Thud (47 page)

“Yes, dear,” said Vimes.

“Don’t look so glum! You’ll be upholding the honor of Ankh-Morpork, remember!”

“Really, dear? What shall I do with the other hand?” said Vimes, settling back into the seat.

“Oh, Sam! Tonight you’ll walk with kings!”

I’d sooner be walking all by myself along Treacle Mine Road at three in the morning, Vimes thought. In the rain, with the gutters gushing. But it was a wife thing. She took such a…a
pride
in him. He could never work out why.

He looked down at his arm. He’s sorted
that
out, at least. Exit wound indeed! It was just the way the burning oil had splashed on his skin. It might look a
bit
like that damn symbol, enough to put the wind up the dwarfs, but no floaty eyeball was going to get past
him
. Common sense and facts, that’s what worked!

After a while, it dawned on him that they weren’t going into the town. They’d gone down almost as far as the lakes, but now they were heading back up on the cliff path. He could see the valley below them, opening out.

The kings were working their subjects hard, reasoning that tired warriors are less keen to fight. Teams swarmed over the rock like ants. Maybe there was a plan. There probably was. But the mountains would sneer at it every winter. You’d have to have squads here all the time, you’d need to scout the mountainsides to find and smash the big boulders before they caused trouble. Remember Koom Valley! Because, if you don’t, your history is…history.

And maybe, behind the thunder and in the roar of the waters flowing underground, you’ll hear the laughter of dead kings.

The coach came to a halt. Sybil opened the door.

“Get down, Sam Vimes,” she said. “No arguing. It’s time for your portrait.”

“Out here? But it’s—” Vimes began.

“Good afternoon, Commander,” said Otto Chriek cheerfully, appearing at the doorway. “I haf set up a bench and zer light is just right for color!”

Vimes had to agree that it was. Thunder light made the mountains gleam like gold. In the middle distance, the Tears of the King fell in a line of glittering silver. Brightly colored birds skimmed through the air. And all the way up the valley there were rainbows.

Koom Valley, on Koom Valley Day. He’d had to be there.

“If her ladyship vill be seated viz zer little boy on her lap and you, Commander, standink with your hand on her shoulder…?” He bustled around his big black iconograph.

“He’s up here taking pictures for the
Times
,” Sybil whispered. “And I thought, well, it’s now or never. Portraiture must move on.”

“How long is this going to take?” said Vimes.

“Oh, about a fraction of a second, Commander,” said Otto.

Vimes brightened up. This was more like it.

Of course, it never is. But it was a warm afternoon, and Vimes still felt good. They sat and stared with those fixed grins people wear when they’re wondering why a fraction of a second takes half an hour, while Otto tried to get the universe sorted out to his satisfaction.

“Havelock will be wondering how to reward you, you know,” murmured Sybil as the vampire fussed around.

“He can go on wondering,” said Vimes. “I’ve everything I want.”

He smiled.

Click!

“S
ixty new officers?”
said Lord Vetinari.

“The price of peace, sir,” said Captain Carrot earnestly. “I’m sure that Commander Vimes wouldn’t settle for anything less. We are really stretched.”

“Sixty men—and dwarfs and trolls, obviously—is more than a third of your current complement,” said the Patrician, tapping his walking stick on the cobbles. “Peace comes with a rather large bill, Captain.”

“And a few dividends, sir,” Carrot said.

They looked up at the circle-and-bar symbol over the door of the mine, just above the yellow-and-black rope used by the Watch to warn off intruders.

“The mine falls to us by default?” said Vetinari.

“Apparently, sir. I believe the term is ‘eminent domain.’”

“Ah, yes. That means ‘theft by the government,’” said Vetinari.

“But the grags bought the freehold, sir. They’re hardly going to contest it now.”

“Quite. And the dwarfs really can make watertight tunnels?”

“Oh, yes. The trick is almost as old as mining. Would you care to step inside? I’m afraid the elevator is not working at the moment, though.”

Lord Vetinari inspected the rails and the little carts the dwarfs had used to shift spoil. He felt the dry walls. He went back upstairs and frowned as a one-ton slab of iron came through the wall, whirled past his face, passed through the opposite wall, and buried itself in the street outside.

“And was that supposed to happen?” he said, brushing plaster dust off his robe.

An excited voice behind him shouted: “The torque! It’s impossible! Amazing!”

A figure climbed through the wall, holding something in one hand. It rushed up to Captain Carrot, vibrating with excitement.

“It spins once every six point nine seconds, but the torque is immense! It broke the clamp! What powers it?”

“No one seems to know,” said Carrot. “In Uberwald—”

“Excuse me, what is this about?” said Lord Vetinari, holding out a hand imperiously.

The man glanced at him and then turned to Carrot.

“Who’s this?” he said.

“Lord Vetinari,
Ruler of the City
, may I present Mr. Pony of the Artificers’ Guild?” said Carrot quickly. “Please let his lordship see the Axle, Mr. Pony.”

“Thank you,” said Vetinari. He took the thing, which looked like two cubes, each about six inches on a side, joined together on one face, like a pair of dice joined at the sixes. In relation to the other, one turned—very, very slowly.

“Oh,” he said flatly. “A mechanism. How nice.”

“Nice?” said Pony. “Don’t you understand? It won’t
stop
turning.”

Carrot and Pony looked expectantly at the Patrician, who said: “And that’s a
good
thing, is it?”

Carrot coughed. “Yes, sir. One of these drives one of the biggest mines in Uberwald. All the pumps, the fans that move the air, the trucks that haul the ore, the bellows for the forges, the elevators…everything. Just one of those. It’s another type of Device, like the cubes. We don’t know how they’re made, they’re very rare, but the other three I’ve heard of have not stopped working for hundreds of years. They don’t use fuel, they don’t
need
anything. They appear to be millions of years old. No one knows what made them. They just turn.”

“How interesting,” said Vetinari. “Hauling trucks? Underground, you say?”

“Oh, yes,” said Carrot. “Even with miners in.”

“I shall give this some thought,” said Vetinari, avoiding Mr. Pony’s outstretched hand. “And what could we make it do in this city?”

He and Carrot turned questioning faces to Mr. Pony, who shrugged and said: “Everything?”

P
link!
went a drop of water onto the head of the very, very
late King Bloodaxe.

“How long are we going to have to do this, Sarge?” said Nobby as they watched the line of visitors shuffle past the dead kings.

“Mister Vimes has sent for another squad from home,” said Fred Colon, shifting from one foot to the other. It seemed quite warm when you first came into the cave, but after a while, the clamminess could get a man down. He reflected that Nobby wasn’t affected by this, being blessed by Nature with natural clammy.

“It’s starting to give me the creeps, Sarge,” said Nobby, indicating the kings. “If that hand moves, I’m going to scream.”

“Think of it as Being There, Nobby.”

“I’ve always been
somewhere,
Sarge.”

“Yeah, but when they comes to write the history books, they’ll—” Fred Colon paused for thought. He had to admit, they probably wouldn’t mention him and Nobby. “Well, your Tawneee will be proud of you, anyway.”

“I think that’s not to be, Sarge,” said Nobby sadly. “She’s a nice girl, but I think I’m goin’ to have to let her down lightly.”

“Surely not!”

“’Fraid so, Sarge. She cooked me dinner the other day. She tried to make distressed pudding like my ol’ mum used to make.”

Plink!

Fred Colon smiled all the way from his stomach. “Ah, yes. No one could distress a pudding like your ol’ mum, Nobby.”

“It was awful, Fred,” said Nobby, hanging his head. “As for her slumpie, well, I do not wish to go there. She is not a girl who knows her way around a stove.”

“She’s more of a pole person, Nobby, that is true.”

“Exactly. An’ I thought, ol’ Hammerhead, well, you might never be sure which way she was lookin,’ but her buttered clams, well—” he sighed.

“There’s a thought to keep a man warm on a cold night,” Fred agreed.

“An,’ y’know, these days, when she hits me with a wet fish, it doesn’t sting like it used to,” Nobby went on. “I think we were reaching an understanding.”

Plink!

“She can crack a lobster with her fist,” Colon observed. “That’s a very portable talent.”

“So I was thinking of speaking to Angua,” said Nobby. “She might give me a few hints on how to let Tawneee down gently.”

“That’s a good idea, Nobby,” said Fred. “No touchin,’ sir, otherwise I shall have to cut yer fingers orf.” This was said, in a friendly tone of voice, to a dwarf who had been reaching in awe toward the board.

“But we’ll still be friends, of course,” said Nobby as the dwarf backed away. “So long as I can get into the PussyCat Club for free, anyway, I’ll always be there if she needs a helmet to cry on.”

“That’s very modern of you, Nobby,” said Fred. He smiled in the gloom. Somehow, the world was back on course.

Plink!

W
andering through
the world, the eternal troll…

Brick headed after Detritus, dragging his club. Well, he wuz goin’ up in der worl’ an’ no mistakin’! Dey said it hurt if you come off of der stuff, but Brick had always hurt, all his life, and right now it wasn’t too bad at all. It wuz, like,
weird
der way he could fink to der end of a sentence now an’ still remember der start of it. An’ he wuz bein’ given food, which he wuz gettin’ to like once he stopped frowing it up. Sergeant Detritus, who knew everythin’, had tole him if’n he stayed clean an’ smartened up he could rise as high as lance constable one day, makin’ heapo money.

He wuzn’t too sure what had been happnin’ to cause all dis. It looked like he wasn’t in der city anymore, an’ dere had been some fightin’, and Sergeant Detritus had showed him dese kinda dead people and smacked him aroun’ der head an’ said “Remember!” an’ he wuz doin’ his best, but he’d been smacked aroun’ der head a hole lot harder many, many times and dat one was
nuffin’
. But Sergeant Detritus said it wuz all about not hatin’ dwarfs no more and dat was okay, cuz really Brick never had der energy to waste hatin’. What dey had been doin’ down dat hole was makin’ der worl’ a betterer place, Sergeant Detritus said.

And it seemed to Brick, as he smelled the food, dat Sergeant Detritus had got dat one dead right.

T
rolls and dwarfs
had raised a huge roundhouse in Koom
Valley, using giant boulders for the walls and half a fallen forest for the roof. A fire thirty yards long crackled inside. Ranged around it on long benches were the kings of more than a hundred dwarf mines, and the leaders of eighty troll clans, with their followers and servants and bodyguards. The noise was intense, the smoke was thick, the heat was a wall.

It had been a good day. Progress had been made. The guests were not mixing, that was true, but neither were they trying to kill one another. This was a promising development. The truce was holding.

At the high table, King Rhys leaned back in his makeshift throne and said: “One does not make demands of kings. One makes requests, which are graciously granted. Does he not understand?”

“I don’t think he gives a
tra’ka,
sir, if I may be coarse,” said Grag Bashfullsson, who was standing respectfully beside him. “And the senior dwarfs in the city will be right behind him on this. It’s not my place, sir, but I advise acquiescence.”

“And that’s all he wants? No gold, no silver, no concessions?”

“That’s all
he
wants, sire. But I suspect you will be hearing from Lord Vetinari before long.”

“Oh, you may be sure of that!” said the king. He sighed. “It’s a new world, Grag, but some things don’t change. Er…that…thing
has
left him, has it?”

“I believe so, sire.”

“You are not certain?”

The grag smiled a faint, inward smile. “Let’s just say that his reasonable request is best granted, shall we, sire?”

“Your point is taken, Grag. Thank you.”

King Rhys turned in his seat, leaned across the two empty places, and said to the Diamond King: “Do you think something has happened to them? It’s past six o’clock!”

Shine smiled, filling the hall with light. “I suspect they’ve been delayed by matters of great importance.”

“More important than
this
?” said the dwarf king.…and, because some things
are
important, the coach stood outside the magistrate’s house, down in the town. The horses stamped impatiently. The coachman waited. Inside, Lady Sybil darned a sock, because some things are important, with a faint smile on her face.

And floating out of an open upstairs window was the voice of Sam Vimes: