'Three years!' he said. 'Three years and no one bothered! Three bloody years and not so much as a knock at the door! And he'll ask me! Oh, yes! He'll be nice about it! He'll probably even go and get the extra forms so I won't be put to the trouble! Why couldn't you buggers have just run away?'
Vimes peered around the shadowy, musty room. The voice might as well have come from a tomb.
A panicky look crossed the face of the little Herald. 'Perhaps Sir Samuel would be kind enough to step this way?' said the voice. It was chilly, clipping every syllable with precision. It was the kind of voice that didn't blink.
'That is, in fact, er ... Dragon/ said Red Crescent.
Vimes reached for his sword.
'Dragon King of Arms,' said the man.
'King of Arms?' said Vimes.
'Merely a title,' said the voice. 'Pray enter.'
For some reason the words re-spelled themselves in Vimes's hindbrain as 'prey, enter'.
'King of Arms,' said the voice of Dragon, as Vimes passed into the shadows of the inner sanctum. 'You will not need your sword, Commander. I have been Dragon King of Arms for more than five hundred years but I do not breathe fire, I assure you. Ah-ha. Ah-ha.'
'Ah-ha,' said Vimes. He couldn't see the figure clearly. The light came from a few high and grubby windows, and several dozen candles that burned with black-edged flames. There was a suggestion of hunched shoulders in the shape before him.
'Pray be seated,' said Dragon King of Arms. 'And I would be most indebted if you would look to your left and raise your chin.'
'And expose my neck, you mean?' said Vimes.
'Ah-ha. Ah-ha.'
The figure picked up a candelabrum and moved closer. A hand so skinny as to be skeletal gripped Vimes's chin and moved it gently this way and that.
'Ah, yes. You have the Vimes profile, certainly. But not the Vimes ears. Of course, your maternal grandmother was a Clamp. Ah-ha...'
The Vimes hand gripped the Vimes sword again. There was only one type of person that had that much strength in a body so apparently frail.
'I thought so! You are a vampire!' he said. 'You're a bloody vampire.'
'Ah-ha.' It might have been a laugh. It might have been a cough. 'Yes. Vampire, indeed. Yes, I've heard about your views on vampires. Not really alive but not dead enough, I believe you have said. I think that is rather clever. Ah-ha. Vampire, yes. Bloody, no. Black puddings, yes. The acme of the butcher's art, yes. And if all else fails there are plenty of kosher butchers down in Long Hogmeat. Ah-ha, yes. We all live in the best way we can. Ah-ha. Virgins are safe from me. Ah-ha. For several hundred years, more's the pity. Ah-ha.'
The shape, and the pool of candlelight, moved away.
'I'm afraid your time has been needlessly wasted, Commander Vimes.' Vimes's eyes were growing accustomed to the flickering light. The room was full of books, in piles. None of them were on shelves. Each one sprouted bookmarks like squashed fingers.
'I don't understand,' he said. Either Dragon King of Arms had very hunched shoulders or there were wings under his shapeless robe. Some of them could fly like a bat, Vimes recalled. He wondered how old this one was. They could 'live' almost forever...
'I believe you're here because it is considered, ah-ha, appropriate that you have a coat of arms. I am afraid that this is not possible. Ah-ha. A Vimes coat of arms has existed, but it cannot be resurrected. It would be against the rules.'
'What rules?'
There was a thump as a book was taken down and opened.
'I'm sure you know your ancestry, Commander. Your father was Thomas Vimes, his father was Gwilliam Vimes - '
'It's Old Stoneface, isn't it,' said Vimes flatly. 'It's something to do with Old Stoneface.'
'Indeed. Ah-ha. Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes. Your ancestor. Old Stoneface, indeed, as he was called. Commander of the City Watch in 1688. And a regicide. He murdered the last king of Ankh-Morpork, as every schoolboy knows.'
'Executed!'
The shoulders shrugged. 'Nevertheless, the family crest was, as we say in heraldry, Excretus Est Ex Altitudine, That is to say, Depositatum De Latrina. Destroyed. Banned. Made incapable of resurrection. Lands confiscated, house pulled down, page torn out of history. Ah-ha. You know, Commander, it is interesting that so many of, ah-ha, Old Stoneface's descendants' - the inverted commas dropped neatly around the nickname like an old lady carefully picking up something nasty in a pair of tongs - 'have been officers of the Watch. I believe, Commander, that you too have acquired the nickname. Ah-ha. Ah-ha. I have wondered whether there is some inherited urge to expunge the infamy. Ah-ha.'