Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

He grinned maniacally at Vimes.

“Didn't expect that, did you?” he said. “We've still got guards here, you know. Not so many, of course. Not many people want to come in.”

There were footsteps in the passage outside and four of the palace guards padded in, swords drawn.

“I wouldn't put up a fight, if I were you,” Wonse went on. “They're desperate and uneasy men. But very highly paid.”

Vimes said nothing. Wonse was a gloater. You always stood a chance with gloaters. The old Patrician had never been a gloater, you could say that for him. If he wanted you dead, you never even heard about it.

The thing to do with gloaters was play the game according to the rules.

“You'll never get away with it,” he said.

“You're right. You're absolutely right. But never is a long time,” said Wonse. “None of us get away with anything for that long.”

“You shall have some time to reflect on this,” he said and nodded to the guards. “Throw him in the special dungeon. And then go about that other little task.”

“Er,” said the leader of the guards, and hesitated.

“What's the matter, man?”

“You, er, want us to attack him?” said the guard miserably. Thick though the palace guard were, they were as aware as everyone else of the conventions, and when guards are summoned to deal with one man in overheated circumstances it's not a good time for them. The bugger's bound to be heroic, he was thinking. This guard was not looking forward to a future in which he was dead.

“Of course, you idiot!”

“But, er, there's only one of him,” said the guard captain.

“And he's smilin',” said a man behind him.

“Prob'ly goin' to swing on the chandeliers any minute,” said one of his colleagues. “And kick over the table, and that.”

“He's not even armed!” shrieked Wonse.

“Worst kind, that,” said one of the guards, with deep stoicism. “They leap up, see, and grab one of the ornamental swords behind the shield over the fireplace.”

“Yeah,” said another, suspiciously. “And then they chucks a chair at you.”

“There's no fireplace! There's no sword! There's only him! Now take him!” screamed Wonse.

A couple of guards grabbed Vimes tentatively by the shoulders.

“You're not going to do anything heroic, are you?” whispered one of them.

“Wouldn't know where to start,” he said.

“Oh. Right.”

As Vimes was hauled away he heard Wonse breaking into insane laughter. They always did, your gloaters.

But he was correct about one thing. Vimes didn't have a plan. He hadn't thought much about what was going to happen next. He'd been a fool, he told himself, to think that you just had a confrontation and that was the end of it.

He also wondered what the other task was.

The palace guards said nothing, but stared straight ahead and marched him down, across the ruined hall, and through the wreckage of another corridor to an ominous door. They opened it, threw him in, and marched away.

And no-one, absolutely no-one, noticed the thin, leaf-like thing that floated gently down from the shadows of the roof, tumbling over and over in the air like a sycamore seed, before landing in the tangled gewgaws of the hoard.

It was a peanut shell.