“Thirty feet.” Colon nodded slowly. “That's what I'd reckon. And it's deep, is it?”
“Very deep, I've heard.”
“I'll take your word for it. It looks pretty mucky. I'd hate to have to jump in it.”
Carrot slapped him cheerfully on the back, nearly pushing him over, and said, “What's up, Sarge? Do you want to live for ever?”
“Dunno. Ask me again in five hundred years.”
“It's a good job we've got your lucky arrow, then!” said Carrot.
“Hmm?” said Colon, who seemed to be in a miserable daydream world of his own.
“I mean, it's a good job we've got a last desperate million-to-one chance to rely on, or we'd really be in trouble!” “Oh, yes,” said Nobby sadly. “Lucky old us.”
The Patrician lay back. A couple of rats dragged a cushion under his head.
“Things are rather bad outside, I gather,” he said.
“Yes,” said Vimes bitterly. “You're right. You're the safest man in the city.”
He wedged another knife in a crack in the stones and tested his weight carefully, while Lord Vetinari looked on with interest. He'd managed to get six feet off the floor and up to a level with the grille.
Now he started to hack at the mortar around the bars.
...
The Patrician watched him for a while, and then took a book off the little shelf beside him. Since the rats couldn't read the library he'd been able to assemble was a little baroque, but he was not a man to ignore fresh knowledge. He found his bookmark in the pages of Lacemaking Through the Ages, and read a few pages.
After a while he found it necessary to brush a few crumbs of mortar off the book, and looked up.
“Are you achieving success?” he inquired politely.
Vimes gritted his teeth and hacked away. Outside the little grille was a grubby courtyard, barely lighter than the cell. There was a midden in one corner, but currently it looked very attractive. More attractive than the dungeon, at any rate. An honest midden was preferable to the way Ankh-Morpork was going these days. It was probably allegorical, or something.
He stabbed, stabbed, stabbed. The knife blade twanged and shook in his hand.
...
The Librarian scratched his armpits thoughtfully. He was facing problems of his own.
He had come here full of rage against book thieves and that rage still burned. But the seditious thought had occurred to him that, although crimes against books were the worst kind of crimes, revenge ought, perhaps, to be postponed.
It occurred to him that, while of course what humans chose to do to one another was all one to him, there were certain activities that should be curtailed in case the perpetrators got over-confident and started doing things like that to books, too.
The Librarian stared at his badge again, and gave it a gentle nibble in the optimistic hope that it had become edible. No doubt about it, he had a Duty to the captain.
The captain had always been kind to him. And the captain had a badge, too.
Yes.
There were times when an ape had to do what a man had to do ...
The orangutan threw a complex salute and swung away into the darkness.
...
The sun rose higher, rolling through the mists and stale smoke like a lost balloon.