Feet of Clay (21 page)

‘What did they say?’ said Vimes.

Drumknott looked up thoughtfully. ‘Let me see, now … “It was you wot done it, own up, everybody seen you, we got lots of people say you done it, you done it all right didn’t you, own up.” That was, I think, the general approach. And then, I said it wasn’t me and that seemed to puzzle the officer concerned.’

Drumknott delicately licked his finger and turned a page.

Vimes stared at him.

The sound of saws was brisk on the morning air. Captain Carrot knocked against the timber-yard door, which was eventually opened.

‘Good morning, sir!’ he said. ‘I understand you have a golem here?’

‘Had,’ said the timber merchant.

‘Oh dear, another one,’ said Angua.

That made four so far. The one in the foundry had knelt under a hammer, the one in the stonemason’s yard was now ten clay toes sticking out from under a two-ton block of limestone, one working in the docks had last been seen in the river, striding towards the sea, and now this one …

‘It was weird,’ said the merchant, thumping the golem’s chest. ‘Sidney said it went on sawing all the way up to the moment it sawed its head right off. I’ve got a load of ash planking got to go out this afternoon. Who’s going to saw it up, may I ask?’

Angua picked up the golem’s head. Insofar as it had any expression at all, it was one of intense concentration.

‘’ere,’ said the merchant, ‘Alf told me he heard in the Drum last night that golems have been murderin’ people …’

‘Enquiries are continuing,’ said Carrot. ‘Now then, Mr … it’s Preble Skink, isn’t it? Your brother runs the lamp-oil shop in Cable Street? And your daughter is a maid at the university?’

The man looked astonished. But Carrot knew everyone.

‘Yeah …’

‘Did your golem leave the yard yesterday evening?’

‘Well, yeah, early on … Something about a holy day.’ He looked nervously from one to the
other
. ‘You got to let them go, otherwise the words in their heads—’

‘And then it came back and worked all night?’

‘Yeah. What else would it do? And then Alf came in on early turn and he said it came up outa the saw pit, stood there for a moment, and then …’

‘Was it sawing pine logs yesterday?’ said Angua.

‘That’s right. Where’m I going to get another golem at short notice, may I ask?’

‘What’s this?’ said Angua. She picked up a wood-framed square from a heap of sawdust. ‘This was its slate, was it?’ She handed it to Carrot.

‘“Thou Shalt Not Kill,”’ Carrot read slowly. ‘“Clay of My Clay. Ashamed.” Do you have any idea why it’d write that?’

‘Search me,’ said Skink. ‘They’re always doing dumb things.’ He brightened up a bit. ‘Hey, perhaps it went potty? Get it? Clay … pot … potty?’

‘Extremely funny,’ said Carrot gravely. ‘I will take this as evidence. Good morning.

‘Why did you ask about pine logs?’ he said to Angua as they stepped outside.

‘I smelled the same pine resin in the cellar.’

‘Pine resin’s just pine resin, isn’t it?’

‘No. Not to me. That golem
was
in there.’

‘They all were,’ sighed Carrot. ‘And now they’re committing suicide.’

‘You can’t take life you haven’t got,’ said Angua.

‘What shall we call it, then? “Destruction of property”?’ said Carrot. ‘Anyway, we can’t ask them now …’ He tapped the slate.

‘They’ve given us the answers,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we can find out what the questions should have been.’

‘What do you mean, “nothing”?’ said Vimes. ‘It’s got to be the book! He licks his fingers to turn a page, and every day he gets a little dose of arsenic! Fiendishly clever!’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Cheery, backing away. ‘I can’t find a trace. I’ve used all the tests I know.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I could send it up to the Unseen University. They’ve built a new morphic resonator in the High Energy Magic Building. Magic would easily—’

‘Don’t do that,’ said Vimes. ‘We’ll keep the wizards out of this. Damn! For half an hour there I really thought I’d got it …’

He sat down at his desk. Something new was odd about the dwarf, but again he couldn’t quite work out what it was.

‘We’re missing something here, Littlebottom,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let’s look at the facts. If you want to poison someone slowly you’ve either got to give them small doses all the time – or, at least, every day. We’ve covered everything the Patrician does. It can’t be the air in the room. You and I have been in there every day. It’s not the food, we’re pretty sure of that. Is something stinging him? Can you poison a wasp? What we need—’

‘’scuse me, sir.’

Vimes turned.

‘Detritus? I thought you were off-duty?’

‘I got dem to give me der address of dat maid called Easy like you said,’ said Detritus, stoically. ‘I went up dere and dere was people all lookin’ in.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Neighbours and dat. Cryin’ women all round der door. An’ I remember what you said about dat dipplo word—’

‘Diplomacy,’ said Vimes.

‘Yeah. Not shoutin’ at people an’ dat. I fought, dis look a delicate situation. Also, dey was throwin’ stuff at me. So I came back here. I writ down der address. An’ now I’m goin’ home.’ He saluted, rocked slightly from the force of the blow to the side of his head, and departed.

‘Thanks, Detritus,’ said Vimes. He looked at the paper written in the troll’s big round hand.

‘1st Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street,’ he said. ‘Good grief!’

‘You know it, sir?’

‘Should do. I was born in that street,’ said Vimes. ‘It’s down below the Shades. Easy … Easy … Yes …
Now I
remember. There was a Mrs Easy down the road. Skinny woman. Did a lot of sewing. Big family. Well, we were all big families, it was the only way to keep warm …’

He frowned at the paper. It wasn’t as if it were any particular lead. Maidservants were always going off to see their mothers, every time there was the least little family upset. What was it his granny
had
used to say? ‘Yer son’s yer son till he takes a wife, but yer daughter’s yer daughter all yer life.’ Sending a Watchman around would almost certainly be a waste of everyone’s time …

‘Well, well … Cockbill Street,’ he said. He stared at the paper again.
You might as well rename the place Memory Lane
. No, you couldn’t waste Watch resources on a wild-goose chase like that. But he might look in. On his way past. Some time today.

‘Er … Littlebottom?’

‘Sir?’

‘On your … your lips. Red. Er. On your lips …’

‘Lipstick, sir.’

‘Oh … er. Lipstick? Fine. Lipstick.’

‘Constable Angua gave it to me, sir.’

‘That was kind of her,’ said Vimes. ‘I expect.’

It was called the Rats Chamber. In theory this was because of the decoration; some former resident of the palace had thought that a fresco of dancing rats would be a real decorative coup. There was a pattern of rats woven in the carpet. On the ceiling rats danced in a circle, their tails intertwining at the centre. After half an hour in that room, most people wanted a wash.

Soon, then, there would be a big rush on the hot water. The room was filling up fast.

By common consent the chair was taken and amply filled by Mrs Rosemary Palm, head of the
Guild
of Seamstresses
¹⁵
, as one of the most senior guild leaders.

‘Quiet, please! Gentlemen!’

The noise level subsided a little.

‘Dr Downey?’ she said.

The head of the Assassins’ Guild nodded. ‘My friends, I think we are all aware of the situation—’ he began.

‘Yeah, so’s your accountant!’ said a voice in the crowd. There was a ripple of nervous laughter but it didn’t last long, because you don’t laugh too loud at someone who knows exactly how much you’re worth dead.

Dr Downey smiled. ‘I can assure you once again, gentlemen – and ladies – that I am aware of no engagement regarding Lord Vetinari. In any case, I cannot imagine that an Assassin would use poison in this case. His lordship spent some time at the Assassins’ school. He knows the uses of caution. No doubt he will recover.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’ said Mrs Palm.

‘No one lives forever,’ said Dr Downey, in the calm voice of a man who personally knew this to be true. ‘Then, no doubt, we’ll get a new ruler.’

The room went very silent.

The word ‘Who?’ hovered silently above every head.

‘Thing is … the thing is …’ said Gerhardt Sock, head of the Butchers’ Guild, ‘it’s been …
you’ve
got to admit it … it’s been … well, think about some of the others …’

The words ‘Lord Snapcase, now … at least this one isn’t actually insane’ flickered in the group consciousness.

‘I have to admit,’ said Mrs Palm, ‘that under Vetinari it has certainly been safer to walk the streets—’

‘You should know, madam,’ said Mr Sock. Mrs Palm gave him an icy look. There were a few sniggers.

‘
I meant
that a modest payment to the Thieves’ Guild is all that is required for perfect safety,’ she finished.

‘And, indeed, a man may visit a house of ill—’

‘Negotiable hospitality,’ said Mrs Palm quickly.

‘Indeed, and be quite confident of not waking up stripped stark naked and beaten black and blue,’ said Sock.

‘Unless his tastes run that way,’ said Mrs Palm. ‘We aim to give satisfaction. Very accurately, if required.’

‘Life has certainly been more reliable under Vetinari,’ said Mr Potts of the Bakers’ Guild.

‘He does have all street-theatre players and mime artists thrown into the scorpion pit,’ said Mr Boggis of the Thieves’ Guild.

‘True. But let’s not forget that he has his bad points too. The man is capricious.’

‘You think so? Compared to the ones we had before he’s as reliable as a rock.’

‘Snapcase was reliable,’ said Mr Sock gloomily. ‘Remember when he made his horse a city councillor?’

‘You’ve got to admit it wasn’t a
bad
councillor. Compared to some of the others.’

‘As I recall, the others at that time were a vase of flowers, a heap of sand and three people who had been beheaded.’

‘Remember all those fights? All the little gangs of thieves fighting all the time? It got so that there was hardly any energy left to actually steal things,’ said Mr Boggis.

‘Things are indeed more … reliable now.’

Silence descended again. That was it, wasn’t it? Things were reliable now. Whatever else you said about old Vetinari, he made sure today was always followed by tomorrow. If you were murdered in your bed, at least it would be by arrangement.

‘Things were more exciting under Lord Snapcase,’ someone ventured.

‘Yes, right up until the point when your head fell off.’

‘The trouble is,’ said Mr Boggis, ‘that the job
makes
people mad. You take some chap who’s no worse than any of us and after a few months he’s talking to moss and having people flayed alive.’

‘Vetinari isn’t mad.’

‘Depends how you look at it. No one can be as sane as he is without being mad.’

‘I am only a weak woman,’ said Mrs Palm, to the personal disbelief of several present, ‘but it does
seem
to me that there’s an opportunity here. Either there’s a long struggle to sort out a successor, or we sort it out now. Yes?’

The guild leaders tried to look at one another while simultaneously avoiding everyone else’s glances. Who’d be Patrician now? Once there’d have been a huge multi-sided power struggle, but now …

You got the power, but you got the problems, too. Things had changed. These days, you had to negotiate and juggle with all the conflicting interests. No one sane had tried to kill Vetinari for
years
, because the world with him in it was just preferable to one without him.

Besides … Vetinari had tamed Ankh-Morpork. He’d tamed it like a dog. He’d taken a minor scavenger among scavengers and lengthened its teeth and strengthened its jaws and built up its muscles and studded its collar and fed it lean steak and then he’d aimed it at the throat of the world.

He’d taken all the gangs and squabbling groups and made them see that a small slice of the cake on a regular basis was better by far than a bigger slice with a dagger in it. He’d made them see that it was better to take a small slice but
enlarge the cake
.

Ankh-Morpork, alone of all the cities of the plains, had opened its gates to dwarfs and trolls (alloys are stronger, Vetinari had said). It had worked. They made things. Often they made trouble, but mostly they made wealth. As a result, although Ankh-Morpork still had many enemies, those enemies had to finance their armies with
borrowed
money. Most of it was borrowed from Ankh-Morpork, at punitive interest. There hadn’t been any really big wars for years. Ankh-Morpork had made them unprofitable.

Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: ‘Do not fight, or we will kill you.’ The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: ‘If you fight, we’ll call in your mortgages. And incidentally, that’s
my
pike you’re pointing at me. I paid for that shield you’re holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.’

And now the whole machine, which whirred away so quietly that people had forgotten it was a machine at all and thought that it was just the way the world worked, had given a lurch.

The guild leaders examined their thoughts and decided that what they did not want was power. What they wanted was that tomorrow should be pretty much like today.

‘There’s the dwarfs,’ said Mr Boggis. ‘Even if one of us – not that I’m saying it would be one of us, of course – even if
someone
took over, what about the dwarfs? We get someone like Snapcase again, there’s going to be chopped kneecaps in the streets.’

‘You’re not suggesting we have some sort of …
vote
, are you? Some kind of
popularity
contest?’

‘Oh, no. It’s just … it’s just … all more complicated now. And power goes to people’s heads.’

‘And then other people’s heads fall off.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep on saying that,
whoever
you are,’ said Mrs Palm. ‘Anyone would think
you’d
had your head cut off.’