Men at Arms (Discworld 15)

'Couldn't say, sir.'

Vimes minutely examined the wall. He wished Carrot was here. The lad might be simple, but he was so simple that sometimes he saw things that the subtle missed. And he kept coming up with simple ideas that stuck in your mind. Policeman, for example. He'd said to Vimes one day, while they were proceeding along the Street of Small Gods: Do you know where 'policeman' comes from, sir? Vimes hadn't. 'Polis' used to mean 'city', said Carrot. That's what policeman means: 'a man for the city'. Not many people know that. The word 'polite comes from 'polis', too. It used to mean the ptoper behaviour from someone living in a city.

Man of the city . . . Carrot was always throwing out stuff like that. Like 'copper'. Vimes had believed all his life that the Watch were called coppers because they carried copper badges, but no, said Carrot, it comes from the old word cappere, to capture.

Carrot read books in his spare time. Not well. He'd have real difficulty if you cut his index finger off. But continuously. And he wandered around Ankh-Morpork on his day off.

'Captain Vimes?'

Vimes blinked.

'Sir?'

'You have no concept of the delicate balance of the dry. I'll tell you one more time. This business with the Assassins and the dwarf and this clown . . . you are to cease involving yourself.'

'No, sir. I can't.'

'Give me your badge.'

Vimes looked down at his badge.

He never really thought about it. It was just something he'd always had. It didn't mean anything very much . . . really . . . one way or the other. It was just something he'd always had.

'My badge?'

'And your sword.'

Slowly, with fingers that suddenly felt like bananas, and bananas that didn't belong to him at that, Vimes undid his sword belt.

'And your badge.'

'Um. Not my badge.'

Why not?'

'Um. Because it's my badge.'

'But you're resigning anyway when you get married.'

'Right.'

Their eyes met.

'How much does it mean to you?'

Vimes stared. He couldn't find the right words. It was just that he'd always been a man with a badge. He wasn't sure he could be one without the other.

laid the papers down and put the piece of metal on top of them.

Then he reached in his pocket and produced a couple of metal pellets.

A stick, the gargoyle had said.

Vimes looked at the sketch. It looked, as Cuddy had noted, like the stock of a crossbow with a pipe on the top of it. There were a few sketches of strange mechanical devices alongside it, and a couple of the little six-pipe things. The whole drawing looked like a doodle. Someone, possibly this Leonard, had been reading a book about fireworks and had scribbled in the margins.

Fireworks.

Well. . . fireworks? But fireworks weren't a weapon. Crackers went bang. Rockets went up, more or less, but all you could be sure of them hitting was the sky.