The Fifth Elephant (4 page)

Of course he is, Vimes thought. He probably knows them all by name.

“You have to understand, sir, that there’s a sort of big debate going on,” said Carrot. “On how you define a dwarf.”

“Well,
some
people might say that they’re called dwarfs because—”

“No, sir. Not size. Nobby Nobbs is shorter than many dwarfs, and we don’t call
him
a dwarf.”

“We don’t call him a human, either,” said Vimes.

“And, of course, I am also a dwarf.”

“You know, Carrot, I keep meaning to talk to you about that—”

“Adopted by dwarfs, brought up by dwarfs…to dwarfs, I’m a dwarf, sir. I can do the rite of
k’zakra
, I know the secrets of
h’ragna
, I can
ha’lk
my
g’rakha
correctly…I am a dwarf.”

“What do those things mean?”

“I’m not allowed to tell non-dwarfs.” Carrot tactfully tried to stand out of the way of the cigar smoke. “Unfortunately, some of the mountain dwarfs think that dwarfs who have moved away aren’t proper dwarfs, either. But this time, the kingship has been swung by the views of the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs, and a lot of dwarfs back home don’t like it. There’s been a lot of bad feeling all round. Families falling out, that sort of thing. Much pulling of beards.”

“Really?” Vimes tried not to smile.

“It’s not funny if you’re a dwarf.”

“Sorry.”

“And I’m afraid this new Low King is only going to make matters worse, although of course I wish him well.”

“Tough, is he?”

“Er…I think you can assume, sir, that any dwarf who rises sufficiently in dwarf society to even be
considered
as a candidate for the kingship did not get there by singing the hi-ho song and bandaging wounded animals in the forest. But by dwarf standards, King Rhys Rhysson is a modern thinker, although I hear he doesn’t like Ankh-Morpork very much.”

“Sounds like a very clear thinker, too.”

“Anyway, this has upset a lot of the more, er, traditional mountain dwarfs who thought the next king would be Albrecht Albrechtson.”

“Who is
not
a modern thinker?”

“He thinks even coming up above ground is dangerously non-dwarfish.”

Vimes sighed. “Well, I can see there’s a problem, Carrot, but the thing about this problem, the key point, is that it’s not mine. Or yours, dwarf or not.” He tapped the Scone’s case.

“Replica, eh?” he said. “Sure it’s not the real one?”

“Sir! There is only one real Scone. We call it the ‘thing and the whole of the thing.’”

“Well, if it’s a good replica, who’d know?”

“Any dwarf would, sir.”

“Only joking.”

There was a hamlet down there, where two rivers met. There would be boats.

This was
working
. The slopes behind him were white and free of dark shapes. No matter how good they were, let them try to outswim a boat…

Hard-packed snow crunched under his feet. He staggered past the few rough hovels, saw the jetty, saw the boats, fought with the frozen rope that moored the nearest one, grabbed an oar and pushed himself out into the current.

There was still no movement on the hills.

Now, at last, he could take stock. It was a bigger boat than one man could handle, but all he had to do was fend off the banks. That’d do for tonight. In the morning he could leave it somewhere, perhaps ask someone to get a message through to the tower, and then he’d buy a horse and…

Behind him, under the tarpaulin in the bows, something started to growl.

They really were
very
clever.

In a castle not far away, the vampire Lady Margolotta sat quietly, leafing through
Twurp’s Peerage
.

It wasn’t a very good reference book for the countries on this side of the Ramtops, where the standard work was
The Almanac de Gothick
, in which she herself occupied almost four pages,
*
but if you needed to know who thought they were who in Ankh-Morpork it was invaluable.

Her copy was now bristling with bookmarks. She sighed and pushed it away.

Beside her was a fluted glass containing a red liquid. She took a sip, and made a face. Then she stared at the candlelight, and tried to think like Lord Vetinari.

How much did he suspect? How much news got back? The clacks tower had only been up for a month, and was being roundly denounced throughout Bonk as an intrusion. But it seemed to be doing a good if stealthy local traffic.

Who would he send?

His choice would tell her everything, she was sure. Someone like Lord Rust or Lord Selachii…well, she’d think a lot less of him if he sent someone like those. All that she had heard, and Lady Margolotta heard a lot of things, the Ankh-Morpork diplomatic corps as a whole could not find its backside with a map. Of course, it was good business for a diplomat to appear stupid, right up to the moment when he’d stolen your socks, but Lady Margolotta had met some of Ankh-Morpork’s finest and no one could act
that
well.

The growing howling outside began to get on her nerves. She rang for her butler.

“Yeth, mithtreth?” said Igor, materializing out of the shadows.

“Go and tell the children of the night to make wonderful music somewhere else, will you? I have a headache.”

“Indeed, mithtreth.”

Lady Margolotta yawned. It had been a long night. She’d think better after a good day’s sleep.

As she went to blow out the candle, she glanced at the book again. There was a marker in the
V
s.

But…surely even the Patrician couldn’t know
that
much…

She hesitated, and then pulled the bellpull above the coffin. Igor reappeared, in the way of Igors.

“Those keen young men at the clacks tower will be awake, won’t they?”

“Yeth, mithtreth.”

“Send a clacks to our agent asking for
everything
about Commander Vimes of the Watch, will you?”

“Ith he a diplomat, mithtreth?”

Lady Margolotta lay back. “No, Igor. He’s the
reason
for diplomats. Close the lid, will you?”

Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while
at the same time
listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases, such as “and they can deliver it tomorrow” or “so I’ve invited them for dinner” or “they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply.”

Lady Sybil was aware of this. Sam could coherently carry on an entire conversation while thinking about something completely different.

“I will tell Willikins to pack winter clothes,” she said, watching him. “It’ll be pretty cold up there at this time of year.”

“Yes. That’s a good idea.” Vimes continued to stare at a point just above the fireplace.

“We’ll have to host a party ourselves, I expect, so we ought to take a cartload of typical Ankh-Morpork food. Show the flag, you know. Do you think I should take a cook along?”

“Yes, dear. That would be a good idea. No one outside the city knows how to make a knuckle sandwich properly.”

Sybil was impressed. Ears operating entirely on automatic had nevertheless triggered the mouth into making a small but coherent contribution.

She said, “Do you think we ought to take the alligator with us?”

“Yes, that might be advisable.”

She watched his face. Small furrows formed on Vimes’s brow as the ears nudged the brain. He blinked.

“What alligator?”

“You were miles away, Sam. In Uberwald, I expect.”

“Sorry.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Why’s he sending
me
, Sybil?”

“I’m sure Havelock shares with me a conviction that you have hidden depths, Sam.”

Vimes sank gloomily into his armchair. It was, he felt, a persistent flaw in his wife’s otherwise practical and sensible character that she believed, against all evidence, that he was a man of many talents. He
knew
he had hidden depths. There was nothing in them that he’d like to see float to the surface. They contained things that should be left to lie.

There was also a nagging worry that he couldn’t quite pin down. Had he been able to, he might have expressed it like this: Policemen didn’t go on holiday. Where you got policemen, as Lord Vetinari was wont to remark, you got crime. So if he went to Bonk, however you pronounced the damn place, there
would
be a crime. It was something the world always laid on for policemen.

“It’ll be nice to see Serafine again,” said Sybil.

“Yes, indeed,” said Vimes.

In Bonk he would not, officially,
be
a policeman. He did not like this at all. He liked this even less than all the other things.

On the few occasions he’d been outside Ankh-Morpork and its surrounding fiefdom he’d either been going to other local cities where the Ankh-Morpork badge carried some weight, or he had been in hot pursuit, that most ancient and honorable of police procedures. From the way Carrot talked, in Bonk his badge would merely figure as extra roughage on someone’s menu.

His brow wrinkled again.

“Serafine?”

“Lady Serafine von Uberwald,” said Sybil. “Sergeant Angua’s mother? You remember me telling you last year? We were at finishing school together. Of course, we all knew she was a werewolf, but nobody would ever dream of talking about that sort of thing in those days. Well, you just
didn’t
. There was all that business over the ski instructor, of course, but I’m certain in my own mind that he must have fallen down some crevasse or other. She married the baron, and they live just outside Beyonk. I write to her with a little news every Hogswatch. A very old werewolf family.”

“A good pedigree,” said Vimes, absently.

“You know you wouldn’t like Angua to hear you say that, Sam. Don’t
worry
so. You’ll have a chance to relax, I’m sure. It will be good for you.”

“Yes, dear.”

“It’ll be like a second honeymoon,” said Sybil.

“Yes indeed,” said Vimes, remembering that what with one thing and another they’d never really had a first one.

“On that, er, subject,” said Sybil, a little more hesitantly, “you remember I told you I was going to see old Mrs. Content?”

“Oh yes, how is she?” Vimes was staring at the fireplace again. It wasn’t just old school friends, sometimes it seemed Sybil kept in touch with anyone she’d ever met.

Her Hogswatch card list ran to a second volume.

“Quite well, I believe. Anyway, she agrees that—”

There was a knocking at the door.

She sighed. “It’s Willikins’s evening off,” she said. “You’d better answer it, Sam. I know you want to…”

“I’ve told them
not
to disturb me unless it’s serious,” said Vimes, getting up.

“Yes, but you think all crime is serious, Sam.”

Carrot was on the doorstep.

“It’s a bit…political, sir,” he said.

“What’s so political at a quarter to ten at night, Captain?”

“The Dwarf Bread Museum’s been broken into, sir,” said Carrot.

Vimes looked into his honest blue eyes.

“A thought occurs to me, Captain,” he said, slowly. “And the thought is: A certain item has gone missing.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“And it’s the replica Scone.”

“Yes, sir. Either they broke in just after we left, or,” Carrot licked his lips nervously, “they were hiding while we were there.”

“Not rats, then.”

“No, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Vimes fastened his cloak and took his helmet off its peg.

“So someone has stolen a replica of the Scone of Stone a few weeks before the real one is due to be used in a very important ceremony,” he said. “I find this intriguing.”

“That’s what I thought too, sir.”

Vimes sighed. “I
hate
the political ones.”

When they’d gone, Lady Sybil sat for a while staring at her hands. Then she took a lamp into the library and pulled down a slim volume, bound in white leather on which had been embossed in gold the words
OUR WEDDING
.

It had been a strange event. Ankh-Morpork’s high society—so high that it’s stinking, Sam always said—had turned up mostly out of curiosity. She was Ankh-Morpork’s most eligible spinster who’d never thought she’d be married, and he was a mere captain of the guard who tended to annoy a lot of people.

And here were the iconographs of the event. There she was, looking rather more expansive than radiant, and there Sam was, scowling at the camera with his hair hastily smoothed down. There was Sergeant Colon with his chest inflated so much his feet had almost left the ground, and Nobby grinning widely or perhaps just making a face, it was so hard to tell with Nobby.

Sybil turned over the pages with care. She had put a sheet of tissue between each one, to protect them.

In many ways, she told herself, she
was
very lucky. She was very proud of Sam. He worked hard for a lot of people. He cared about people who weren’t important. He always had far more to cope with than was good for him. He was the most
civilized
man she’d ever met. Not a gentleman, thank goodness, but a gentle man.

She never really knew what it was he
did
. Oh, she knew what the
job
was, but by all accounts he didn’t spend much time behind his desk. He tended to drop his clothes into the laundry basket before he eventually came to bed, so she’d only hear later from the laundry girl about the bloodstains and the mud. There were rumors of chases over rooftops, hand-to-hand and knee-to-groin fights with men who had names like Harry “The Boltcutter” Weems…

There was a Sam Vimes she knew, who went out and came home again, and out there was another Sam Vimes who hardly belonged to her and lived in the same world as all those men with the dreadful names…

Sybil Ramkin had been brought up to be thrifty, thoughtful, genteel in an outdoor sort of way, and to think kindly of people.