"The other one also appears to be dead, sir. I"d swear he was fine when I tied him up, sir, because he was cursing me in their lingo."
"You didn"t hit him too hard, did-" Vimes began, and gave up on it. If Willikins had wanted someone dead, he wouldn"t have taken them prisoner. It must have been a surprise, breaking into a cellar and meeting something like Willikins. Anyway, to hell with them.
"Just ... died?" he said.
"Yes, sir. Do dwarfs naturally salivate green?" "What?"
"There is green around his mouth, sir. Could be a clue, in my opinion.
"All right, put him on the roof of the coach too. Let"s go, shall we?"
Vimes had to insist that Sybil travel on the inside. Usually she got her own way and he was happy to give it to her, but the unspoken agreement was that when he really insisted, she listened. It"s a married couple thing.
Vimes rode beside Willikins, and got him to stop halfway down the hill where a man was selling the evening edition of the Times, still damp from the press.
The picture on the front page was of a mob of dwarfs. They were pulling open one of the mine"s big, round metal doors; it was hanging off its hinges. In the middle of the group, hands gripping the edge of the frame and muscles bulging, was Captain Carrot. Gleaming, with his shirt off.
Vimes grunted happily, folded up the paper, and lit a cheroot.
The shaking in his legs was barely noticeable now, the fires of that terrible rage banked but still glowing.
"A free press, Willikins. You just can"t beat it," he said.
"I have often heard you remark as much, sir," said Willikins.
The entity slithered through the rainy streets. Confounded again! It was getting through, it knew it! It was being heard! And yet every time it tried to follow the words, it was thrown back. Bars had blocked its way, doors that had been open locked themselves as it approached. And what was this? Some kind of low-class soldier! By now it would have had berserkers biting their shields in half!
That was not the main problem, though. It was being watched. And that had never happened before.
There was a crowd of dwarfs milling around outside the Yard. They did not look belligerent - that is to say, any more belligerent than a species the members of which, by custom and practice, wear a big heavy helmet, mail and iron boots and carry an axe all the time will automatically look - but they did seem lost and bewildered and unsure why they were there.
Vimes got Willikins to drive in through the coach arch and take the bodies of the attackers down to Igor, who knew about things like people dying with green mouths.
Sybil, Purity and Young Sam were hustled away to a clean office. Interesting thing, Vimes thought, as he watched Cheery and a group of dwarf officers fuss over the child: even now - in fact especially now, given the way the tension had made everyone revert to old certainties - he wasn"t sure how many female dwarf officers he had. It was a brave female dwarf who advertised the fact, in a society where the wearing of even a decent, floor-length, leatherand-chain-mail dress instead of leggings positioned you, on the moral map, on the far side of Tawneee and her hard-working coworkers at the Pink PussyCat Club. But introduce a gurgling kid into the room and you could spot them instantly, for all their fearsome clang and beards you could lose a rat in.
Carrot pushed his way through the crowd and saluted. "A lot"s been happening, sir!"
"My word, has it?" said Vimes, with manic brightness.
"Yessir. Everyone was pretty ... angry when we brought the dead dwarfs up from the mine, and what with one thing and another, opening the big door in Treacle Street was pretty popular. All the deep-downers have gone, except one-"
"That"d be Helmclever," said Vimes, heading for his own office. Carrot looked surprised. "That"s right, sir. He"s in a cell. I"d like you to have a look at him, if you don"t mind. He was crying and moaning and trembling in a corner with lit candles all round him." "More candles? Afraid of the dark?" Vimes suggested. "Could be, sir. Igor says the trouble"s in his head."
"Don"t let Igor try to give him a new one!" said Vimes quickly. "I"ll go down there as soon as I can."
"I"ve tried talking to him but he just looks blank, sir. How did you know he was the one we found?"
"I"ve got some edges and some bits that are an interesting shape," said Vimes, sitting down at his desk. When Carrot looked blank, he went on: "Of the jigsaw puzzle, captain. But there are lots of bits of sky. However, I think I might be nearly there, because I think I"ve been handed a corner. What talks underground?"
"Sir?"
"You know the dwarfs were listening for something underground? You wondered if someone was trapped, right? But is there ... I don"t know ... something dwarf-made that speaks?"
Carrot"s brow wrinkled. "You"re not talking about a cube, are you, sir?"
"I don"t know. Am I? You tell me!"
"The deep-downers have some in their mine, sir, but I"m sure there"s none buried here. They"re generally found in hard rocks. Anyway, you wouldn"t listen for one. I"ve never heard of them talking when they"re found. Some dwarfs have spent years learning how to use just one of them!"