Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)
Itym: Ae smalle vegettable shape (with pin-point accuracy).
Vimes wondered about that. He'd bought some apples in there once, and there didn't appear to be anything about it that a dragon could possibly take offence at.
Still, very considerate of the dragon, he thought as he made his way to the Watch House. When you think of all the timber yards, hayricks, thatched roofs and oil stores it could have hit by chance, it's managed to really frighten everyone without actually harming the city.
Rays of early morning sunlight were piercing the drifts of smoke as he pushed open the door. This was home. Not the bare little room over the candlemaker's shop in Wixon's Alley, where he slept, but this nasty brown room that smelt of unswept chimneys, Sgt Colon's pipe, Nobby's mysterious personal problem and, latterly, Carrot's armour polish. It was almost like home.
No-one else was there. He wasn't entirely surprised. He clumped up to his office and leaned back in his chair, whose cushion would have been thrown out of its basket in disgust by an incontinent dog, pulled his helmet over his eyes, and tried to think.
No good rushing about. The dragon had vanished in all the smoke and confusion, as suddenly as it had come. Time for rushing about soon enough. The important thing was working out where to rush to ...
He'd been right. Wading bird! But where did you start looking for a bloody great dragon in a city of a million people?
He was aware that his right hand, entirely unbidden, had pulled open the bottom drawer, and three of his fingers, acting on sealed orders from his hindbrain, had lifted out a bottle. It was one of those bottles that emptied themselves. Reason told him that sometimes he must occasionally start one, break the seal, see amber liquid glistening all the way up to the neck. It was just that he couldn't remember the sensation. It was as if the bottles arrived two-thirds empty . . .
o;It happens,” said Lady Ramkin sadly. “It's all down to genes, you know.”
“It is?” said Vimes. Somehow, the creature seemed to be concentrating all the power its siblings wasted in flame and noise into a stare like a thermic lance. He couldn't help remembering how much he'd wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they'd been starving-anything with meat on it would have done.
He heard the dragon lady say, “One tries to breed for a good flame, depth of scale, correct colour and so on. One just has to put up with the occasional total whittle.”
The little dragon turned on Vimes a gaze that would be guaranteed to win it the award for Dragon the Judges would Most Like to Take Home and Use as A Portable Gas Lighter.
Total whittle, Vimes thought. He wasn't sure of the precise meaning of the word, but he could hazard a shrewd guess. It sounded like whatever it was you had left when you had extracted everything of any value whatsoever. Like the Watch, he thought. Total whittles, every one of them. And just like him. It was the saga of his life.
“That's Nature for you,” said her ladyship. "Of course I wouldn't dream of breeding from him, but he wouldn't be able to anyway.''
“Why not?” said Vimes.
“Because dragons have to mate in the air and he'll never be able to fly with those wings, I'm afraid. I'll be sorry to lose the bloodline, naturally. His sire was Brenda Rodley's Treebite Brightscale. Do you know Brenda?”
“Er, no,” said Vimes. Lady Ramkin was one of those people who assumed that everyone else knew everyone one knew.
“Charming gel. Anyway, his brothers and sisters are shaping up very well.”
Poor little bastard, thought Vimes. That's Nature for you in a nutshell. Always dealing off the bottom of the pack.
No wonder they call her a mother . . .
“You said you had something to show me,” Lady Ramkin prompted.
Vimes wordlessly handed her the parcel. She slipped off her heavy mittens and unwrapped it.
“Plaster cast of a footprint,” she said, baldly. “Well?”
“Does it remind you of anything?” said Vimes.
“Could be a wading bird.”
“Oh.” Vimes was crestfallen.
Lady Ramkin laughed. “Or a really big dragon. Got it out of a museum, did you?”
“No. I got it off the street this morning.”
“Ha? Someone's been playing tricks on you, old chap.”
“Er. There was, er, circumstantial evidence.”