Men at Arms (Discworld 15)

'Cumbling Michael, I need a nail and a length of string,' said Carrot, very slowly and carefully. His eyes never left the speck of metal. It was almost as if he expected it to do something.

'I don't think—' the beggar began.

Carrot reached out without turning his head and picked him up by his grubby collar without apparent effort.

'A length of string,' he repeated, 'and a nail.'

'Yes, Corporal Carrot.'

'And the rest of you, go away,' said Angua.

They goggled at her.

'Do it!' she shouted, clenching her fists. 'And stop staring at her!'

The beggars vanished.

'It'll take a while to get the string,' said Carrot, brushing aside some glass. 'They'll have to beg it off someone, you see.'

He drew his knife and started digging at the floorboards, with care. Eventually he excavated a metal slug, flattened slightly by its passage through the window, the mirror, the floorboards and certain parts of the late Lettice Knibbs that had never been designed to see daylight.

He turned it over and over in his hand.

'Angua?'

'Yes?'

'How did you know there was someone dead in here?'

'I . . . just had a feeling.'

The beggars returned, so unnerved that half a dozen of them were trying to carry one piece of string.

Carrot hammered the nail into the frame under the smashed pane to hold one end of the string. He stuck his knife in the groove and affixed the other end of the string to it. Then he lay down and sighted up the string.

'Good grief.' 'What is it?'

'It must have come from the roof of the opera house.' 'Yes? So?'

'That's more than two hundred yards away.' 'Yes?'

'The . . . thing went an inch into an oak floor.'

'Did you know the girl . . . at all?' said Angua, and felt embarrassed at asking.

'Not really.'

'I thought you knew everyone.'

'She was just someone I'd see around. The city's full of people who you just see around.'

'Why do beggars need servants?'

'You don't think my hair gets like this by itself, dear, do you?'

There was an apparition in the doorway. Its face was a mass of sores. There were warts, and they had warts, and they had hair on. It was possibly female, but it was hard to tell under the layers and layers of rags. The aforementioned hair looked as though it had been permed by a hurricane. With treacle on its fingers.

Then it straightened up.