Feet of Clay (Discworld 19)

'Er ... excuse me ... but are you and Captain Carrot... ?'

Angua waited politely.

'... Er...'

'Oh, yes,' said Angua, taking pity. 'We're er. But I stay at Mrs Cake's boarding house because you need your own space in a city like this.' And an understanding landlady sympathetic to those with special needs, she added to herself. Like doorhandles that a paw could operate, and a window left open on moonlit nights. 'You've got to have somewhere where you can be yourself. Anyway, the Watch House smells of socks.'

'I'm staying with my Uncle Armstrangler,' said Cheery. 'It's not very nice there. People talk about mining most of the time.'

'Don't you?'

'There's not a lot you can say about mining. I mine in my mine and what's mine is mine, ' said Cheery in a singsong voice. 'And then they go on about gold which, frankly, is a lot duller than people think.'

'I thought dwarfs loved gold,' said Angua.

They just say that to get it into bed.'

'Are you sure you're a dwarf? Sorry. That was a joke.'

'There must be more interesting things. Hair. Clothes. People.'

'Good grief. You mean girl talk?

'I don't know, I've never talked girl talk before,' said Cheery. 'Dwarfs just talk.'

'It's like that in the Watch, too,' said Angua. 'You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There's no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You'll soon learn the language. Basically it's how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were sick. Just think egotesticle. You'll soon get the hang of it. And you'll have to be prepared for sexually explicit jokes in the Watch House.'

Cheery blushed.

'Mind you, that seems to have ended now,' said Angua.

'Why? Did you complain?'

'No, after I joined in it all seemed to stop/ said Angua, 'And, you know, they didn't laugh? Not even when I did the hand gestures too? I thought that was unfair. Mind you, some of them were quite small gestures.'

'There's no help for it, I'll have to move out,' sighed Cheery. 'I feel all... wrong.'

Angua looked down at the little figure trudging along beside her. She recognized the symptoms. Everyone needed their own space, just like Angua did, and sometimes that space was inside their heads. And she liked Cheery, oddly enough. Possibly it was because of her earnestness. Or the fact that she was the only person apart from Carrot who didn't look slightly frightened when they talked to her. And that was because she didn't know. Angua wanted to preserve that ignorance as a small precious thing, but she could tell when someone needed a little change in their lives.

'We're going quite close to Elm Street,' she said, carefully. 'Just, er, drop in for a while. I've got some stuff you could borrow...'

I won't be needing it, she told herself. When I go, I won't be able to carry much.

Constable Downspout watched the fog. Watching was, after staying in one place, the thing he did best. But he was also good at keeping quite still. Not making any noise whatsoever was another of his best features. When it came to doing absolutely nothing at all he was among the finest. But it was keeping completely motionless in one place that was his forte. If there were a roll-call for the world's champion non-movers, he wouldn't even turn up.

Now, chin on his hands, he watched the fog.

The clouds had settled somewhat so that up here, six storeys above the streets, it was possible to believe you were on a beach at the edge of a cold, moonlit sea. The occasional tall tower or steeple rose out of the clouds, but all sounds were muffled and pulled in on themselves. Midnight came and went.

Constable Downspout watched, and thought about pigeons.

Constable Downspout had very few desires in life, and almost all of them involved pigeons.

A group of figures lurched, staggered or in one case rolled through the fog like the Four Horsemen of a small Apocalypse. One had a duck on his head, and because he was almost entirely sane except for this one strange particular he was known as the Duck Man. One coughed and expectorated repeatedly, and hence was called Coffin Henry. One, a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, was for no apparent reason called Arnold Sideways. And the fourth, for some very good reasons indeed, was Foul Ole Ron.

Ron had a small greyish-brown, torn-eared terrier on the end of a string, although in truth it would be hard for an observer to know exactly who was leading whom and who, when push came to shove, would be the one to fold at the knees if the other one shouted 'Sit!' Because, although trained canines as aids for those bereft of sight, and even of hearing, have frequently been used throughout the universe, Foul Ole Ron was the first person ever to own a Thinking-Brain Dog.

The beggars, led by the dog, were heading for the dark arch of Misbegot Bridge, which they called Home. At least, one of them called it 'Home'; the others respectively called it 'Haaawrk haaawrk HRRaawrk ptui!', 'Heheheh! Whoops!' and 'Buggrit, millennium hand and shrimp!'