Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

“Yes. ”

“He didn't have to join?”

"He wanted to join. And you said it must be a joke, and I said we ought to try and get more ethnic minorities into the Watch. You remember?''

Vimes tried to. It wasn't easy. He was vaguely aware that he drank to forget. What made it rather pointless was that he couldn't remember what it was he was forgetting any more. In the end he just drank to forget about drinking.

A trawl of the chaotic assortment of recollections that he didn't even try to dignify any more by the name of memory produced no clue.

“Do I?” he said helplessly.

Wonse folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward.

“Now look, Captain, ” he said. “Lordship wants an explanation. I don't want to have to tell him the captain of the Night Watch hasn't the faintest idea what goes on among the men under, if I may use the term loosely, his command. That sort of thing only leads to trouble, questions asked, that sort of thing. We don't want that, do we. Do we?”

“No, sir, ” Vimes muttered. A vague recollection of someone earnestly talking to him in the Bunch of Grapes was bobbing guiltily at the back of his mind. Surely that hadn't been a dwarf? Not unless the qualification had been radically altered, at any rate.

“Of course we don't, ” said Wonse. “For old times' sake. And so on. So I'll think of something to tell him and you, Captain, will make a point of finding out what's going on and putting a stop to it. Give this dwarf a short lesson in what it means to be a guard, all right?”

“Haha, ” said Vimes dutifully.

“I'm sorry?” said Wonse.

“Oh. Thought you made an ethnic joke, there. Sir. ”

“Look, Vimes, I'm being very understanding. In the circumstances. Now, I want you to get out there and sort this out. Do you understand?”

Vimes saluted. The black depression that always lurked ready to take advantage of his sobriety moved in on his tongue.

“Right you are, Mr Secretary, ” he said. “I'll see to it that he learns that arresting thieves is against the law. ”

He wished he hadn't said that. If he didn't say things like that he'd have been better off now. Captain of the Palace Guard, a big man. Giving him the Watch had been the Patrician's little joke. But Wonse was already reading a new document on his desk. If he noticed the sarcasm, he didn't show it.

“Very good, ” he said.

...

Dearest Mother [Carrot wrote] It has been a much better day. I went into the Thieves' Guild and arrested the chief Miscreant and dragged him to the Patrician's Palace. No more trouble from him, I fancy. And Mrs Palm says I can stay in the attic because, it is always useful to have a man around the place. This was because, in the night, there were men the Worse for Drink making a Fuss in one of the Girl's Rooms, and I had to speak to them and they Showed Fight and one of them tried to hurt me with his knee but I had the Protective and Mrs Palm says he has broken his Patella but I needn't pay for a new one.

I do not understand some of the Watch duties. I have a partner, his name is Nobby. He says I am too keen. He says I have got a lot to learn. I think this is true, because, I have only got up to Page 326 in, The Laws and Ordinances of the Cities of Ankh and Morpork. Love to all, Your Son, Carrot.

PS. Love to Minty.

...

It wasn't just the loneliness, it was the back-to-front way of living. That was it, thought Vimes.

The Night Watch got up when the rest of the world was going to bed, and went to bed when dawn drifted over the landscape. You spent your whole time in the damp, dark streets, in a world of shadows. The Night Watch attracted the kind of people who for one reason or another were inclined to that kind of life.

He reached the Watch House. It was an ancient and surprisingly large building, wedged between a tannery and a tailor who made suspicious leather goods. It must have been quite imposing once, but quite a lot of it was now uninhabitable and patrolled only by owls and rats. Over the door a motto in the ancient tongue of the city was now almost eroded by time and grime and lichen, but could just be made out:

FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC

It translated-according to Sergeant Colon, who had served in foreign parts and considered himself an expert on languages-as 'To Protect and to Serve'.

Yes. Being a guard must have meant something, once.

Sergeant Colon, he thought, as he stumbled into the musty gloom. Now there was a man who liked the dark. Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.