Feet of Clay (Discworld 19)

'Do you know much about your, er, antecedents?'

'That is a lie, sir. I haven't got no antecedents, sir, no matter what you might have been tole.'

'Oh. Good. Er ... you don't actually know what antecedents means, do you, Nobby?'

Nobby shifted uneasily. He didn't like being questioned by policemen, especially since he was one. 'Not in so many words, sir.'

'You never got told anything about your forebears?' Another worried expression crossed Nobby's face, so Vimes quickly added: 'Your ancestors?'

'Only old Sconner, sir. Sir ... if all this is working up to asking about them sacks of vegetables which went missing from the shop in Treacle Mine Road, I was not anywhere near the - '

Vimes waved a hand vaguely. 'He didn't... leave you anything? Or anything?'

'Coupla scars, sir. And this trick elbow of mine. It aches sometimes, when the weather changes. I always remembers ole Sconner when the wind blows from the Hub.'

'Ah, right - '

'And this, o' course...' Nobby fished around behind his rusting breastplate. And that was a marvel, too. Even Sergeant Colon's armour could shine, if not actually gleam. But any metal anywhere near Nobby's skin corroded very quickly. The corporal pulled out a leather thong that hung around his neck. There was a gold ring on it. Despite the fact that gold cannot corrode, it had nevertheless developed a patina.

'He left it to me when he was on his deathbed,' said Nobby. 'Well, when I say left it

'Did he say anything?'

'Well, yeah, he did say Give it back, you little bugger! , sir. See, 'e 'ad it on a string round his neck, sir, just like me. But it's not like a proper ring, sir. I'd have flogged it but it's all I got to remember him by. Except when the wind blows from the Hub.'

Vimes took the ring and rubbed it with a finger. It was a seal ring, with a coat of arms on it. Age and wear and the immediate presence of the body of Corporal Nobbs had made it quite unreadable.

'You are armigerous, Nobby.'

Nobby nodded. 'But I got a special shampoo for it, sir.'

Vimes sighed. He was an honest man. He'd always felt that was one of the bigger defects in his personality.

'When you've got a moment, nip along to the College of Heralds in Mollymog Street, will you? Take this ring with you and say I sent you.'

'Er...'

'It's all right. Nobby,' said Vimes. 'You won't get into trouble. Not as such.'

'If you say so, sir.'

'And you don't have to bother with the sir , Nobby.'

'Yessir.'

When Nobby had gone Vimes reached behind the desk and picked up a faded copy of Twurp's Peerage or, as he personally thought of it, the guide to the criminal classes. You wouldn't find slum dwellers in these pages, but you would find their landlords. And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

These days they seemed to be bringing out a new edition every week. Dragon had been right about one thing, at least. Everyone in Ankh-Morpork seemed to be hankering after more arms than they were born with.

He looked up de Nobbes.

There even was a damn coat of arms. One supporter of the shield was a hippo, presumably one of the royal hippos of Ankh-Morpork and therefore the ancestor of Roderick and Keith. The other was a bull of some sort, with a very Nobby-like expression; it was holding a golden ankh which, this being the de Nobbes coat of arms, it had probably stolen from somewhere. The shield was red and green; there was a white chevron with five apples on it. Quite what they had to do with warfare was unclear. Perhaps they were some kind of jolly visual pune or play on words that had had them slapping their thighs down at the Royal College of Arms, although probably if Dragon slapped his thigh too hard his leg would fall off.

It was easy enough to imagine an ennobled Nobbs. Because where Nobby went wrong was in thinking small. He sidled into places and pinched things that weren't worth much. If only he'd sidled into continents and stolen entire cities, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in the process, he'd have been a pillar of the community.

There was nothing in the book under 'Vimes'.

Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes wasn't a pillar of the community. He killed a king with his own hands. It needed doing, but the community, whatever that was, didn't always like the people who did what needed to be done or said what had to be said. He put some other people to death as well, that was true, but the city had been lousy, there'd been a lot of stupid wars, we were practically part of the Klatchian empire. Sometimes you needed a bastard. History had wanted surgery. Sometimes Dr Chopper is the only surgeon to hand. There's something final about an axe. But kill one wretched king and everyone calls you a regicide. It wasn't as if it was a habit or anything...