... where Otto Chriek of the Times was waiting in the street, iconograph at the ready.
"Oh no you don"t, Otto," said Vimes, as his squad approached. "I"m standing on the public highway, Mister Vimes," said Otto meekly. "Smile, please. .
And took a picture of a troll officer holding a dwarf up in the air.
Oh well, said Vimes to himself, that"s Page One sorted out. And probably the bloody cartoon, too.
One dwarf in the cells, one in the tender loving care of Igor, Vimes thought as he trudged up the stairs to his office. And it"s only going to get worse. Those dwarfs were obeying Ardent, weren"t they? What would they have done if the dwarf had shaken his head?
He landed in his chair so hard that it rolled back a foot.
He"d met deep-down dwarfs before. They"d been weird, but he"d been able to deal with them. The Low King was a deep-downer, and Vimes had got on with him well enough, once you accepted that the fairytale dwarf in the Hogfather beard was an astute politician. He was a dwarf with vision. He dealt with the world. Ha, "he"d seen the light. But those in the new mine ...
He hadn"t seen them, even though they were sitting in a room made brilliant with the light of hundreds of candles. That seemed odd, since the grags themselves were completely shrouded in their pointy black leather. But maybe it was some mystic ceremony, and who"d look for sense there? Maybe you got a more holy dark in the midst of light? The brighter the light the blacker the shadow?
Ardent had spoken in a language that sounded like dwarfish, and out of the dark hoods had come answers and questions, all barked out in the same harsh brief syllables.
At one point Vimes was asked to repeat the meat of his statement made up above, which had seemed too far away now. He"d done so, and there"d been a long drawn out discussion in what he"d come to think of as Deep Dwarf. And all the time he felt that eyes he could not see were watching him very hard indeed. It didn"t help that his head had been aching like mad and there were shooting pains going up and down his arm.
And that was it. Had they understood him? He didn"t know. Ardent had said that they agreed with considerable reluctance. Had they? He hadn"t a clue, not a clue, to what had really been said. Would Carrot be given access to a crime scene that had not been interfered with in any way? Vimes grunted. Huh. What do you think, boys and girls?
He pinched his nose, and then stared at his right hand. Igor had gone on at length about "tiny invithible biting creatureth" and used some vicious ointment that probably killed anything of any size or visibility. It had stung like seven hells for five minutes, but then had gone and seemed to have taken the pain with it. Anyway, what mattered was that the Watch was officially on this case.
His eye was caught by the top sheet of paperwork in his in-tray [1] He groaned as he picked it up.
To: His Grace Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Watch
From: Mr A E Pessimal, Inspector of the Watch Your Grace,
I hope you will not mind giving me as soon as possible the answers to the following questions:
1 What is Corporal "Nobby" Nobbs for? why do you employ a known petty thief."
2 I timed two officers in Broadway- earlier, and in the space of one hour they made no arrests. Why was this an economic use of their time
3 The level of violence used by troll officers against troll prisoners appears excessive. Could you please comment upon this?
[1] Vimes maintained three trays: In, Out and Shake It All About; the last one was where he put everything he was too busy, angry, tired or bewildered to do anything about.
... and so on. Vimes read on with his mouth open. All right, the man wasn"t a copper - definitely not - but surely he had a fully functional brain. Oh, good grief, he"d even spotted the monthly discrepancy in the petty cash box! Would A. E. Pessimal understand if Vimes explained that Nobby"s services over the years more than made up for the casual petty theft, which you accepted as a kind of mild nuisance? Would that be an economic use of my time? I think not.
As he put the paper back in the tray he spotted a sheet underneath, in Cheery"s handwriting. He picked it up and read it.
Two dwarfs and one troll had handed in their badges that morning, citing "family reasons". Damn. That was seven officers lost this week. Bloody Koom Valley, it got everywhere. Oh, it couldn"t be fun, heavens knew, being a troll holding the line against a bunch of your fellow trolls and defending a dwarf like the late Hamcrusher. It probably wasn"t any funnier being a dwarf hearing that some troll street gang beat up your brother because of what that idiot had said. Some people would be asking: whose side are you on? If you"re not for us, you"re against us. Huh. If you"re not an apple, you"re a banana...
Carrot came in quietly and placed a plate on the desk. "Angua told me all about it," he said. "Well done, sir."
"What do you mean, well done?" said Vimes, looking at his healthy sandwich lunch. "I nearly started a war!"
"Ah, but they didn"t know you were bluffing."
"I probably wasn"t: Vimes carefully lifted the top of the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and smiled inwardly. Good old Cheery. She knew what a Vimes BIT was all about. It was about having to lift up quite a lot of crispy bacon before you found the miserable skulking vegetables. You might never notice them at all.
"I want you to take Angua down there with you again," he said. "And ... yes, Lance-Constable Humpeding. Our little Sally. Just the job for a vampire who fortuitously has arrived in the nick of time, eh? Let"s see how good she is."
"Just those two, sir?"
"Er, yes. They both have very good night vision, yes?" Vimes looked down at his sandwich and mumbled, "We can"t take any artificial light down there."