Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

“Get your pig sausages, five for two dollars!” said Throat, who never let a conversation stand in the way of trade. “Could be good for business, could monarchy. Pig sausages! Pig sausages! Inna bun! And righting all wrongs, too. Sounds like a solid idea to me. With onions!”

“Can I press you to a hot sausage, ma'am?” said Nobby.

Lady Ramkin looked at the tray around Throat's neck. Thousands of years of good breeding came to her aid and there was only the faintest suggestion of horror in her voice when she said, “My, they look good. What splendid foodstuffs.”

“Are they made by monks on some mystic mountain?” said Carrot.

Throat gave him an odd look. “No,” he said patiently, “by pigs.”

“What wrongs?” said Vimes urgently. “Come on, tell me. What wrongs is he going to right?”

“We-ell,” said Throat, “there's, well, taxes. That's wrong, for a start.” He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. Paying taxes was something that, in Throat's world, happened only to other people.

“That's right,” said an old woman next to him. “And the gutter of my house leaks something dreadful and the landlord won't do nothing. That's wrong.”

“And premature baldness,” said the man in front of her. “That's wrong, too.” Vimes's mouth dropped open.

“Ah. Kings can cure that, you know,” said another protomonarchist knowingly.

“As a matter of fact,” said Throat, rummaging in his pack, “I've got one bottle left of this astonishing ointment what is made-” he glared at Carrot-“by some ancient monks who live on a mountain-”

“And they can't answer back, you know,” the monarchist went on. “That's how you can tell they're royal. Completely incapable of it. It's to do with being gracious.”

“Fancy,” said the leaky-guttering woman.

“Money, too,” said the monarchist, enjoying the attention. “They don't carry it. That's how you can always tell a king.”

“Why? It's not that heavy,” said the man whose remaining hair was spread across the dome of his head like the remnant of a defeated army. “I can carry hundreds of dollars, no problem.”

“You probably get weak arms, being a king,” said the woman wisely. “Probably with the waving.”

“I've always thought,” said the monarchist, pulling out a pipe and beginning to fill it with the ponderous air of one who is going to deliver a lecture, “that one of the major problems of being a king is the risk of your daughter getting a prick.”

There was a thoughtful pause.

“And falling asleep for a hundred years,” the monarchist went on stolidly.

“Ah,” said the others, unaccountably relieved.

“And then there's wear and tear on peas,” he added.

“Well, there would be,” said the woman, uncertainly.

“Having to sleep on them all the time,” said the monarchist.

“Not to mention hundreds of mattresses.”

“Right.”

“Is that so? I think I could get 'em for him wholesale,” said Throat. He turned to Vimes, who had been listening to all this with leaden depression. “See, Captain? And you'd be in the royal guard, I expect. Get some plumes in your helmet.”

“Ah, pageantry,” said the monarchist, pointing with his pipe. “Very important. Lots of spectacles.”

“What, free?” said Throat.

“We-ell, I think maybe you have to pay for the frames,” said the monarchist.

“You're all bloody mad!” shouted Vimes. “You don't know anything about him and he hasn't even won yet!”