Feet of Clay (Discworld #19)

Feet of Clay (Discworld #19) Page 5

'It turned out Nanny Nobbs weren't quite dead the first time.'

'So why have you taken all this time off?'

'Don't like to say, sir...'

'Why not?'

'You're gonna go spare, sir.'

'Spare?'

'You know, sir ... throw a wobbler.'

'I might, Nobby.' Vimes sighed. 'But it'll be nothing to what'll get heaved if you don't tell me...'

'Thing is, it's the tricentre - tricera - this three-hundred-year celebration thing next year, Mr Vimes...'

'Yes?'

Nobby licked his lips. 'I dint like to ask for time offspecial. Fred said you were a bit sensitive about it all. But... you know I'm in the Peeled Nuts, sir...'

Vimes nodded. 'Those clowns who dress up and pretend to fight old battles with blunt swords,' he said.

'The Ankh-Morpork Historical Re-creation Society, sir,' said Nobby, a shade reproachfully.

'That's what I said.'

'Well... we're going to recreate the Battle of Ankh-Morpork for the celebrations, see. That means extra practice.'

'It all begins to make sense,' said Vimes, nodding wearily. 'You've been marching up and down with your tin pike, eh? In my time?'

'Er ... not exactly, Mr Vimes . , . er... I've been riding up and down on my white horse, to tell the truth

'Oh? Playing at being a general, eh?'

'Er ... a bit more'n a general, sir...'

'Goon.'

Nobby's adam's apple bobbed nervously. 'Er... I'm going to be King Lorenzo, sir. Er ... you know... the last king, the one your... er...'

The air froze.

'You ... are going to be...' Vimes began, unpeeling each word like a sullen grape of wrath.

'I said you'd go spare,' said Nobby. 'Fred Colon said you'd go spare, too.'

'Why are you - ?'

'We drew lots, sir.'

'And you lost?'

Nobby squirmed. Er ... not exactly lost, sir. Not precisely lost. More sort of won, sir. Everyone wanted to play him. I mean, you get a horse and a good costume and everything, sir. And he was a king, when all's said and done, sir.'

'The man was a vicious monster!'

'Well, it was all a long time ago, sir,' said Nobby anxiously.

Vimes calmed down a little. 'And who drew the straw to play Stoneface Vimes?'

'Er...er...'

'Nobby!'

Nobby hung his head. 'No one, sir. No one wanted to play him, sir.' The little corporal swallowed, and then plunged onwards with the air of a man determined to get it all over with. 'So we're making a man out of straw, sir, so he'll burn nicely when we throw him on the bonfire in the evening. There's going to be fireworks, sir,' he added, with dreadful certainty.

Vimes's face shut down. Nobby preferred it when people shouted. He had been shouted at for most of his life. He could handle shouting.

'No one wanted to be Stoneface Vimes,' Vimes said coldly.

'On account of him being on the losing side, sir.'

'Losing? Vimes's Ironheads won. He ruled the city for six months.'

Nobby squirmed again. 'Yeah, but... everyone in the Society says he didn't ought to of, sir. They said it was just a fluke, sir. After all, he was outnumbered ten to one, and he had warts, sir. And he was a bit of a bastard, sir, when all's said and done. He did chop off a king's head, sir. You got to be a bit of a nasty type to do that, sir. Saving your presence, Mr Vimes.'

Vimes shook his head. What did it matter, anyway? (But it did matter, somewhere.) It had all been a long time ago. It didn't matter what a bunch of deranged romantics thought. Facts were facts.

'All right, I understand,' he said. 'It's almost funny, really. Because there's something else I've got to tell you, Nobby.'

'Yessir?' said Nobby, looking relieved.

'Do you remember your father?'

Nobby looked about to panic again. 'What kind of question is that to suddenly ask anybody, sir?'

'Purely a social enquiry.'

'Old Sconner, sir? Not much, sir. Never used to see him much except when the milit'ry police used to come for to drag him outa the attic.'

'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...

Vimes had found old Stoneface's journal in the Unseen University library. The man had been hard, no doubt about that. But they were hard times. He'd written: 'In the Fyres of Struggle let us bake New Men, who Will Notte heed the old Lies.' But the old lies had won in the end.

He said to people: you're free. And they said hooray, and then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant and, as soon as he'd been betrayed, they milled around a bit like barn-bred chickens who've seen the big world outside for the first time, and then they went back into the warm and shut the door -

'Bing bong bingely beep.'

Vimes sighed and pulled out his organizer.

'Yes?'

'Memo: Appointment with bootmaker, 2pm,' said the imp.

'It's not two o'clock yet and that was Tuesday in any case,' said Vimes.

'So I'll cross it off the list of Things To Do, then?'

Vimes put the disorganized organizer back in his pocket and went and looked out of the window again.

Who had a motive for poisoning Lord Vetinari?

No, that wasn't the way to crack it. Probably, if you went to some outlying area of the city and confined your investigations to little old ladies who didn't get out much, what with all the wallpaper over the door and everything, you might be able to find someone without a motive. But the man stayed alive by always arranging matters so that a future without him represented a riskier business than a future with him still upright.

The only people, therefore, who'd risk killing him were madmen - and the gods knew Ankh-Morpork had enough of them  -  or someone who was absolutely confident that if the city collapsed he'd be standing on top of the pile.

If Fred were right - and the sergeant was generally a good indicator of how the man in the street thought because he was the man in the street - then that person was Captain Carrot. But Carrot was one of the few people in the city who seemed to like Vetinari.

Of course, there was one other person who stood to gain.

Damn, thought Vimes. It's me, isn't it...

There was another knock at the door. He didn't recognize this one.

He opened the door cautiously.

'It's me, sir. Littlebottom.'

'Come in, then.' It was nice to know there was at least one person in the world with more problems than him. 'How is his lordship?'

'Stable,' said Littlebottom.

'Dead is stable,' said Vimes.

'I mean he's alive, sir, and sitting up reading. Mr Doughnut made up some sticky stuff that tasted of seaweed, sir, and I mixed up some Gloobool's Salts. Sir, you know the old man in the house on the bridge?'

'What old... oh. Yes.' It seemed a long time ago. 'What about him?'

'Well... you asked me to look around and ... I took some pictures. This is one, sir.' He handed Vimes a rectangle that was nearly all black.

'Odd. Where'd you get it?'

'Er... have you ever heard the story about dead men's eyes, sir?'

'Assume I haven't had a literary education, Littlebottom.'

'Well... they say...'

'Who say?'

'They, sir. You know, they.'

'The same people who're the everyone in everyone knows ? The people who live in the community ?'

'Yes, sir. I suppose so, sir.'

Vimes waved a hand. 'Oh, them. Well, go on.'

'They say that the last thing a dying man sees stays imprinted in his eyes, sir.'

'Oh, that. That's just an old story.'

'Yes. Amazing, really. I mean, if it weren't true, you'd have thought it wouldn't have survived, wouldn't you? I thought I saw this little red spark, so I got the imp to paint a really big picture before it faded completely. And, right in the centre...'

'Couldn't the imp have made it up?' said Vimes, staring at the picture again.

'They haven't got the imagination to lie, sir. What they see is what you get.'

'Glowing eyes.'

'Two red dots,' said Littlebottom, conscientiously, 'which might indeed be a pair of glowing eyes, sir.'

'Good point, Littlebottom.' Vimes rubbed his chin. 'Blast! I just hope it's not a god of some sort. That's all I need at a time like this. Can you make copies so I can send them to all the Watch Houses?'

'Yes, sir. The imp's got a good memory.'

'Hop to it, then.'

But before Littlebottom could go the door opened again. Vimes looked up. Carrot and Angua were there.

'Carrot? I thought you were on your day off?'

'We found a murder, sir! At the Dwarf Bread Museum. But when we got back to the Watch House they told us Lord Vetinari's dead!'

Did they? thought Vimes. That's rumour for you. If we could modulate it with the truth, how useful it could be...

'He's breathing well for a corpse,' he said. 'I think he'll be okay. Someone got past his guard, that's all. I've got a doctor to see him. Don't worry.'

Someone got past his guard, he thought. Yes. And I'm his guard.

'I hope the man's a leader in the field, that's all I can say,' said Carrot severely.

'He's even better than that - he's the doctor to the leaders of the field,' said Vimes. I'm his guard and I didn't see it coming.

'It'd be terrible for the city if anything happened to him!' said Carrot.

Vimes saw nothing but innocent concern behind Carrot's forthright stare. 'It would, wouldn't it?' he said. 'Anyway, it's under control. You said there's been another murder?'

'At the Dwarf Bread Museum. Someone killed Mr Hopkinson with his own bread!'

'Made him eat it?'

'Hit him with it, sir,' said Carrot reproachfully. 'Battle Bread, sir.'

'Is he the old man with the white beard?'

'Yes, sir. You remember, I introduced you to him when I took you to see the Boomerang Biscuit exhibition.'

Angua thought she saw a faint wince of recollection speed guiltily across Vimes's face. 'Who's going around killing old men?' he said to the world at large.

'Don't know, sir. Constable Angua went plain clothes'  -  Carrot waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially - 'and couldn't find a sniff of anyone. And nothing was taken. This is what it was done with.'

The Battle Bread was much larger than an ordinary loaf. Vimes turned it over gingerly. 'Dwarfs throw it like a discus, right?'

'Yes, sir. At the Seven Mountains games last year Snori Shieldbiter took the tops off a line of six hard-boiled eggs at fifty yards, sir. And that was with just a standard hunting loaf. But this is, well, it's a cultural artefact. We haven't got the baking technology for bread like this any more. It's unique.'

'Valuable?'

'Very, sir.'

'Worth stealing?'

'You'd never be able to get rid of it! Every honest dwarf would recognize it!'

'Hmm. Did you hear about that priest being murdered on Misbegot Bridge?'

Carrot looked shocked. 'Not old Father Tubelcek? Really?'

Vimes stopped himself from asking: 'You know him, then?' Because Carrot knew everyone. If Carrot were to be dropped into some dense tropical jungle it'd be 'Hello, Mr Runs Swiftly Through The Trees! Good morning, Mr Talks To The Forest, what a splendid blowpipe! And what a novel place for a feather!'

'Did he have more than one enemy?' said Vimes.

'Sorry, sir? Why more than one?'

'I should say the fact that he had one is obvious, wouldn't you?'

'He is ... he was a nice old chap,' said Carrot. 'Hardly stirred out. Spends... spent all his time with his books. Very religious. I mean, all kinds of religion. Studied them. Bit odd, but no harm in him. Why should anyone want to kill him? Or Mr Hopkinson? A pair of harmless old men?'

Vimes handed him the Battle Bread. 'We shall find out. Constable Angua, I want you to have a look at this one. Take... yes, take Corporal Littlebottom,' he said. 'He's been doing some work on it. Angua's from Uberwald too, Littlebottom. Maybe you've got friends in common, that sort of thing.'

Carrot nodded cheerfully. Angua's expression went wooden.

'Ah, h'druk g'har dWatch, Sh'rt'azs!' said Carrot. 'H'h Angua tConstable... Angua g'har, b'hk bargr'a Sh'rt'azs Kad'k... '[10]

Angua appeared to concentrate. 'Grr'dukk d'buz-h'drak...' she managed.

Carrot laughed. 'You just said small delightful mining tool of a feminine nature !'

Cheery stared at Angua, who returned the stare blankly while mumbling, 'Well, dwarfish is difficult if you haven't eaten gravel all your life...'

Cheery was still staring. 'Er ... thank you,' he managed. 'Er ... I'd better go and tidy up.'

'What about Lord Vetinari?' said Carrot.

'I'm putting my best man on that,' said Vimes. 'Trustworthy, reliable, knows the ins and outs of this place like the back of his hand. I'm handling it, in other words.'

Carrot's hopeful expression faded to hurt puzzlement. 'Don't you want me to?' he said. 'I could - '

'No. Indulge an old man. I want you to go back to the Watch House and take care of things.'

'What things?'

'Everything! Rise to the occasion. Move paper around. There's that new shift rota to draw up. Shout at people! Read reports!'

Carrot saluted. 'Yes, Commander Vimes.'

'Good. Off you go, then.'

And if anything happens to Vetinari, Vimes added to himself as the dejected Carrot went out, no one will be able to say you were anywhere near him.

The little grille in the gate of the Royal College of Arms snapped open, to the distant accompaniment of brayings and grunts. 'Yes?' said a voice, 'what dost thee want?'

'I'm Corporal Nobbs,' said Nobby.

An eye applied itself to the grille. It took in the full, dreadful extent of the godly handiwork that was Corporal Nobbs.

'Are you the baboon? We've had one on order for...'

'No. I've come about some coat with arms,' said Nobby.

'You?' said the voice. The owner of the voice made it very clear that he was aware there were degrees of nobility from something above kingship stretching all the way down to commoner, and that as far as Corporal Nobbs was concerned an entirely new category - commonest, perhaps - would have to be coined.

'I've been told,' said Nobby, miserably. 'It's about this ring I got.'

'Go round the back door,' said the voice.

Cheery was tidying away the makeshift equipment he'd set up in the privy when a sound made him look around. Angua was leaning against the doorway.

'What do you want?' he demanded.

'Nothing. I just thought I'd say: don't worry, I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to.'

'I don't know what you're talking about!'

'I think you're lying.'

Cheery dropped a test tube, and sagged on to a seat. 'How could you tell?' he said. 'Even other dwarfs can't tell! I've been so careful!'

'Shall we just say ... I have special talents?' said Angua.

Cheery started to clean a beaker distractedly.

'I don't know why you're so upset,' said Angua. 'I thought dwarfs hardly recognized the difference between male and female, anyway. Half the dwarfs we bring in here on a No. 23 are female, I know that, and they're the ones that are hardest to subdue...'

'What's a No. 23?'

. ' Running Screaming at People While Drunk and Trying to Cut Their Knees off',' said Angua. 'It's easier to give them numbers than write it down every time. Look, there's plenty of women in this town that'd love to do things the dwarf way. I mean, what're the choices they've got? Barmaid, seamstress or someone's wife. While you can do anything the men do...'

'Provided we do only what the men do,' said Cheery.

Angua paused. 'Oh,' she said. 'I see. Hah. Yes. I know that tune.'

'I can't hold an axe!' said Cheery. 'I'm scared of fights! I think songs about gold are stupid! I hate beer! I can't even drink dwarfishly! When I try to quaff I drown the dwarf behind me!'

'I can see that could be tricky,' said Angua.

'I saw a girl walk down the street here and some men whistled after her! And you can wear dressesl With colours!'

'Oh, dear.' Angua tried not to smile. 'How long have lady dwarfs felt like this? I thought they were happy with the way things are...'

'Oh, it's easy to be happy when you don't know any different,' said Cheery bitterly. 'Chainmail trousers are fine if you've never heard of lingerry!'

'Li -  oh, yes,' said Angua. 'Lingerie. Yes.' She tried to feel sympathetic and found that she was, really, but she did have to stop herself from saying that at least you don't have to find styles that can easily be undone by paws.

'I thought I could come here and get a different kind of job,' Cheery moaned. 'I'm good at needlework and I went to see the Guild of Seamstresses and - ' She stopped, and blushed behind her beard.

'Yes,' said Angua. 'Lots of people make that mistake.' She stood up straight and brushed herself off. 'You've impressed Commander Vimes, anyway. I think you'll like it here. Everyone's got troubles in the Watch. Normal people don't become policemen. You'll get on fine.'

'Commander Vimes is a bit...' Cheery began.

'He's okay when he's in a good mood. He needs to drink but he doesn't dare to these days. You know: one drink is too many, two is not enough... And that makes him edgy. When he's in a bad mood he'll tread on your toes and then shout at you for not standing up straight.'

* You're normal,' said Cheery, shyly. 'I like you.'

Angua patted her on the head. 'You say that now,* she said, 'but when you've been around here for a while you'll find out that sometimes I can be a bitch... What's that?'

'What?'

'That... painting. With the eyes....'

'Or two points of red light,' said Cheery.

'Oh, yeah?'

'It's the last thing Father Tubelcek saw, I think,' said the dwarf.

Angua stared at the black rectangle. She sniffed. 'There it is again!' /

Cheery took a step backwards. 'What? What?'

'Where's that smell coming from?' Angua demanded.

'Not me!' said Cheery hurriedly.

Angua grabbed a small dish from the bench and sniffed at it. This is it! I smelled this at the museum! What is it?'

'It's just clay. It was on the floor in the room where the old priest was killed,' said Cheery. 'Probably it came off someone's boot.'

Angua crumbled some of it between her fingers.

'I think it's just potters' clay,' said Cheery. We used to use it at the guild. For making pots,' she added, just in case Angua hadn't grasped things. 'You know? Crucibles and things. This looks like someone tried baking it but didn't get the heat right. See how it crumbles?'

'Pottery,' said Angua. 'I know a potter . , .'

She glanced down at the dwarfs iconograph again.

Please, no, she thought. Not one of them?

The front gate of the College of Arms - both front gates - were swung open. The two Heralds bobbed excitedly around Corporal Nobbs as he tottered out.

'Has your lordship got everything he requires?'

'Nfff,' said Nobby.

'If we can be of any help whatsoever - '

'Nnnf.'

'Any help at all - ?'

'Nnnf.'

'Sorry about your boots, m'lord, but the wyvern's been ill. It'll brush off no trouble when it dries.' Nobby tottered off along the lane. 'He even walks nobly, wouldn't you say?' 'More... nobbly than nobly, I think.' 'It's disgusting that he's a mere corporal, a man of his breeding.'

Igneous the troll backed away until he was up against his potter's wheel.

'I never done it,' he said.