Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

“Well, it's the coronation, isn't it,” he said. “Got to get the streets ready for the coronation. Got to have the flags up. Got to get the old bunting out, haven't we?”

Nobby gave the dripping finery a jaundiced look. “Doesn't look that old to me,” he said. “It looks new. What're them fat saggy things on that shield?”

“Those are the royal hippos of Ankh,” said the man proudly. “Reminders of our noble heritage.”

“How long have we had a noble heritage, then?” said Nobby.

“Since yesterday, of course.”

“You can't have a heritage in a day,” said Carrot. “It has to last a long time.”

“If we haven't got one,” said Sergeant Colon, “I bet we'll soon have had one. My wife left me a note about it. All these years, and she turns out to be a monarchist.” He kicked the pavement viciously. “Huh!” he said. “A man knocks his pipes out for thirty years to put a bit of meat on the table, but all she's talking about is some boy who gets to be king for five minutes' work. Know what was for my tea last night? Beef dripping sandwiches!”

This did not have the expected response from the two bachelors.

“Cor!” said Nobby.

“Real beef dripping?” said Carrot. “The kind with the little crunchy bits on top? And shiny blobs of fat?”

“Can't remember when I last addressed the crust on a bowl of dripping,” mused Nobby, in a gastronomic heaven. “With just a bit of salt and pepper, you've got a meal fit for a k-”

o;What do you mean?” said Lady Ramkin, not tearing her gaze from its armoured flanks.

What did he mean? What did he mean? He thought fast.

“It's just not physically possible, that's what I mean,” he said. “Nothing that heavy should be able to fly, or breathe fire like that. I told you.”

“But it looks real enough. I mean, you'd expect a magical creature to be, well, gauzy.”

“Oh, it's real. It's real all right,” said Ramkin bitterly. “But supposing it needs magic like we need, like we need . . . sunlight? Or food.”

“It's a thaumivore, you mean?”

“I just think it eats magic, that's all,” said Vimes, who had not had a classical education. “I mean, all these little swamp dragons, always on the point of extinction, suppose one day back in prehistoric times some of them found out how to use magic?”

' "There used to be a lot of natural magic around once,'' said Lady Ramkin thoughtfully.

“There you are, then. After all, creatures use the air and the sea. I mean, if there's a natural resource around, something's going to use it, aren't they? Then it wouldn't matter about bad digestion and weight and wing size and so on, because the magic would take care of it. Wow!”

But you'd need a lot, he thought. He wasn't certain how much magic you'd need to change the world enough to let tons of armoured carcass flit around the sky like a swallow, but he'd bet it was lots.

All those thefts. Someone'd been feeding the dragon.

He looked at the bulk of the Unseen University Library of magic books, the greatest accumulation of distilled magical power on the Discworld.

And now the dragon had learned how to feed itself.

He became terribly aware that Lady Ramkin had moved, and saw to his horror that she was striding towards the dragon, chin stuck out like an anvil.

“What the hell are you doing?” he whispered loudly.

“If it's descended from the swamp dragons then I can probably control it,” she called back. “You have to look them in the eye and use a no-nonsense tone of voice. They can't resist a stern human voice. They don't have the willpower, you know. They're just big softies.”

To his shame, Vimes realised that his legs were going to have nothing to do with any mad dash to drag her back.

His pride didn't like that, but his body pointed out that it wasn't his pride that stood a very reasonable chance of being thinly laminated to the nearest building. Through ears burning with embarrassment he heard her say: “Bad boy!”

The echoes of that stern injunction rang out across the plaza.