Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

They sat in silence for a moment.

“I liked him,” said Carrot. “I'm sorry he's gone.”

There was some more silence, very similar to the earlier silence but even deeper and more furrowed with depression.

“I expect you'll be made captain now,” said Carrot.

Colon started. “Me? I don't want to be captain! I can't do the thinking. It's not worth all that thinking, just for another nine dollars a month.”

He drummed his fingers on the table.

“Is that all he got?” said Nobby. “I thought officers were rolling in it.”

“Nine dollars a month,” said Colon. “I saw the pay scales once. Nine dollars a month and two dollars plumes allowance. Only he never claimed that bit. Funny, really.”

“He wasn't the plumes type,” said Nobby.

“You're right,” said Colon. “The thing about the captain, see, I read this book once . . . you know we've all got alcohol in our bodies . . . sort of natural alcohol? Even if you never touch a drop in your life, your body sort of makes it anyway ... but Captain Vimes, see, he's one of those people whose body doesn't do it naturally. Like, he was born two drinks below normal.”

“Gosh,” said Carrot.

“Yes ... so, when he's sober, he's really sober. Knurd, they call it. You know how you feel when you wake up if you've been on the piss all night, Nobby? Well, he feels like that all the time. ”

“Poor bugger,” said Nobby. “I never realised. No wonder he's always so gloomy.”

“So he's always trying to catch up, see. It's just that he doesn't always get the dose right. And, of course-” Colon glanced at Carrot-' 'he was brung low by a woman. Mind you, just about anything brings him low."

“So what do we do now, Sergeant?” said Nobby.

“And do you think he'd mind if we eat his cake?” said Carrot wistfully. “It'd be a shame to let it go stale.”

Colon shrugged.

The older men sat in miserable silence as Carrot macerated his way through the cake like a bucket-wheel rockcrusher in a chalk pit. Even if it had been the lightest of souffles they wouldn't have had any appetite.

They were contemplating life without the captain. It was going to be bleak, even without dragons. Say what you liked about Captain Vimes, he'd had style. It was a cynical, black-nailed style, but he'd had it and they didn't. He could read long words and add up. Even that was style, of a sort. He even got drunk in style.

They'd been trying to drag the minutes out, trying to stretch out the time. But the night had come.

There was no hope for them.

They were going to have to go out on the streets.

It was six of the clock. And all wasn't well.

“I miss Errol, too,” said Carrot

“He was the captain's, really,” said Nobby. “Anyway, Lady Ramkin'll know how to look after him.”

“It's not as though we could leave anything around, either,” said Colon. “I mean, even the lamp oil. He even drank the lamp oil.”

“And mothballs,” said Nobby. “A whole box of mothballs. Why would anyone want to eat mothballs? And the kettle. And sugar. He was a devil for sugar.”

“He was nice, though,” said Carrot. “Friendly.”

“Oh, I'll grant you,” said Colon. “But it's not right, really, a pet where you have to jump behind a table every time it hiccups.”

“I shall miss his little face,” said Carrot.