Thud (26 page)

“No, Sergeant Angua!”

“You don’t? I was probably mistaken then, was I?” The points pressed a little harder. In the man’s mind, steely talons were about to pierce his jugular.

“Couldn’t say for sure, Sergeant Angua!”

“My nerves are a tad stretched right now!” Angua howled.

“Hadn’t noticed, Sergeant Angua!”

“We’re all a little bit on edge at the moment, wouldn’t you say!”

“That’s ever so true, Sergeant Angua!”

Angua let the man’s boot reach the ground. She put two black, shiny, and noticeably
pointed
heels into his unresisting hands.

“Could you do me a really big favor, please, and take these back up to the Pink PussyCat Club?” she said sweetly. “They belong to someone called Sherilee, I think. Thank you.”

She turned and looked over to the duty desk, where Carrot was watching her with his mouth open. Well aware of the stir she was causing, she walked up to the desk past an audience of shocked faces and threw a muddy necklace down onto the open Incident Book.

“Four dwarfs murdered by other dwarfs, down in the Long Dark,” she said. “I’ll bet my nose on it. That belonged to one of them. He’d also got this.” A muddy envelope was dropped by the necklace. “It’s pretty slimy, but you can read it. Mister Vimes is going to go postal.” She looked up into the blue eyes of Carrot. “Where is he?”

“Sleeping on a mattress in his office,” said Carrot, and shrugged. “Lady Sybil knew he wouldn’t go home, so she got Willikins to make up a bed down here. Are you two all right?”

“Fine, sir,” said Sally.

“I was getting very worried—” Carrot began.

“Four dead dwarfs, Captain,” said Angua. “City dwarfs. That’s what you should be worrying about. Three half-buried, this one crawled away.”

Carrot picked up the necklace and read the runes.

“Lars Legstrong,” he said. “I think I know the family. Are you sure he was murdered?”

“Throat cut. It’d be hard to call it suicide. But he took some time to die. He made it to one of their damn doors, which they’d locked shut, and scrawled one of their signs on it in his own blood. Then he sat down and waited to die in the dark. In the damn dark, Carrot! They were working dwarfs! They had shovels and wheelbarrows! They were down there doing a job, and when they weren’t needed anymore they got the chop! Hacked down and left for the mud! He might even still have been alive down there when Mister Vimes and I went in. Behind their bloody thick door, dying by inches. And do you know what
this
means?”

She pulled a folded piece of card out of her bodice and passed it over.

“A drinks menu?” said Carrot.

“Open it,” snapped Angua. “I’m sorry it’s written in lipstick, it was all we could find.”

Carrot flipped it open. “Another dark symbol?” he said. “I don’t think I know this one.”

There were other dwarf officers in the office. Carrot held up the symbol.

“Does anyone here know what this means?”

A few helmeted heads shook, and a few dwarfs backed away, but a deep voice from the doorway said: “Yes, Captain Carrot. I suspect I do. Does it look like an eye with a tail?”

“Yes…er…sir?” said Carrot, staring. A shadow moved.

“It was drawn in the dark? By a dying dwarf? In his own blood? It is the Summoning Dark, Captain, and it will be
moving.
Good morning to you. I am Mr. Shine.”

Carrot’s jaw dropped as the watchmen turned to look at the newcomer. He loomed in the doorway, almost as broad as he was tall, in a black cloak and hood that hid any possible feature.

“
The
Mr. Shine?” he said.

“Regrettably so, Captain, and can I charge you to see that no one in this room leaves for a few minutes after I do? I like to keep my movements…private.”

“I didn’t think you were real, sir!”

“Believe me, young man, I wish it were possible to keep you in that happy state,” said the hooded figure. “However, my hand is forced.”

Mr. Shine stepped forward, pulling a rangy figure into the room. It was a troll, whose look of sullen defiance did not quite manage to conceal knee-knocking terror.

“This is Brick, Captain. I deliver him back into the
personal
custody of your Sergeant Detritus. He has information of use to you. I have heard his story. I believe him. You must move fast. The Summoning Dark may already have found a champion. What else…oh yes, be sure not to keep that symbol in a dark place. Keep light around it at all times. And now, if you will excuse the theatricals—”

The black robe twitched. Hard, white,
blinding
light filled the room for a second. When it had gone, so had Mr. Shine. All that was left was a large, round stone on the stained floor.

Carrot blinked, and then pulled himself together.

“All right, you heard,” he said to the suddenly animated room at large. “No one is to follow Mr. Shine, understood?”

“Follow
him
, Captain?” said a dwarf. “We’re not mad, you know!”

“Dat’s right,” said a troll. “Dey say he can reach inside o’ you an’ stop your heart!”

“Mr. Shine?” said Angua. “Is he what they’ve been writing about on the walls?”

“It looks like that,” said Carrot shortly. “And he said we don’t have much time. Mr…. Brick, was it?”

While Chrysophrase’s trolls had contrived to swagger while standing still, Brick just managed to huddle all alone. You usually need two to huddle, but here was a troll trying to hide behind himself. No one could hide behind Brick; for a troll, he was stick-thin to the point of knobbliness. His lichen was cheap and matted, not the real thing at all, probably the stuff they made up out of broccoli stalks in the back alleys of Quarry Lane. His belt of skulls was a disgrace; some of them were clearly the papier-mâché kind that could be bought from any joke shop. One had a red nose.

He looked around nervously, and there was a thud as his club dropped from his fingers.

“I’m in deep copro, right?” he said.

“Certainly we need to talk to you,” said Carrot. “Do you want a lawyer?”

“No, I ate already.”

“You
eat
lawyers?” said Carrot.

Brick gave him an empty stare until sufficient brain had been mustered.

“What d’y’call dem fings, dey kinda crumble when you eat dem?” he ventured.

Carrot looked at Detritus and Angua, to see if there was going to be any help there.

“
Could
be lawyers,” he conceded.

“Dey go soggy if you dips ’em in somfing,” said Brick, as if undertaking a forensic examination.

“More likely to be biscuits, then?” Carrot suggested.

“Could be. Inna packet wi’ all paper on. Yeah, biscuits.”

“What I meant,” said Carrot, “was when we talk to you, do you want someone to be on your side?”

“Yes please. Everyone,” said Brick promptly. To be the center of attention in a room full of watchmen was his worst nightmare. No, hold on, what about dat time when he had dat bad Slab wot had bin cut wi’ ammonium nitrate? Whooo! Good-bye lobes! Yep! Den dis was his second worst nightmar—no, come to fink of it, dere was dis time when he had dat stuff wot Hardcore jacked off’f One-Eyed Goddam, whee, yes! Who knows where
dat
has bin! All dem dancin’ teef! So dis was his—hey, wait, remember dat time you got lunched on Scrape an’ your arms flew away? Okay, dat was bad, so maybe
dis
was his…wait, wait, of course, can’t be forgetting der day when you got baked on Sliver and blew powdered zinc up you nose an’ thought you’d thrown up your feet? Aargh, here come dat time again when you’d, aargh no, when you’d, aargh—

Brick had got as far as his nineteenth worst nightmare before Carrot’s voice cut through the snakes.

“Mr. Brick?”

“Er…is dat still me?” said Brick nervously. He could really, really do some Slab right now…

“Generally your advocate is one person,” said Carrot. “We’re going to have to ask you some difficult questions. You’re allowed to have someone to help you. Perhaps you have a friend we could fetch?”

Brick pondered this. The only people he could think of in this context were Totally Slag and Big Marble, although more correctly they fell into the category of “people dat don’t fro fings at me much and let me glom a bit o’ Slab sometimes” Right now, these did not seem ideal qualifications.

He pointed to Sergeant Detritus.

“Him,” he said. “He helped me find my teef.”

“I’m not sure a serving officer is—” Carrot began.

“I’ll volunteer for the role, Captain,” said a little voice. Carrot peered over the edge of the desk.

“Mr. Pessimal? I don’t think you should be out of bed.”

“Uh…I am, in fact, acting lance constable, Captain,” said A.E. Pessimal, politely yet firmly. He was on crutches.

“Oh? Er…right,” said Carrot. “But, I still think you shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“Nevertheless, justice must be served,” said A. E. Pessimal.

Brick bent down and peered closely at the inspector. “It’s dat gnome from last night,” he said. “Don’t want him!”

“You can’t think of
anyone
?” said Carrot.

Brick thought again, and at last brightened up.

“Yeah, I can,” he said. “Easy. Someone to help me answer der questions, right.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, easy peas. If you can fetch that dwarf I saw down in dat new dwarf mine last night, he’d help me.”

The room went deadly quiet.

“And why would he do that?” said Carrot carefully.

“He could tell you why he was hitting dat other dwarf onna head,” said Brick. “I mean,
I
don’t know. But I ’spect he won’t wanna come on account of me bein’ a troll, so I’ll stick with the sergeant, if it’ all der same to you.”

“I think this is going too far, Captain!” said A. E. Pessimal.

In the silence that followed this, Carrot’s voice sounded very loud.

“I think this, Mr. Pessimal, is the point where we wake up Commander Vimes.”

T
here was an old military saying
that Fred Colon used to
describe total bewilderment and confusion. An individual in that state, according to Fred, “couldn’t tell if it was arsehole or breakfast time.”

This had always puzzled Vimes. He wondered what research had been done. Even now, with his mouth tasting of warmed-over yesterday and everything curiously sharp in his vision, he thought he’d be able to tell the difference. Only one was likely to include a cup of coffee, for a start.

He had one now, ergo, it was breakfast time. Actually, it was near lunchtime, but that would have to do.

The troll known to everyone else and occasionally to himself as Brick was seated in one of the big troll cells, but in deference to the fact that no one could decide if he was a prisoner or not, the door had been left unlocked. The understanding was that, provided he didn’t try to leave, no one would stop him leaving. Brick was engulfing his third bowl of mineral-rich mud that, to a troll, was nourishing soup.

“What
is
Scrape?” Vimes said, leaning back in the room’s one spare chair and staring at Brick as a zoologolist might eye a fascinating but highly unpredictable new species. He’d put the stone book from the mysterious Mr. Shine on the table by the bowl, to see if it got any reaction, but the troll paid it no attention.

“Scrape? You don’t see it much dese days now dat Slab’s so damn cheap,” rumbled Detritus, who was watching his new find with a proprietorial air, like a mother hen watching a chick who was about to leave the nest. “It what you ‘scrape up,’ see? It few bits o’ drain-grade Slab boiled up in a tin wi’ alcohol and pigeon droppin’s. It what der street trolls make when dey is short o’ cash an’…what is it dey’s short of, Brick?”

The moving spoon paused. “Dey is short o’ self-respec’, Sergeant,” he said, as one might who’d had the lesson shouted into his ear for twenty minutes.

“By Io, he got it!” said Detritus, slapping the skinny Brick on the back so hard that the young troll dropped his spoon into the steaming gloop. “But dis lad has promised me all dat is behind him and he is damn straight now, on account o’ havin’ joined my One-Step Program! Ain’t dat so, Brick? No more Slab, Scrape, Slice, Slide, Slunkie, Slurp, or Sliver for
dis
boy, right?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” said Brick obediently.

“Sergeant, why do the names of all troll drugs start with
s
?” said Vimes.

“Ah, it make dem easier to remember, sir,” said Detritus, nodding sagely.

“Ah, of course. I hadn’t spotted that,” said Vimes. “Has Sergeant Detritus explained to you why he calls it a one-step program, Brick?”

“Er…’cos he won’t let me put a foot wrong, sir?” said Brick, as if reading it off a card.

“An’ Brick here’s got something else to say to you, haven’t you, Brick?” said the maternal Detritus. “Go on, tell Mister Vimes.”

Brick looked down at the table. “Sorry I tried to kill you, Mister Vimes,” he whispered.

“Well, we’ll see about that, shall we?” said Vimes, for something better to say. “By the way, I think you meant Mister Vimes, and I prefer it if only people who’ve fought alongside me call me
Mister
Vimes.”

“Well, technic’ly Brick
has
fought—” Detritus began, but Vimes put down his coffee mug firmly. His ribs were aching.

“No, ‘in front of’ is not the same thing as ‘alongside,’ Sergeant,” he said. “It really isn’t.”

“Not really his fault, sir, it was more a case o’ mis-taken identity,” Detritus protested.

“You mean he didn’t know who I was?” said Vimes. “That didn’t seem to—”

“Nosir. He didn’t know who
he
was, sir. He thought he was a bunch o’ lights and fireworks. Trust me, sir, I reckon I can make something o’ this one. Please? Sir, he was out o’ his brain on Big Hammer and still he was walkin’ about!”