“I did, too,” said Stratford. “And he was a copper and you’re just a butler.”
“Very true,” said Willikins, “and much older than you and heavier than you and slower than you, but still a bit spry. What’ve you got to lose?”
Only the horse, steaming patiently in the mist, saw what happened next, and being a horse was in no position to articulate its thoughts on the matter. Had it been able to do so it would have given as its opinion that one human ran toward another human carrying a huge metal stick while the other human quite calmly put his hand into his breast pocket. This was followed by a terrible scream, a gurgling noise and then silence.
Willikins staggered to the side of the road and sat down on a stone, panting a little. Stratford certainly had been fast, no doubt about that. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, staring at nothing but the fog. Then he stood up, looked down at the shadow on the ground and said, “But not fast enough.” Then, like a good citizen, Willikins went back to see he if he could help the unlucky gentlemen of the law, who appeared to be in difficulties. You should always help the gentlemen of the law. Where would we be without them?
The chief sub-editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times really hated poetry. He was a plain man and had devoted a large part of his career to keeping it out of his paper. But they were a cunning bunch, poets, and could sneak it up on you when your back was turned. And tonight, with the paper already so late that the lads downstairs were into overtime, he stared at the report just delivered by hand from Knatchbull Harrington, the paper’s music critic. A man of whom he was deeply suspicious. He turned to his deputy and waved the page angrily. “ ‘Whence came it, that ethereal music?’ See what I mean? What’s wrong with ‘Where did that music come from’? Bloody stupid introductory sentence in any case. And what does ethereal mean, anyway?”
The deputy sub hesitated. “I think it means runny. Could be wrong.”
The chief sub-editor stood in misery. “Definitely poetry!”
Somebody had played some music that was very good. Apparently it made everybody amazed. Why didn’t that twit in his rather feminine purple silk shirts just write something like that? After all, it said everything that you needed to know, didn’t it? He took out his red pencil, and just as he was applying it to the wretched manuscript there was a sound on the metal staircase and Mr. de Worde, the editor, staggered into the office, looking as if he had seen a ghost or, perhaps, a ghost had seen him.
He looked groggily at the two puzzled men and managed to say, “Did Harrington send in his stuff?”
The chief sub held out the offending stuff in front of him. “Yes, guv, a load of rubbish in my opinion.”
De Worde grabbed it, read it with his lips moving and thrust it back at the man. “Don’t you dare change a single word. Front page, Bugsy, and I hope to hell that Otto got an iconograph.”
“Yessir, but, sir—”
“And don’t bloody argue!” screamed De Worde. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in my office.”
He clattered on up the stairs while the sub-editor and his deputy stood gloomily reading Knatchbull Harrington’s copy again. It began:
Whence came it, that ethereal music, from what hidden grot or secret cell? From what dark cave? From what window into paradise? We watched the tiny figure under the spotlight and the music poured over us, sometimes soothing, sometimes blessing, sometimes accusing. Every one of us confronting ghosts, demons and old memories. The recital by Tears of the Mushroom, a young lady of the goblin persuasion, took but half an hour or, perhaps, it took a lifetime, and then it was over, to a silence which spread and grew and expanded until at last it exploded. Every single patron standing and clapping their hands raw, tears running down our faces. We had been taken somewhere and brought back and we were different people, longing for another journey into paradise, no matter what hell we had to atone for on the way.
The chief sub and his deputy looked at each other with what Knatchbull would certainly have called a “wild surmise.” At last, the deputy sub-editor ventured, “I think he liked it.”
Three days passed. They were busy days for Vimes. He had to get back into the swing again, although, to tell the truth, it was a case of getting out of one swing and into another one, while they were both swinging. So much paperwork to read! So much paperwork to push away! So much paperwork to delegate! So much paperwork to pretend he hadn’t received and that might have been eaten by the gargoyles.
But today, in the Oblong Office, Lord Vetinari was close to ranting. Admittedly you needed to know him very well to realize this. He drummed his fingers on the table. “Snarkenfaugister? I’m sure she makes these things up!”
Drumknott carefully put a cup of coffee on his master’s desk. “Alas, sir, there really is such a word. In Nothingfjord it means a maker of small but necessary items such as, for example, spills and very small clothes pegs for indoor use and half-sized cocktail sticks for people who don’t drink long drinks. The term could be considered of historical interest, because my research this morning turned up the fact that the last known snarkenfaugister died twenty-seven years ago in a freak pencil-sharpener accident. As a matter of fact, I gather that your crossword adversary herself does actually come from Nothingfjord.”
“Ah! There you have it! All those long winters sitting around the stove! Such terrible patience! But she runs the pet shop in Pellicool Steps! Dog collars! Cat biscuits! Mealworms! Such deviousness! Such subterfuge! Such a vocabulary! Snarkenfaugister!”
“Well, sir, she is now the chief crossword compiler for the Times, and I suppose those things go with the territory.”
Lord Vetinari calmed down. “One down, one across. She has won and I am cross. And, as you know, I am very rarely cross, Drumknott. A calm if cynical detachment is generally my forte. I can change the fate of nations but am thwarted at every turn by an apparently blameless lady who compiles crosswords!”
Drumknott nodded. “Indeed, sir, but on that note, if you will permit me to extend that note a little, may I remind you that Commander Vimes is waiting in the other room.”
“Indeed? Show him in, by all means.”
Vimes marched in, saluted very nearly smartly, and stood to attention.
“Ah, your grace, it is good to see you back at last. How went your holidays, apart from lawless actions, ad hoc activities, fights, chases on both land and sea and indeed freshwater, unauthorized expenditure and, of course, farting in the halls of the mighty?”
Vimes’s gaze was steady and just above the Patrician’s eye line. “Point of detail, my lord: didn’t fart, may have picked nose inadvertently.”
“The exigencies of the service, I assume?” said Lord Vetinari wryly. “Vimes, you have caused a considerable amount of paperwork to cross my desk in the last few days. In some cases the writers wanted your head on a plate, others were more circumspect because the writers were in mortal dread of a prison cell. Can
I make one thing perfectly clear, your grace, the law cannot operate retrospectively. If it did, none of us would be safe.
“Lord Rust junior may have done, indeed has done many bad things, but making slaves of goblins under current law cannot be one of them. However, as I suspect, the recent revelations about his additional activities have done his reputation a considerable amount of no good. You might not know this, Vimes, but in society this sort of thing can be worse than a prison sentence, possibly worse than a death. Young Gravid is a man with not many friends right now. I hope that will give you some pleasure.”