Feet of Clay (31 page)

Wee Mad Arthur peered over the edge of the wall. Somewhere below Colon, two red eyes stared up at him.

‘Heavy, is it?’

‘’S!’

‘Kick it with your other foot!’

There was a sucking sound. Colon winced. Then there was a plop, a moment of silence, and a loud crash of pottery down in the street.

‘The boot it was holding came off,’ moaned Colon.

‘How did that happen?’

‘It got … lubricated …’

Wee Mad Arthur tugged at a finger. ‘Up yez come, then.’

‘Can’t.’

‘Why not? It ain’t holding on to yez no more.’

‘Arms tired. Another ten seconds and I’m gonna be a chalk outline …’

‘Nah, no one’s got that much chalk.’ Wee Mad Arthur knelt down so that his head was level with Colon’s eyes. ‘If you gonna die, d’yez mind signing a chitty to say yez promised me a dollar?’

Down below, there was a chink of pottery shards.

‘What was that?’ said Colon. ‘I thought the damn thing smashed up …’

Wee Mad Arthur looked down. ‘D’yez believe in that reincarnation stuff, Mr Colon?’ he said.

‘You wouldn’t get me touching that foreign muck,’ said Colon.

‘Well, it’s putting itself together. Like one of them jiggling saw puzzles.’

‘Well done, Wee Mad Arthur,’ said Colon. ‘But I know you’re just saying that so’s I’ll make the effort to haul meself up, right? Statues don’t go putting themselves back together when they’re smashed up.’

‘Please yezself. It’s done nearly a whole leg already.’

Colon managed to peer down through the small and smelly space between the wall and his armpit. All he could see were shreds of fog and a faint glow.

‘You sure?’ he said.

‘Yez run around rat holes, yez learns to see good in the dark,’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘Otherwise yez dead.’

Something hissed, somewhere below Colon’s feet.

With his one booted foot and his toes he scrabbled at the brickwork.

‘It’s having a wee bit o’ trouble,’ said Wee Mad Arthur conversationally. ‘Looks like it’s put its knees on wrong way round.’

Dorfl sat hunched in the abandoned cellar where the golems had met. Occasionally the golem raised its head and hissed. Red light spilled from its eyes. If something had streamed back down through the glow, soared through the eye-sockets into the red sky beyond, there would be …

Dorfl huddled under the glow of the universe. Its murmur was a long way off, muted, nothing to do with Dorfl.

The Words stood around the horizon, reaching all the way to the sky.

And a voice said quietly, ‘You own yourself.’ Dorfl saw the scene again and again, saw the concerned face, hand reaching up, filling its vision, felt the sudden icy knowledge …

‘… Own yourself.’

It echoed off the Words, and then rebounded, and then rolled back and forth, increasing in volume until the little world between the Words was gripped in the sound.

Golem Must Have a Master.
The letters towered against the world, but the echoes poured around them, blasting like a sandstorm. Cracks started and then ran, zigzagging across the stone, and then—

The Words exploded. Great slabs of them, mountain-sized, crashed in showers of red sand.

The universe poured in. Dorfl felt the universe pick it up and bowl it over and then lift it off its feet and up …

… and now the golem was
among
the universe. It could feel it all around, the purr of it, the
busyness
, the spinning complexity of it, the roar …

There were no Words between you and It.

You belonged to It, It belonged to you.

You couldn’t turn your back on It because there It was, in front of you.

Dorfl was responsible for every tick and swerve of It.

You couldn’t say, ‘I had orders.’ You couldn’t say, ‘It’s not fair.’ No one was listening. There were no Words. You
owned
yourself.

Dorfl orbited a pair of glowing suns and hurtled off again.

Not
Thou Shalt Not
. Say
I Will Not
.

Dorfl tumbled through the red sky, then saw a dark hole ahead. The golem felt it dragging at him, and streamed down through the glow and the hole grew larger and sped across the edges of Dorfl’s vision …

The golem opened his eyes.

NO MASTER!

Dorfl unfolded in one movement and stood upright. He reached out one arm and extended a finger.

The golem pushed the finger easily into the wall where the argument had taken place, and then dragged it carefully through the splintering brick-work. It took him a couple of minutes but it was something Dorfl felt needed to be said.

Dorfl completed the last letter and poked a row of three dots after it. Then the golem walked away, leaving behind:

NO MASTER …

A blue overcast from the cigars hid the ceiling of the smoking-room.

‘Ah, yes. Captain Carrot,’ said a chair. ‘Yes … indeed … but … is he the right man?’

‘’S got a birthmark shaped like a crown. I seen it,’ said Nobby helpfully.

‘But his background …’

‘He was raised by dwarfs,’ said Nobby. He waved his brandy glass at a waiter. ‘Same again, mister.’

‘I shouldn’t think dwarfs could raise anyone very high,’ said another chair. There was a hint of laughter.

‘Rumours and folklore,’ someone murmured.

‘This is a large and busy and above all complex city. I’m afraid that having a sword and a birthmark are not much in the way of qualifications. We would need a king from a lineage that is
used
to command.’

‘Like yours, my lord.’

There was a sucking, draining noise as Nobby attacked the fresh glass of brandy. ‘Oh, I’m used to command, all right,’ he said, lowering the glass. ‘People are always orderin’ me around.’

‘We would need a king who had the support of the great families and major guilds of the city.’

‘People
like
Carrot,’ said Nobby.

‘Oh, the
people
…’

‘Anyway, whoever got the job’d have his work cut out,’ said Nobby. ‘Ole Vetinari’s always
pushin
’ paper. What kinda fun is that? ’S no life, sittin’ up all hours, worryin’, never a moment to yerself.’ He held out the empty glass. ‘Same again, my old mate. Fill it right up this time, eh? No sense in havin’ a great big glass and only sloshin’a bit in the bottom, is there?’

‘Many people prefer to savour the bouquet,’ said a quietly horrified chair. ‘They enjoy sniffing it.’

Nobby looked at his glass with the red-veined eyes of one who’d heard rumours about what the upper crust got up to. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’ll go on stickin’ it in my mouth, if it’s all the same to you.’

‘If we may get to the
point
,’ said another chair, ‘a
king
would
not
have to spend every moment running the city. He would of course have people to do that. Advisors. Counsellors. People of experience.’

‘So what’d he have to do?’ said Nobby.

‘He’d have to reign,’ said a chair.

‘Wave.’

‘Preside at banquets.’

‘Sign things.’

‘Guzzle good brandy disgustingly.’

‘
Reign
.’

‘Sounds like a good job to me,’ said Nobby. ‘All right for some, eh?’

‘Of course, a king would have to be someone who could recognize a hint if it was dropped on his head from a great height,’ said a speaker sharply, but the other chairs shushed him into silence.

Nobby managed to find his mouth after several goes and took another long pull at his cigar. ‘Seems to me,’ he said, ‘seems to
me
, what you want to do is
find
some nob with time on his hands and say, “Yo, it’s your lucky day. Let’s see you wave that hand.”’

‘Ah!
That’s
a good idea! Does any name cross your mind, my lord? Have a drop more brandy.’

‘Why, thanks, you’re a toff. O’ course, so ’m I, eh? That’s right, flunkey, all the way to the top. No, can’t think of anyone that fits the bill.’

‘In fact, my lord, we were indeed thinking of offering the crown to you—’

Nobby’s eyes bulged. And then his cheek bulged.

It is not a good idea to spray finest brandy across the room, especially when your lighted cigar is in the way. The flame hit the far wall, where it left a perfect chrysanthemum of scorched woodwork, while in accordance with a fundamental rule of physics Nobby’s chair screamed back on its castors and thudded into the door.

‘King?’ Nobby coughed, and then they had to slap him on the back until he got his breath again. ‘King?’ he wheezed. ‘And have Mr Vimes cut me head off?’

‘All the brandy you can drink, my lord,’ said a wheedling voice.

‘’S no good if you ain’t got a throat for it to go down!’

‘What’re you talking about?’

‘Mr Vimes’d go spare! He’d go
spare
!’

‘Good heavens, man—’

‘My lord,’ someone corrected.

‘My lord, I mean – when you’re
king
you can tell that wretched Sir Samuel what to do. You’ll be, as you would call it, “the boss”. You could—’

‘Tell ole Stoneface what to do?’ said Nobby.

‘That’s right!’

‘I’d be a king and tell ole Stoneface what to do?’ said Nobby.

‘Yes!’

Nobby stared into the smoky gloom.

‘He’d go
spare
!’

‘Listen, you silly little man—’

‘
My lord
—’

‘You silly little lord, you’d be able to have him executed if you wished!’

‘I couldn’t do that!’

‘Why not?’

‘He’d go spare!’

‘The man calls himself an officer of the law, and whose law does he listen to, eh? Where does his law come from?’

‘
I
don’t know!’ groaned Nobby. ‘He says it comes up through his boots!’ He looked around. The shadows in the smoke seemed to be closing in.

‘I can’t be king! Ole Vimes’d go spare!’

‘
Will you stop saying that!
’

Nobby pulled at his collar.

‘’S a bit hot and smoky in here,’ he mumbled. ‘Which way’s the window?’

‘Over there—’

The chair rocked. Nobby hit the glass helmet-first, landed on top of a waiting carriage, bounced off and ran into the night, trying to escape destiny in general and axes in particular.

Cheri Littlebottom strode into the palace kitchens and fired her crossbow into the ceiling.

‘Don’t nobody move!’ she yelled.

The Patrician’s domestic staff looked up from their dinner.

‘When you say don’t
nobody
move,’ said Drumknott carefully, fastidiously taking a piece of plaster off his plate, ‘do you in fact mean—’

‘All right, Corporal, I’ll take over now,’ said Vimes, patting Cheri on the shoulder. ‘Is Mildred Easy here?’

All heads turned.

Mildred’s spoon dropped into her soup.

‘It’s all right,’ said Vimes. ‘I just need to ask you a few more questions—’

‘I’m … s-s-sorry, sir—’

‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’ said Vimes, walking around the table. ‘But you didn’t just take food home for your family, did you?’

‘S-sir?’

‘What
else
did you take?’

Mildred looked at the suddenly blank expressions on the faces of the other servants. ‘There was the old sheets but Mrs Dipplock did
s-say
I could have—’

‘No, not that,’ said Vimes.

Mildred licked her dry lips. ‘Er, there was … there was some boot polish …’

‘Look,’ said Vimes, as kindly as possible, ‘
everyone
takes small things from the place where they work. Small stuff that no one notices. No one thinks of it as stealing. It’s like … it’s like
rights
.
Odds
and ends. Ends, Miss Easy? I’m thinking about the word “ends”.’

‘Er … you mean … the candle ends, sir?’

Vimes took a deep breath. It was such a relief to be right, even though you knew you’d only got there by trying every possible way to be wrong. ‘
Ah
,’ he said.

‘B-but that’s not stealing, sir. I’ve never stolen nothing, s-sir!’

‘But you take home the candle stubs? Still half an hour of light in ’em, I expect, if you burn them in a saucer?’ said Vimes gently.

‘But that’s not stealing, sir! That’s
perks
, sir.’

Sam Vimes smacked his forehead. ‘Perks! Of course!
That
was the word I was looking for. Perks! Everyone’s got to have perks, aren’t I right? Well, that’s fine, then,’ he said. ‘I expect you get the ones from the bedrooms, yes?’

Even through her nervousness, Mildred Easy was able to grin the grin of someone with an Entitlement that lesser beings hadn’t got. ‘Yessir. I’m
allowed
, sir. They’re much better than the ole coarse ones we use in the main halls, sir.’

‘And you put in fresh candles when necessary, do you?’

‘Yessir.’

Probably slightly more often than necessary
, Vimes thought.
No point in letting them burn down
too
much
…

‘Perhaps you can show me where they’re kept, miss?’

The maid looked along the table to the housekeeper, who glanced at Commander Vimes and then nodded. She was bright enough to know when something that sounded like a question really wasn’t one.

‘We keep them in the candle pantry next door, sir,’ said Mildred.

‘Lead the way, please.’

It wasn’t a big room, but its shelves were stacked floor-to-ceiling with candles. There were the yard-high ones used in the public halls and the small everyday ones used everywhere else, sorted according to quality.

‘These are what we uses in his lordship’s rooms, sir.’ She handed him twelve inches of white candle.

‘Oh, yes …
very
good quality. Number Fives. Nice white tallow,’ said Vimes, tossing it up and down. ‘We burn these at home. The stuff we use at the Yard is damn near pork dripping. We get ours from Carry’s in the Shambles now.
Very
reasonable prices. We used to deal with Spadger and Williams but Mr Carry’s really cornered the market these days, hasn’t he?’

‘Yessir. And he delivers ’em special, sir.’

‘And you put these candles in his lordship’s room every day?’

‘Yessir.’

‘Anywhere else?’