'Could be, sir. There again, you never know your luck.'
Colon was standing stiffly to attention, with his eyes firmly fixed on the middle distance and his voice pitched carefully to avoid any hint of emotion in the words.
Vimes recognized the stance. He used it himself, when he had to. 'What do you mean, Fred?' he said.
'Not a thing, sir. Figure of speech, sir.'
Vimes sat back.
This morning, he thought, I knew what the day held. I was going to see about that damn coat of arms. Then there was my usual meeting with Vetinari. I was going to read some reports after lunch, maybe go and see how they're getting on with the new Watch House in Chittling Street, and have an early night. Now Fred's suggesting... what?
'Listen, Fred, if there is to be a new ruler, it won't be me.'
'Who'll it be, sir?' Colon's voice still held that slow, deliberate tone.
'How should I know? It could be...'
The gap opened ahead of him and he could feel his thoughts being sucked into it. 'You're talking about Captain Carrot, aren't you, Fred?'
'Could be, sir. I mean none of the guilds'd let some other guild bloke be ruler now, and everyone likes Captain Carrot, and, well... rumour's got about that he's the hair to the throne, sir.'
'There's no proof of that, Sergeant.'
'Not for me to say, sir. Dunno about that. Dunno what is proof,' said Colon, with just a hint of defiance. 'But he's got that sword of his, and the birthmark shaped like a crown, and... well, everyone knows he's king. It's his krisma.'
Charisma, thought Vimes. Oh, yes. Carrot has charisma. He makes something happen in people's heads. He can talk a charging leopard into giving up and handing over its teeth and doing good work in the community, and that would really upset the old ladies.
Vimes distrusted charisma. 'No more kings, Fred.'
'Right you are, sir. By the way, Nobby's turned up.'
'The day gets worse and worse, Fred.'
'You said you'd talk to him about all these funerals, sir...'
'The job goes on, I suppose. All right, go and tell him to come up here.
Vimes was left to himself.
No more kings. Vimes had difficulty in articulating why this should be so, why the concept revolted in his very bones. After all, a good many of the patricians had been as bad as any king. But they were... sort of... bad on equal terms. What set Vimes's teeth on edge was the idea that kings were a different kind of human being. A higher lifeform. Somehow magical. But, huh, there was some magic, at that. Ankh-Morpork still seemed to be littered with Royal this and Royal that, little old men who got paid a few pence a week to do a few meaningless chores, like the Master of the King's Keys or the Keeper of the Crown Jewels, even though there were no keys and certainly no jewels.
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: 'Kings. What a good idea.' Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
There was a knock at the door. It should not be possible for a knock to sound surreptitious, yet this knock achieved it. It had harmonics. They told the hindbrain: the person knocking will, if no one eventually answers, open the door anyway and sidle in, whereupon he will certainly nick any smokes that are lying around, read any correspondence that catches his eye, open a few drawers, take a nip out of such bottles of alcohol as are discovered, but stop short of major crime because he is not criminal in the sense of making a moral decision but in the sense that a weasel is evil - it is built into his very shape. It was a knock with a lot to say for itself.
'Come in, Nobby,' said Vimes, wearily.
Corporal Nobbs sidled in. It was another special trait of his that he could sidle forwards as well as sideways.
He saluted awkwardly.
There was something absolutely changeless about Corporal Nobbs, Vimes told himself. Even Fred Colon had adapted to the changing nature of the City Watch, but nothing altered Corporal Nobbs in any way. It wouldn't matter what you did to him, there was always something fundamentally Nobby about Corporal Nobbs.
'Nobby...'
'Yessir?'