Terry Pratchett - Discworld 28 - Night Watch

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Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about

it.

Then he put his jacket on and strolled out into the wonderful late spring morning. Birds sang in

the trees, bees buzzed in the blossom. The sky was hazy, though, and thunderheads on the horizon

threatened rain later. But, for now, the air was hot and heavy. And, in the old cesspit behind the

gardener's shed, a young man was treading water.

Well . . . treading, anyway.

Vimes stood back a little way and lit a cigar. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to employ a

naked flame any nearer to the pit. The fall from the shed roof had broken the crust.

'Good morning!' he said cheerfully.

'Good morning, your grace,' said the industrious treadler.

The voice was higher pitched than Vimes expected and he realized that, most unusually, the young

man in the pit was in fact a young woman. It wasn't entirely unexpected - the Assassins' Guild was

aware that women were at least equal to their brothers when it came to inventive killing - but it

nevertheless changed the situation somewhat.

'I don't believe we've met?' said Vimes. 'Although I see you know who I am. You are . . . ?'

'Wiggs, sir,' said the swimmer. 'Jocasta Wiggs. Honoured to meet you, your grace.'

'Wiggs, eh?' said Vimes. 'Famous family in the Guild. "Sir" will do, by the way. I think I once

broke your father's leg?'

'Yes, sir. He asked to be remembered to you,' said Jocasta.

'You're a bit young to be sent on this contract, aren't you?' said Vimes.

'Not a contract, sir,’ said Jocasta, still paddling.

'Come now, Miss Wiggs. The price on my head is at least—'

‘The Guild council put it in abeyance, sir,' said the dogged swimmer. 'You're off the register.

They're not accepting contracts on you at present.'

'Good grief, why not?'

'Couldn't say, sir,' said Miss Wiggs. Her patient struggles had brought her to the edge of the

pit, and now she was finding that the brickwork was in very good repair, quite slippery and

offered no handholds. Vimes knew this, because he'd spent several hours one afternoon carefully

arranging that this should be so.

'So why were you sent, then?'

'Miss Band sent me as an exercise,' said Jocasta. 'I say, these bricks really are jolly tricky,

aren't they?'

'Yes,' said Vimes, 'they are. Have you been rude to Miss Band lately? Upset her in any way?'

'Oh, no, your grace. But she did say I was getting overconfident, and would benefit from some

advanced field work.'

'Ah. I see.' Vimes tried to recall Miss Alice Band, one of the Assassins' Guild's stricter

teachers. She was, he'd heard, very hot on practical lessons.

'So . . . she sent you to kill me, then?' he said.

'No, sir! It's an exercise! I don't even have any crossbow bolts! I just had to find a spot where

I could get you in my sights and then report back!'

'She'd believe you?'

'Of course, sir,' said Jocasta, looking rather hurt. 'Guild honour, sir.'

Vimes took a deep breath. 'You see, Miss Wiggs, quite a few of your chums have tried to kill me at

home in recent years. As you might expect, I take a dim view of this.'

'Easy to see why, sir,' said Jocasta, in the voice of one who knows that their only hope of

escaping from their present predicament is reliant on the goodwill of another person who has no

pressing reason to have any.

'And so you'd be amazed at the booby traps there are around the place,’ Vimes went on. 'Some of

them are pretty cunning, even if I say it myself.'

'I certainly never expected the tiles on the shed to shift like that, sir.'

‘They're on greased rails,’ said Vimes.

'Well done, sir!'

'And quite a few of the traps drop you into something deadly,’ said Vimes.

'Lucky for me that I fell into this one, eh, sir?'

'Oh, that one's deadly too,' said Vimes. 'Eventually deadly.' He sighed. He really wanted to

discourage this sort of thing but. . . they'd put him off the register? It wasn't that he'd liked

being shot at by hooded figures in the temporary employ of his many and varied enemies, but he'd

always looked at it as some kind of vote of confidence. It showed that he was annoying the rich

and arrogant people who ought to be annoyed.

Besides, the Assassins' Guild was easy to outwit. They had strict rules, which they followed quite

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honourably, and this was fine by Vimes, who, in certain practical areas, had no rules whatsoever.

Off the register, eh? The only other person not on it any more, it was rumoured, was Lord

Vetinari, the Patrician. The Assassins understood the political game in the city better than

anyone, and if they took you off the register it was because they felt your departure would not

only spoil the game but also smash the board ...

'I'd be jolly grateful if you could pull me out, sir,’ said Jocasta.

'What? Oh, yes. Sorry, got clean clothes on,’ said Vimes. 'But when I get back to the house I'll

tell the butler to come down here with a ladder. How about that?'

'Thank you very much, sir. Nice to have met you, sir.'

Vimes strolled back to the house. Off the register? Was he allowed to appeal? Perhaps they

thought—

The scent rolled over him.

He looked up.

Overhead, a lilac tree was in bloom.

He stared.

Damn! Damn! Damn! Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away,

like old silverware that you didn't want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and

sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today, of all days . . .

He reached up, and his hand trembled as he grasped a bloom and gently broke the stem. He sniffed

at it. He stood for a moment, staring at nothing. And then he carried the sprig of lilac carefully

back up to his dressing room.

Willikins had prepared the official uniform for today. Sam Vimes stared at it blankly, and then

remembered. Watch Committee. Right. The battered old breastplate wouldn't do, would it... Not for

His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander of the City Watch, Sir Samuel Vimes. Lord Vetinari had been

very definite about that, blast it.

Blast it all the more because, unfortunately, Sam Vimes could see the point. He hated the official

uniform, but he represented a bit more than just himself these days. Sam Vimes had been able to

turn up for meetings with grubby armour, and even Sir Samuel Vimes could generally contrive to

find a way to stay in street uniform at all times, but a Duke . . . well, a Duke needed a bit of

polish. A Duke couldn't have the arse hanging out of his trousers when meeting foreign diplomats.

Actually, even plain old Sam Vimes never had the arse hanging out of his trousers, either, but no

one would have actually started a war if he had.

The plain old Sam Vimes had fought back. He got rid of most of the plumes and the stupid tights,

and ended up with a dress uniform that at least looked as though its owner was male. But the

helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armourers had made a new, gleaming breastplate with

useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He

hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armour. It was gilt by

association.

He twirled the sprig of lilac in his fingers, and smelled again the heady smell. Yes ... it hadn't

always been like this ...

Someone had just spoken to him. He looked up.

'What?' he barked.

'I enquired if her ladyship is well, your grace?' said the butler, looking startled. 'Are you

feeling all right, your grace?'

'What? Oh, yes. No. I'm fine. So is her ladyship, yes, thank you. I popped in before I went

outside. Mrs Content is with her. She says it won't be for a while.'

'I have advised the kitchen to have plenty of hot water ready, your grace, nevertheless,' said

Willikins, helping Vimes on with the gilty breastplate.

'Yes. Why do they need all that water, do you think?'

'I couldn't say, your grace,’ said Willikins. 'Probably best not to enquire.'

Vimes nodded. Sybil had already made it quite clear, with gentle tact, that he was not required on

this particular case. It had been, he had to admit, a bit of a relief.

He handed Willikins the sprig of lilac. The butler took it without comment, inserted it into a

little silver tube of water that would keep it fresh for hours, and fixed it on to one of the

breastplate straps.

‘Time moves on, doesn't it, your grace,' he said, dusting him down with a small brush.

Vimes took out his watch. 'It certainly does. Look, I'll drop in at the Yard on my way to the

palace, sign what needs signing, and I'll be back as soon as possible, all right?'

Willikins gave him a look of almost unbutlery concern. 'I'm sure her ladyship will be fine, your

grace,' he said. 'Of course she is not, not—'

'—young,' said Vimes.

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'I would say she is richer in years than many other primi-gravidae,’ said Willikins smoothly. 'But

she is a well-built lady, if you don't mind me saying so, and her family have traditionally had

very little trouble in the childbirth department—'

‘Trimi what?'

'New mothers, your grace. I'm sure her ladyship would much rather know that you were running after

miscreants than wearing a hole in the library carpet.'

'I expect you're right, Willikins. Er . . . oh, yes, there's a young lady dogpaddling in the old

cesspit, Willikins.'

'Very good, your grace. I shall send the kitchen boy down there with a ladder directly. And a

message to the Assassins' Guild?'

'Good idea. She'll need clean clothes and a bath.'

'I think, perhaps, the hose in the old scullery might be more appropriate, your grace? To start

with, at least?'

'Good point. See to it. And now I must be off.'

In the crowded main office of the Pseudopolis Yard Watch House, Sergeant Colon absent-mindedly

adjusted the sprig of lilac that he'd stuck into his helmet like a plume.

‘They go very strange, Nobby,' he said, leafing listlessly through the morning's paperwork. 'It's

a copper thing. Happened to me when I had kids. You get tough.'

'What do you mean, tough?' said Corporal Nobbs, possibly the best living demonstration that there

was some smooth evolution between humans and animals.

'We-ell,' said Colon, leaning back in his chair. 'It's like . . . well, when you're our age . . .'

He looked at Nobby, and hesitated. Nobby had been giving his age as 'probably 34' for years; the

Nobbs family were not good at keeping count.

'I mean, when a man reaches ... a certain age,' he tried again, 'he knows the world is never going

to be perfect. He's got used to it being a bit, a bit . . .'

'Manky?' Nobby suggested. Tucked behind his ear, in the place usually reserved for his cigarette,

was another wilting lilac flower.

'Exactly,’ said Colon. 'Like, it's never going to be perfect, so you just do the best you can,

right? But when there's a kid on the way, well, suddenly a man sees it different. He thinks: my

kid's going to have to grow up in this mess. Time to clean it up. Time to make it a Better World.

He gets a bit ... keen. Full of ginger. When he hears about Stronginthearm it's going to be very

hot around here for— 'morning, Mister Vimes!'

'Talking about me, eh?' said Vimes, striding past them as they jerked to attention. He had not in

fact heard any of the conversation, but Sergeant Colon's face could be read like a book and Vimes

had learned it by heart years ago.

'Just wondering if the happy event—' Colon began, trailing after Vimes as he took the stairs two

at a time.

'It hasn't,' said Vimes shortly. He pushed open the door to his office, "morning, Carrot!'

Captain Carrot sprang to his feet and saluted. ' 'morning, sir! Has Lady—'

'No, Carrot. She has not. What's been happening overnight?'

Carrot's gaze went to the sprig of lilac, and back to Vimes's face. 'Nothing good, sir,’ he said.

'Another officer killed.'

Vimes stopped dead. 'Who?' he demanded.

'Sergeant Stronginthearm, sir. Killed in Treacle Mine Road. Carcer again.'

Vimes glanced at his watch. They had ten minutes to get to the palace. But time suddenly wasn't

important any more.

He sat down at his desk. 'Witnesses?'

'Three this time, sir.’

‘That many?'

'All dwarfs. Stronginthearm wasn't even on duty, sir. He'd signed off and was picking up a rat pie

and chips from a shop and walked out straight into Carcer. The devil stabbed him in the neck and

ran for it. He must've thought we'd found him.’

'We've been looking for the man for weeksl And he bumped into poor old Stronginthearm when all the

dwarf was thinking of was his breakfast? Is Angua on the trail?'

'Up to a point, sir,’ said Carrot awkwardly.

'Why only up to a point?'

'He - well, we assume it was Carcer - dropped an aniseed bomb in Sator Square. Almost pure oil.'

Vimes sighed. It was amazing how people adapted. The Watch had a werewolf. That news had got

around, in an underground kind of way. And so the criminals had evolved to survive in a society

where the law had a very sensitive nose. Scent bombs were the solution. They didn't have to be

that dramatic. You just dropped a little flask of pure peppermint or aniseed in the street where a

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lot of people would walk over it, and suddenly Sergeant Angua was facing a hundred, a thousand

criss-crossing trails, and went to bed with a terrible headache.

He listened glumly as Carrot reported on men brought off leave or put on double shift, on

informers pumped, pigeons stooled, grasses rustled, fingers held to the wind, ears put on the

street. And he knew how little it all added up to. They still had fewer than a hundred men in the

Watch, and that was including the canteen lady. There were a million people in the city, and a

billion places to hide. Ankh-Morpork was built of bolt-holes. Besides, Carcer was a nightmare.

Vimes was used to the other kinds of nut jobs, the ones that acted quite normally right up to the

point where they hauled off and smashed someone with a poker for blowing their nose noisily. But

Carcer was different. He was in two minds, but instead of them being in conflict, they were in

competition. He had a demon on both shoulders, urging one another on.

And yet... he smiled all the time, in a cheerful chirpy sort of way, and he acted like the kind of

rascal who made a dodgy living selling gold watches that go green after a week. And he appeared to

be convinced, utterly convinced, that he never did anything really wrong. He'd stand there amid

the carnage, blood on his hands and stolen jewellery in his pocket, and with an expression of

injured innocence declare, 'Me? What did I do?'

And it was believable right up until you looked hard into those cheeky, smiling eyes, and saw,

deep down, the demons looking back.

. . . but you mustn't spend too much time looking at those eyes, because that'd mean you'd taken

your eyes off his hands, and by now one of them held a knife.

It was hard for the average copper to deal with people like that. They expected people, when

heavily outnumbered, to give in or try to deal or at least just stop moving. They didn't expect

people to kill for a five-dollar watch. (A hundred dollar watch, now, that'd be different. This

was Ankh-Morpork, after all.)

'Was Stronginthearm married?' he said.

'No, sir. Lived in New Cobblers with his parents.'

Parents, thought Vimes. That made it worse.

'Anyone been to tell them?' he asked. 'And don't say it was Nobby. We don't want any repeat of

that "bet you a dollar you're the widow Jackson" nonsense.'

'I went, sir. As soon as we got the news.'

‘Thank you. They took it badly?'

‘They took it ... solemnly, sir.'

Vimes groaned. He could imagine the expressions.

‘I’ll write them the official letter,' he said, pulling open his desk. 'Get someone to take it

round, will you? And say I'll be over later. Perhaps this isn't the time to—' No, hold on, they

were dwarfs, dwarfs weren't bashful about money. 'Forget that - say we'll have all the details of

his pension and so on. Died on duty, too. Well, near enough. That's extra. It all adds up.' He

rummaged in his cupboards. 'Where's his file?'

'Here, sir,' said Carrot, handing it over smoothly. 'We are due at the palace at ten, sir. Watch

Committee. But I'm sure they'll understand,' he added, seeing Vimes's face. ‘I’ll go and clean out

Stronginthearm's locker, sir, and I expect the lads'll have a whip-round for flowers and

everything . . .'

Vimes pondered over a sheet of headed paper after the captain had gone. A file, he had to refer to

a damn file. But there were so many coppers these days . . .

A whip-round for flowers. And a coffin. You look after your own. Sergeant Dickins had said that, a

long time ago . . .

He wasn't good with words, least of all ones written down, but after a few glances at the file to

refresh his memory he wrote down the best he could think of.

And they were all good words and, more or less, they were the right ones. But in truth

Stronginthearm was just a decent dwarf who'd been paid to be a copper. He'd joined up because,

these days, joining the Watch was quite a good choice of career. The pay wasn't bad, there was a

worthwhile pension, there was a wonderful medical scheme if you had the nerve to submit to Igor's

ministrations in the cellar and, after a year or so, an Ankh-Morpork trained copper could leave

the city and get a job in the Watches of the other cities on the plain with instant promotion.

That was happening all the time. Sammies, they were called, even in towns that had never heard of

Sam Vimes. He was just a little proud of that. 'Sammies' meant watchmen who could think without

their lips moving, who didn't take bribes - much, and then only at the level of beer and

doughnuts, which even Vimes recognized as the grease that helps the wheels run smoothly - and

were, on the whole, trustworthy. For a given value of 'trust', at least.

The sound of running feet indicated that Sergeant Detritus was bringing some of the latest

trainees back from their morning run. He could hear the jody Detritus had taught them. Somehow,

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you could tell it was made up by a troll:

'Now we sing dis stupid song!

Sing it as we run along!

Why we sing dis we don't know!

We can't make der words rhyme prop'ly!'

'Sound off!'

'One! Two!' 'Sound off!'

'Many! Lots!' 'Sound off.'

'Er . . . what?'

It still irked Vimes that the little training school in the old lemonade factory was turning out

so many coppers who quit the city the moment their probation was up. But it had its advantages.

There were Sammies almost as far as Uberwald now, all speeding up the local promotion ladder. It

helped, knowing names, and knowing that those names had been taught to salute him. The ebb and

flow of politics often meant that the local rulers weren't talking to one another, but via the

semaphore towers, the Sammies talked all the time.

He realized he was humming a different song under his breath. It was a tune he'd forgotten for

years. It went with the lilac, scent and song together. He stopped, feeling guilty.

He was finishing the letter when there was a knock at the door.

'Nearly done!' he shouted.

'It'th me, thur,' said Constable Igor, pushing his head round the door, and then he added, 'Igor,

sir.'

'Yes, Igor?' said Vimes, wondering not for the first time why anyone with stitches all round his

head needed to tell anyone who he was.*

* The Igor employed by the Watch as forensic specialist and medical aide was quite young (in so

far as you could tell with an Igor, since useful limbs and other organs were passed on among Igors

as others might hand on a pocket watch) and very modern in his thinking. He had a DA haircut with

extended quiff, wore crepe soles and sometimes forgot to lisp.

'I would just like to thay, sir, that I could have got young Thtronginthearm back on his feet,

thur,' said Igor, a shade reproachfully.

Vimes sighed. Igor's face was full of concern, tinged with disappointment. He had been prevented

from plying his ... craft. He was naturally disappointed.

'We've been through this, Igor. It's not like sewing a leg back on. And dwarfs are dead set

against that sort of thing.'

‘There's nothing thupernatural about it, thur. I am a man of Natural Philothophy! And he was still

warm when they brought him in—'

‘Those are the rules, Igor. Thanks all the same. We know your heart is in the right place—'

'They are in the right places, sir,' said Igor reproachfully.

‘That's what I meant,' Vimes said, without missing a beat, just as Igor never did.

'Oh, very well, sir,’ said Igor, giving up. He paused, and then said: 'How is her ladyship, sir?'

Vimes had been expecting this. It was a terrible thing for a mind to do, but his had already

presented him with the idea of Igor and Sybil in the same sentence. Not that he disliked Igor.

Quite the reverse. There were watchmen walking around the streets right now who wouldn't have legs

if it wasn't for Igor's genius with a needle. But—

‘Fine. She's fine,' he said abruptly.

'Only I heard that Mrs Content was a bit worr—'

'Igor, there are some areas where . . . Look, do you know anything about. . . women and babies?'

'Not in so many wordth, sir, but I find that once I've got someone on the slab and had a good, you

know, rummage around, I can thort out most thingth—'

Vimes's imagination actually shut down at this point.

‘Thank you, Igor,' he managed, without his voice trembling, 'but Mrs Content is a very experienced

midwife.'

'Jutht as you say, sir,' said Igor, but doubt rode on the words.

'And now I've got to go,’ said Vimes. 'It's going to be a long day.'

He ran down the stairs, tossed the letter to Sergeant Colon, nodded to Carrot and they set off at

a fast walk for the palace.

After the door had shut one of the watchmen looked up from the desk where he'd been wrestling with

a report and the effort of writing down, as policemen do, what ought to have happened.

'Sarge?'

'Yes, Corporal Ping?'

'Why're some of you wearing purple flowers, sarge?'

There was a subtle change in the atmosphere, a suction of sound caused by many pairs of ears

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