He peered into the shadows. A few horses were watching him. In the distance, around him, other horses were being moved, people were shouting, there was the general bustle of the stables. But the voice had come out of a little pool of ominous silence.
‘I’ve still got two months to go on my last receipt,’ he said to the darkness. ‘And may I say that the free canteen of cutlery seemed to be made of an alloy of lead and horse manure?’
‘I’m not a thief, friend,’ said the shadows.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Do you know what’s good for you?’
‘Er . . . yes. Healthy exercise, regular meals, a good night’s sleep.’ William stared at the long lines of loose-boxes. ‘I think what you meant to ask was: do I know what’s bad for me, in the general context of blunt instruments and sharp edges. Yes?’
‘Broadly, yes. No, don’t move, mister. You stand where I can see you and no harm will come to you.’
William analysed this. ‘Yes, but if I stand where you can’t see me,
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I don’t see how any harm could come to me there, either.’
Something sighed. ‘Look, meet me halfway here– No! Don’t move!’
‘But you said to–‘
‘Just stand still and shut up and listen, will you?’
‘All right.’
‘I am hearing where there’s a certain dog that people are lookin’ for,’ said the mystery voice.
‘Ah. Yes. The Watch want him, yes. And . . . ?’ William thought he could just make out a slightly darker shape. More importantly, he could smell a Smell, even above the general background odour of the horses.
‘Ron?’ he said.
‘Do I sound like Ron?’ said the voice.
‘Not . . . exactly. So who am I talking to?’
‘You can call me . . . Deep Bone.’
‘Deep Bone?
‘Anything wrong with that?’
‘I suppose not. What can I do for you, Mr Bone?’
‘Just supposin’ someone knew where the doggie was but didn’t want to get involved with the Watch?’ said the voice of Deep Bone.
‘Why not?’
‘Let’s just say the Watch can be trouble to a certain kind of person, eh? That’s one reason.’
‘All right.’
‘And let’s just say there’s people around who’d much prefer the little doggie didn’t tell what it knew, shall we? The Watch might not take enough care. They’re very uncaring about dogs, the Watch.’
‘Are they?’
‘Oh yes, the Watch fink a dog has no human rights at all. That’s another reason.’
‘Is there a third reason?’
‘Yes. I read in the paper where there’s a reward.’
‘Ah. Yes?’
‘Only it got printed wrong, ‘cos it said twenty-five dollars instead of a hundred dollars, see?’
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‘Oh. I see. But a hundred dollars is a lot of money for a dog, Mr Bone.’
‘Not for this dog, if you know what I mean,’ said the shadows. ‘This dog’s got a story to tell.’
‘Oh, yes? It’s the famous talking dog of Ankh-Morpork, is it?’
Deep Bone growled. ‘Dogs can’t talk, everyone knows that. But there’s them as can understand dog language, if you catch my drift.’
‘Werewolves, you mean?’
‘Could be people of that style of kidney, yes.’
‘But the only werewolf I know is in the Watch,’ said William. ‘So you’re just telling me to pay you a hundred dollars so that I could hand Wuffles over to the Watch?’
That’d be a feather in your cap with old Vimes, wouldn’t it?’ said Deep Bone.
‘But you said you didn’t trust the Watch, Mr Bone. I do listen to what people say, you know.’
Deep Bone went quiet for a while. Then:
‘All right, the dog and an interpreter, one hundred and fifty dollars.’
‘And the story this dog could tell deals with events in the palace a few mornings ago?’
‘Could be. Could be. Could very well be. Could be exactly the kind of fing I’m referrin’ to.’
‘I want to see who I’m talking to,’ said William.
‘Can’t do that.’
‘Oh, well,’ said William. That’s reassuring. I’ll just go and get a hundred and fifty dollars, shall I, and bring it back to this place and hand it over to you, just like that?’
‘Good idea.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Oh, so you don’t trust me, eh?’ said Deep Bone.
‘That’s right.’
‘Er . . . supposin’ I was to tell you a little piece of free news information for gratis and nothin’. A lick of the lolly. A little taste, style of fing.’
‘Go on . . .’
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‘It wasn’t Vetinari who stabbed the other man. It was another man.’
William wrote this down, and then looked at it. ‘Exactly how helpful is this?’ he said.
That’s a good bit of news, that is. Hardly anyone knows it.’
‘There’s not a lot to know! Isn’t there a description?’
‘He’s got a dog bite on his ankle,’ said Deep Bone.
‘That’ll make him easy to find in the street, won’t it? What are you expecting me to do, try a little surreptitious trouser lifting?’
Deep Bone sounded hurt. That’s kosher news, that is. It’d worry certain people if you put that in your paper.’
‘Yes, they’d worry that I’d gone mad! You’ve got to tell me something better than that! Can you give me a description?’
Deep Bone went silent for a while, and when the voice spoke again it sounded uncertain. ‘You mean, what he looked like?’ it said.
‘Well, yes!’
‘Ah . . . well, it dunt work like that with dogs, see? What w– what your average dog does, basic’ly, is look up. People are mostly just a wall with-a pair of nostril holes at the top, is my point.’
‘Not a lot of help, then,’ said William. ‘Sorry we can’t do busin–‘
‘What he smells like, now, that’s somethin’ else,’ said the voice of Deep Bone, hurriedly.
‘All right, tell me what he smells like.’
‘Do I see a pile of cash in front of me? I don’t think so.’
‘Well, Mr Bone, I’m not even going to think about getting that kind of money together until I’ve got some proof that you really know something.’
‘All right,’ said the voice from the shadows after a while. ‘You know there’s a Committee to Unelect the Patrician? Now that’s news.’
‘What’s new about that? People have plotted to get rid of him for years.’
There was another pause.
‘Y’know,’ said Deep Bone, ‘it’d save a lot of trouble if you just gave me the money and I told you everything.’
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‘So far you haven’t told me anything. Tell me everything, and then I’ll pay you, if it’s the truth.’
‘Oh, yes, pull one of the others, it’s got bells on!’
Then it looks like we can’t do business,’ said William, putting his notebook away.
‘Wait, wait . . . this’ll do. You ask Vimes what Vetinari did just before the attack.’
‘Why, what did he do?’
‘See if you can find out.’
That’s not a lot to go on.’
There was no reply. William thought he heard a shuffling noise.
‘Hello?’
He waited a moment and then very carefully stepped forward.
In the gloom a few horses turned to look at him. Of an invisible informant there was no sign.
A lot of thoughts jostled for space in his mind as he headed out into the daylight, but surprisingly enough it was a small and theoretically unimportant one that kept oozing into centre stage. What kind of expression was ‘pull one of the others, it’s got bells on’? Now, ‘pull the other one, it’s got bells on’, he’d heard of – it stemmed from the days of a crueller than usual ruler in Ankh-Morpork who had had any Morris dancers ritually tortured. But ‘one of the others’ . . . where was the sense in that?
Then it struck him.
Deep Bone must be a foreigner. It made sense. It was like the way Otto spoke perfectly good Morporkian but hadn’t got the hang of colloquialisms.
He made a note of this.
He smelled the smoke at the same time as he heard the pottery clatter of golem feet. Four of the clay people thudded past him, carrying a long ladder. Without thinking he fell in behind, automatically turning to a new page in his notebook.
Fire was always the terror in those parts of the city where wood and thatch predominated. That was why everyone had been so dead set against any form of fire brigade, reasoning -with impeccable Ankh-Morpork logic – that any bunch of men who were paid to put out fires would naturally see to
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it that there was a plentiful supply of fires to put out.
Golems were different. They were patient, hard-working, intensely logical, virtually indestructible and they volunteered. Everyone knew golems couldn’t harm people.
There was some mystery about how the golem fire brigade had got formed. Some said the idea had come from the Watch, but the generally held theory was that golems simply would not allow people and property to be destroyed. With eerie discipline and no apparent communication they would converge on a fire from all sides, rescue any trapped people, secure and carefully pile up all portable property, form a bucket chain along which the buckets moved at a blur, trample every last ember . . . and then hurry back to their abandoned tasks.