'Nothing,' said Vimes. 'There you are, then.'
'I mean the Watch did nothing, and that's what hurt them,' said Vimes. 'What could you do, then? Arrest Winder?'
Vimes felt he was building a bridge of matchsticks over a yawning abyss, and now he could feel the chilly winds below him. He'd arrested Vetinari, back in the future. Admittedly the man had walked free, after what passed for the due process of law, but the City Watch had bee- was going to be big enough and strong enough and well-connected enough to actually arrest the ruler of the city. How had they ever got to that stage? How had he even dreamed that a bunch of coppers could slam the cell door on the boss? Well, perhaps it had started here. Lance-Constable Vimes was watching him intently. 'Of course we can't,' he said, 'but we ought to be able to. Maybe one day we will. If we can't then the law isn't the law, it's just a way of keeping people down.'
'Looks like you've woken up and smelled the cacky,' said Coates, 'because that's exactly what you're in. Sorry, lads, but you're going to die. That's what'll happen if you tangle with real soldiers. Hear about Dolly Sisters last night? Three dead and they weren't even trying.'
'Come on, Ned, no one's going to have a go at us if we're just patrolling,' mumbled Colon. 'Patrolling for what?' said Coates. 'To keep the peace? What'll you do when there's no peace left to keep? Well, I'm not going to stand around and see you get killed. I'm off.' He turned and strode out of the yard and into the Watch House. You bloody fool, you're right, Vimes thought. I just wish you weren't so right. 'Still with us, lads?' he said, to the group caught behind the line. 'That's right, sarge!' said Lance-Constable Vimes. The rest of the volunteers seemed slightly less certain. 'Are we gonna get killed?' said Wiglet. 'Who said it's going to come to a fight?' said Vimes, watching Coates's retreating back. 'Wait a moment, I want a word with Ned-'
'Got the Shilling, sarge,' Snouty announced, advancing across the yard. 'And the captain wants a word with you.'
'Tell him I'll be up in just a few-'
'It's the new captain,' said Snouty quickly. 'He's here already, hnah. Keen. Milit'ry. Not the patient type, sarge.' I used to have Carrot and Detritus and Angua and Cheery for this, Vimes thought bitterly. I'd say you do this, and you do that, and all I had to do was fret and deal with the soddin' politics . . . 'Get Fred to swear the men in,' he said. 'And tell the officer I'll be with him shortly.'
He ran through the Watch House and out of the front door. There were a lot of people in the street, more than usual. It wasn't a mob as such, but it was Ankh-Morpork's famous ur-mob, the state you got just before a real mob happened. It spread across the city like web and spider and, when some triggering event happened, twanged its urgent message through the streets and thickened and tightened around the spot. The Dolly Sisters Massacre had got around and the numbers had grown in the telling. Vimes could sense the tension in the web. It was just waiting for some idiot to do the wrong thing, and Nature is bountiful where idiots are concerned. 'Coates!' he yelled. To his surprise, the man stopped and turned. 'Yeah?'
'I know you're with the revolutionaries.'
'You're just guessing.'
'No, you had the password in your notebook,' said Vimes. The same one Dibbler was passing out in pies. You must know I was able to get into the lockers. Look, do you think you and Dibbler'd still be walking around if I was a spy for Swing?'
'Sure. You're not after us, we can be mopped up later. Swing wants the leaders.' Vimes stood back. 'Okay. Why haven't you told the lads?'
'Things are moving, that's why. It's all starting,' said Ned. 'Who you are doesn't matter any more. But you're going to get the lads killed. They'd have been on our side, if it wasn't for you. I was working on 'em. You know Spatchcock always drops his sword on his foot and Nancyball wets himself when he's threatened and Vimesy is simple, and now you're going to stick 'em all right in the middle and they're gonna die. And all for no reason!'
'Why haven't you told them?' Vimes repeated. 'Maybe you've got friends in high places,' Ned snarled. Vimes glanced up at the rooftops. 'Have we finished?' said Ned. 'Give me your badge,' said Vimes. 'You what?'
'You're quitting. Fair enough. Give me your badge.' Coates recoiled as if he'd been stung. 'Blow that!'
'Then leave the city,' said Vimes. 'It'd be for your own good.'
'Is that a threat?'
'Not from me. But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes. I'll see you later.' He turned his back and hurried away, so that the man wouldn't see his face. Okay. Now it was time. It had to be now, or he'd burst like Mr Salciferous. He had wanted to do this, hadn't dared try it, because those monks could probably do a man a lot of no good if he crossed them, but it had all gone too far now . . . A sense of duty told him there was an officer waiting to see him. He overruled it. It was not in possession of all the facts. Vimes reached the entrance to the Watch House, and stopped. He shut his eyes. If anyone had bothered to look at him, they'd have seen a man apparently trying to grind two cigarette stubs into the road, one with each foot. Thank you, Rosie, for those cardboard soles. He smiled. He thought with the brains in his feet. And as young Sam had noticed, the feet had a memory of their own . . . Rounded cathead cobbles, the usual kind. They hadn't been well set in this part of the city and moved very slightly underfoot . . . then twice before getting to the Watch House his feet had felt larger cobbles, narrow bands of them, where the road surface had been replaced after drains had been laid. And before that, there'd been a similar band but of soft brick rubble, so crushed by cartwheels that it was practically a gully. A few dozen steps earlier they'd twirled him round a couple of times, but the last surface before that had been . . . mud. Vimes, who had been walking with his eyes shut, bumped into a cart. Mud, he thought, getting up and ignoring the strange looks of passers-by. That meant an alley. Let's see . . . ah, yes, over there ... It took twenty minutes. People turned as he walked through the streets, closing his eyes when he dared so that his feet could see better. Sometimes he did look around, though, and there it was again, the thunderstorm sensation of tensions building up, waiting for the first little thing. People were uneasy - the herd was restless - and they didn't quite know why. Everyone he looked at returned his gaze blankly. He stepped onwards. Rough flagstones between two stretches of the ancient cobbles they called trollheads . . . the only place where you got that in this part of the city was here, where Pewter Street crossed Elm, and before that it had been . . . yeah, big stones, some of the most ancient in the city, rutted by hundreds and hundreds of years of iron-bound cartwheels, that was a road that had been right behind a city wall . . . yes; he crossed the Pitts, still on Elm, and then lost his thread. A metal grating on the pavement gave it back to him. Cellar grating. Cool cellar. Coat of arms on it, worn down. Buttermarket. Yeah. Go, feet!
The monks had turned him again here but . . . long bricks, hard-fired in the kiln, and a stretch of quite modern flagstones, well dressed and fitted. It could trick you if you didn't know you were in ... yeah, Masons Road, and there were masons here and they looked after the surface. Now find an alley, mud but with a lot of gravel in it, because the stonemasons dumped their waste here but this one has occasional hummocks across it, where pipes have been laid. Yeah. Now find square- head cobbles . . . He opened his eyes. Yeah. Away on his left, on Clay Lane, was a block of three buildings. A temple sandwiched between two cheapjack corner shops. It was . . . just a temple, slightly foreign-looking, but weren't they all? It looked High Hublandish, where everyone lived on yaks or something. The temple doors were locked. He rattled the handle im-potently, and then hammered on the woodwork with his sword. It had no effect. He didn't even leave a mark on the wood. But the door of the shonky shop next door was open. It was a familiar place. Once upon a time, it was his tailor and bootmaker. And, like a pawn shop, a shonky shop was always open. Vimes stepped inside, and was immediately enveloped in dusty darkness. It was a cave of cloth. Racks of old suits hung from the ceiling. Ancient shelves bent under piles of shirts and vests and socks. Here and there old boxes loomed in the gloom and caught his knees. Piles of derelict boots slipped and slid under his feet. And there was the smell. If poverty had a smell, this was it. If humbled pride had a smell, this was it. And there was a touch of disinfectant as well. Within a few feet of the door, Vimes was already lost. He turned and shoved his way through grey aisle after grey aisle of suffocating cloth and wondered if anyone had ever died in here and how anyone could ever find out. He pulled aside a hanger containing a greasy, threadbare suit- 'You want?' He turned. There was no one there, until his gaze fell slightly and met that of a small, glossy little man, totally bald, very small and thin, and wearing some vague clothing that presumably even a shonky shop hadn't been able to unload on a customer. Who was he? who was he? . . . surprisingly, the name seemed quite fresh in the memory ... 'Ah, er, yeah . . . Mr Shine-'
'Soon Shine Sun,' said Mr Soon. He grabbed the suit Vimes was still holding. 'Good eye, good eye, lovely cloth, lovely cloth, owned by priest, very good, fifty pence to you, shame to sell it, times are hard.' Vimes hastily put the suit back on the rack and pulled out his badge. Soon glared at it.
'I pay already other copper,' he said. 'One dollar, one month, no trouble. Already I pay other copper.'
'Pay?' said Vimes. "Two-stripe copper already I pay. One dollar, one month, no trouble!'
'Corporal Quirke,' muttered Vimes. 'You don't have to pay coppers, Mr Soon. We're here for your protection.' Despite his barely basic grasp of the language, Mr Soon's expression suggested very clearly that the three-stripe, one-crown copper in front of him had dropped in from the planet Idiot. 'Look, I haven't got time for this,' said Vimes. 'Where's the back door? This is Watch business!'
'I pay! I pay protection! One month, no trouble!' Vimes grunted and set off along another narrow, cloth-lined tunnel. A glint of glass caught his eye, and he sidled crabwise up a choked aisle until he found a counter. It was piled with more hopeless merchandise, but there was a bead-curtained doorway behind it. He half clambered, half swam over the piles and scrambled into the tiny room beyond. Mr Soon pushed his way to an ancient tailor's dummy; it was so scratched, chipped and battered it looked like something dug up from the volcanic ash of an ancient city. He pulled on an arm, and the eyes lit up. 'Number Three here,' he said, into its ear. 'He's just gone through. And, boy, is he angry The back door was locked but yielded under the weight of Vimes's body. He staggered into the yard, looked up at the wall separating this greasy space from the temple's garden, jumped, scrabbled his boots on the brickwork and dragged himself on to the top, feeling a couple of bricks crumble away underneath him. He landed on his back, and looked up at a thin, robed figure sitting on a stone seat. 'Cup of tea, commander?' said Sweeper cheerfully. 'I don't want any damn tea!' shouted Vimes, struggling to his feet. Sweeper dropped a lump of rancid yak butter in the tea bowl beside him. 'What do you want, then, Mister Vimes with the very helpful feet?'
'I can't deal with this! You know what I mean!'
'You know, some tea really would calm you down,' said Sweeper. 'Don't tell me to be calm! When are you going to get me home?'
A figure stepped out of the temple. He was a taller, heavier man than Sweeper, white-haired and with the look of a good-natured bank manager about him. He held out a cup. Vimes hesitated a moment, and then took the cup and poured the tea out on to the ground. 'I don't trust you,' he said. There could be anything in this.'
'I can't imagine what we could put in tea that would make it any worse than the way you normally drink it,' said Sweeper calmly. 'Sit down, your grace. Please?' Vimes sagged on to the seat. The rage that had been driving him sank a little, too, but he could feel it bubbling. Automatically, he pulled out a half-smoked cigar and put it in his mouth. 'Sweeper said you'd find us, some way or other,' said the other monk, and sighed. 'So much for secrecy.'
'Why should you worry?' said Vimes, lighting the stub. 'You can just play around with time and it won't have happened, right?'