Feet of Clay (12 page)

The atmosphere in the long, low,
dark
room altered as she stepped inside. A moment of time rang like a glass bowl, and then there was a sense of relaxation. People turned back in their seats.

Well, they were seated. It was quite likely they were people.

Cheery moved closer to Angua. ‘What’s this place called?’ she whispered.

‘It hasn’t really got a name,’ said Angua, ‘but sometimes we call it Biers.’

‘It didn’t
look
like an inn outside. How did you find it?’

‘You don’t. You … gravitate to it.’

Cheery looked around nervously. She wasn’t sure where they were, apart from somewhere in the cattle-market district, somewhere up a maze of alleys.

Angua walked to the bar.

A deeper shadow appeared out of the gloom. ‘Hello, Angua,’ it said, in a deep, rolling voice. ‘Fruit juice, is it?’

‘Yes. Chilled.’

‘And what about the dwarf?’

‘She’ll have him raw,’ said a voice somewhere in the gloom. There was a ripple of laughter in the
dark
. Some of it sounded altogether too strange to Cheery. She couldn’t imagine it issuing from normal lips. ‘I’ll have a fruit juice, too,’ she quavered.

Angua glanced at the dwarf. She felt oddly grateful that the remark from the darkness seemed to have gone entirely over the small bullet head. She unhooked her badge and with care and deliberation laid it down on the counter. It went
perlink
. Then Angua leaned forward and showed the iconograph to the barman.

If it
was
a man. Cheery wasn’t sure yet. A sign over the bar said ‘Don’t you ever change’.

‘You know everything that’s going on, Igor,’ Angua said. ‘Two old men got killed yesterday. And a load of clay got stolen from Igneous the troll recently. Did you ever hear about that?’

‘What’s that to you?’

‘Killing old men is against the law,’ said Angua. ‘Of course, a lot of things are against the law, so we’re very busy in the Watch. We like to be busy about
important
things. Otherwise we have to be busy about unimportant things. Are you hearing me?’

The shadow considered this. ‘Go and take a seat,’ it said. ‘I’ll bring your drinks.’

Angua led the way to a table in an alcove. The clientele lost interest in them. A buzz of conversation resumed.

‘What
is
this place?’ Cheery whispered.

‘It’s … a place where people can be themselves,’ said Angua slowly. ‘People who … have to be a little careful at other times. You know?’

‘No …’

Angua sighed. ‘Vampires, zombies, bogeymen, ghouls, oh my. The und—’ She corrected herself. ‘The differently alive,’ she said. ‘People who have to spend most of their time being very careful, not frightening people,
fitting in
. That’s how it works here. Fit in, get a job, don’t worry people, and you probably won’t find a crowd outside with pitchforks and flaming torches. But sometimes it’s good to go where everybody knows your shape.’

Now that Cheery’s eyes had grown accustomed to the low light she could make out the variety of shapes on the benches. Some of them were a lot bigger than human. Some had pointy ears and long muzzles.

‘Who’s that girl?’ she said. ‘She looks … normal.’

‘That’s Violet. She’s a tooth fairy. And next to her is Schleppel the bogeyman.’

In the far corner something sat huddled in a huge overcoat under a high, broad-brimmed pointed hat.

‘And him?’

‘That’s old Man Trouble,’ said Angua. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you
don’t
mind him.’

‘Er … any werewolves here?’

‘One or two,’ said Angua.

‘
I hate
werewolves.’

‘Oh?’

The oddest customer was sitting by herself, at a small round table. She appeared to be a very old lady, in a shawl and a straw hat with flowers in it. She was staring in front of her with an expression of
good-natured
aimlessness, and in context looked more frightening than any of the shadowy figures.

‘What is she?’ Cheery hissed.

‘Her? Oh, that’s Mrs Gammage.’

‘And what does she do?’

‘Do? Well, she comes in here most days for a drink and some company. Sometimes we …
they
have a singsong. Old songs, that she remembers. She’s practically blind. If you mean, is she an undead … no, she isn’t. Not a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie or a bogeyman. Just an old lady.’

A huge shambling hairy thing paused at Mrs Gammage’s table and put a glass in front of her.

‘Port and lemon. There you goes, Mrs Gammage,’ it rumbled.

‘Cheers, Charlie!’ the old lady cackled. ‘How’s the plumbing business?’

‘Doing fine, love,’ said the bogeyman, and vanished into the gloom.

‘
That
was
a plumber
?’ said Cheery.

‘Of course not. I don’t know who Charlie was. He probably died years ago. But she thinks the bogeyman is him, and who’s going to tell her different?’

‘You mean she doesn’t
know
this place is—’

‘Look, she’s been coming here ever since the old days when it was the Crown and Axe,’ said Angua. ‘No one wants to spoil things. Everyone likes Mrs Gammage. They … watch out for her. Help her out in little ways.’

‘How?’

‘Well, I heard that last month someone broke into her hovel and stole some of her stuff …’

‘
That
doesn’t sound helpful.’

‘… and it was all returned next day and a couple of thieves were found in the Shades with not a drop of blood left in their bodies.’ Angua smiled, and her voice took on a mocking edge. ‘You know, you get told a lot of bad things about the undead, but you never hear about the marvellous work they do in the community.’

Igor the barman appeared. He looked more or less human, apart from the hair on the back of his hands and the single unbifurcated eyebrow across his forehead. He tossed a couple of mats on the table and put their drinks down.

‘You’re probably wishing this
was
a dwarf bar,’ said Angua. She lifted her beermat carefully and glanced at the underside.

Cheery looked around again. By now, if it
had
been a dwarf bar, the floor would be sticky with beer, the air would be full of flying quaff, and people would be singing. They’d probably be singing the latest dwarf tune,
Gold, Gold, Gold
, or one of the old favourites, like
Gold, Gold, Gold
, or the all-time biggie,
Gold, Gold, Gold
. In a few minutes, the first axe would have been thrown.

‘No,’ she said, ‘it could never be that bad.’

‘Drink up,’ said Angua. ‘We’ve got to go and see … something.’

A large hairy hand grabbed Angua’s wrist. She looked up into a terrifying face, all eyes and mouth and hair.

‘Hello, Shlitzen,’ she said calmly.

‘Hah, I’m hearing where there’s a baron who’s really
unhappy
about you,’ said Shlitzen, alcohol crystallizing on his breath.

‘That’s my business, Shlitzen,’ said Angua. ‘Why don’t you just go back behind your door like the good bogeyman that you are?’

‘Hah, he’s sayin’ where you’re disgracin’ the Old Country—’

‘Let go, please,’ said Angua. Her skin was white where Shlitzen was gripping her.

Cheery looked from the wrist to the bogeyman’s shoulder. Rangy though the creature was, muscles were strung along the arm like beads on a wire.

‘Hah, you wearin’ a
badge
,’ it sneered. ‘What’s a good we—?’

Angua moved so fast she was a blur. Her free hand pulled something from her belt and flipped it up and on to Shlitzen’s head. He stopped, and stood swaying back and forth gently, making faint moaning sounds. On his head, flopping down around his ears like the knotted hanky of a style-impaired seaside sunbather, was a small square of heavy material.

Angua pushed back her chair and grabbed the beermat. The shadowy figures around the walls were muttering.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said. ‘Igor, give us half a minute and then you can take the blanket off him. Come on.’

They hurried out. The fog had already turned the sun into a mere suggestion, but it was vivid daylight compared to the gloom in Biers.

‘What
happened
to him?’ said Cheery, running to keep up with Angua’s stride.

‘Existential uncertainty,’ Angua said. ‘He doesn’t know whether he exists or not. It’s cruel, I know, but it’s the only thing we’ve found that works against bogeymen.
Blue
fluffy blanket, for preference.’ She noted Cheery’s blank expression. ‘Look, bogeymen go away if you put your head under the blankets. Everyone knows that, don’t they? So if you put
their
head under a blanket …’

‘Oh, I see. Ooo, that’s
nasty
.’

‘He’ll feel all right in ten minutes.’ Angua skimmed the beermat across the alley.

‘What was he saying about a baron?’

‘I wasn’t really listening,’ said Angua carefully.

Cheery shivered in the fog, but not just from the cold. ‘He sounded like he came from Uberwald, like us. There was a baron who lived near us and he
hated
people to leave.’

‘Yes …’

‘The whole family were werewolves. One of them ate my second cousin.’

Angua’s memory spun in a hurry. Old meals came back to haunt her from the time before she’d said, no, this is not the way to live. A dwarf, a dwarf … No, she was pretty sure she’d never … The family had always made fun of her eating habits …

‘That’s why I can’t stand them,’ said Cheery. ‘Oh, people
say
they can be tamed but
I
say, once a wolf, always a wolf. You can’t trust them. They’re basically evil, aren’t they? They could go back to the wild at any moment, I say.’

‘Yes. You may be right.’

‘And the worst thing is, most of the time they walk around looking just like real people.’

Angua blinked, glad of the twin disguises of the fog and Cheery’s unquestioning confidence. ‘Come on. We’re nearly there.’

‘Where?’

‘We’re going to see someone who’s either our murderer or who knows who the murderer is.’

Cheery stopped. ‘But you’ve got only a sword and I haven’t even got that!’

‘Don’t worry, we won’t need weapons.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘They wouldn’t be any use.’

‘Oh.’

Vimes opened his door to see what all the shouting was about down in the office. The corporal manning – or in this case dwarfing – the desk was having trouble.

‘Again? How many times have you been killed this week?’

‘I was minding my own business!’ said the unseen complainer.

‘Stacking garlic? You’re a
vampire
, aren’t you? I mean, let’s see what jobs you have been doing … Post sharpener for a fencing firm, sunglasses tester for Argus opticians … Is it me, or is there some underlying trend here?’

‘Excuse me, Commander Vimes?’

Vimes looked round into a smiling face that
sought
only to do good in the world, even if the world had other things it wanted done.

‘Ah … Constable Visit, yes,’ he said hurriedly. ‘At the moment I’m afraid I’m rather busy, and I’m not even sure that I have got an immortal soul, ha-ha, and perhaps you could call again when …’

‘It’s about those words you asked me to check,’ said Visit reproachfully.

‘What words?’

‘The ones Father Tubelcek wrote in his own blood? You said to try and find out what they meant?’

‘Oh. Yes. Come on into my office.’ Vimes relaxed. This wasn’t going to be another one of those painful conversations about the state of his soul and the necessity of giving it a wash and brush-up before eternal damnation set in. This was going to be about something
important
.

‘It’s ancient Cenotine, sir. It’s out of one of their holy books, although of course when I say “holy” it is a fact that they were basically misguided in a …’

‘Yes, yes, I’m sure,’ said Vimes, sitting down. ‘Does it by any chance say “Mr X did it, aargh, aargh, aargh”?’

‘No, sir. That phrase does not appear anywhere in any known holy book, sir.’

‘Ah,’ said Vimes.

‘Besides, I looked at other documents in the room and the paper does not appear to be in the deceased’s handwriting, sir.’

Vimes brightened up. ‘Ah-ha! Someone else’s? Does it say something like “Take that, you bastard,
we’ve
been waiting ages to get you for what you did all those years ago”?’

‘No, sir. That phrase also does not appear in any holy book anywhere,’ said Constable Visit, and hesitated. ‘Except in the
Apocrypha
to
The Vengeful Testament of Offler
,’ he added conscientiously. ‘
These
words are from the Cenotine
Book of Truth
,’ he sniffed, ‘as they called it. It’s what their false god …’

‘Could I just perhaps have the words and leave out the comparative religion?’ said Vimes.

‘Very well, sir.’ Visit looked hurt, but unfolded a piece of paper and sniffed disparagingly. ‘These are some of the rules that their god allegedly gave to the first people after he’d baked them out of clay, sir. Rules like “Thou shalt labour fruitfully all the days of your life”, sir, and “Thou shalt not kill”, and “Thou shalt be humble”. That sort of thing.’

‘Is that all?’ said Vimes.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Visit.

‘They’re just religious quotations?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Any idea why it was in his mouth? Poor devil looked like he was having a last cigarette.’

‘No, sir.’

‘I could understand if it was one of the “smite your enemies” ones,’ said Vimes. ‘But that’s just saying “get on with your work and don’t make trouble”.’

‘Ceno was a rather liberal god, sir. Not big on commandments.’

‘Sounds almost decent, as gods go.’

Visit looked disapproving. ‘The Cenotines died through five hundred years of waging some of the bloodiest wars on the continent, sir.’

‘Spare the thunderbolts and spoil the congregation, eh?’ said Vimes.

‘Pardon, sir?’

‘Oh, nothing. Well thank you, Constable. I’ll, er, see that Captain Carrot is informed and, thank you once again, don’t let me keep you from—’

Vimes’s desperately accelerating voice was too late to prevent Visit pulling a roll of paper out of his breastplate.