look down.
No matches . . .
Quietly, in the dusty silence of the College, Vimes picked up a candelabrum and lit his cigar.
He took a few deep luxuriant puffs, and looked thoughtfully at the books. In his hand, the candles spluttered and flickered.
The clock ticked its arrhythmic tock. It finally stuttered its way to one o’clock, and Vimes got up and went into the Oblong Office.
‘Ah, Vimes,’ said Lord Vetinari, looking up.
‘Yes, sir.’
Vimes had managed a few hours’ sleep and had even attempted to shave.
The Patrician shuffled some papers on his desk. ‘It seems to have been a very busy night last night. . .’
‘Yes, sir.’ Vimes stood to attention. All uniformed men knew in their very soul how to act in circumstances like this. You stared straight ahead, for one thing.
‘It appears that I have Dragon King of Arms in the cells,’ said the Patrician.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ve read your report. Somewhat tenuous evidence, I feel.’
‘Sir?’
‘One of your witnesses isn’t even alive, Vimes.’