Thud! Read online

  “Commander Vimes, City Watch,” he said, holding up his badge. “I need to see Grag Hamcrusher immediately.”

  “He’s not seeing anyone,” said one of the guards.

  “Oh. So he is dead, then?” said Vimes.

  He felt the answer. He didn’t even have to see Angua’s little nod; the dwarfs had been dreading the question, and were sweating.

  To their shock and horror, and also somewhat to his own surprise, he sat down on the steps between them and pulled a packet of cheap cigars out of his pocket.

  “I won’t offer one to you lads, because I know that you aren’t allowed to smoke on duty,” he said convivially. “I don’t allow my boys to do it. The only reason I can get away with it is that there’s no one to tell me off, haha.” He blew a stream of blue smoke. “Now, I am, as you know, head of the City Watch. Yes?”

  The two dwarfs, staring straight ahead, nodded imperceptibly.

  “Good,” said Vimes. “And that means you, that’s both of you, are impeding me in the execution of my duty. That gives me, oooh, a whole range of options. The one I’m thinking of right now is summoning Constable Dorfl. He’s a golem. Nothing impedes him in the execution of his duty, believe me. You’ll be picking bits of that door off the floor for weeks. And I wouldn’t stand in his way, if I was you. Oh, and it’d be lawful, which means that if anyone puts up a fight it gets really interesting. Look, I’m only telling you this because I’ve done my share of guarding over the years, and there are times when looking tough works and there are times—and this, I suggest, is one of them—when going and asking the people inside what you should do next is a very good career move.”

  “Can’t leave our post,” said one of the dwarfs.

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Vimes, standing. “I’ll stand guard for you.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  Vimes bent down to the dwarf’s ear.

  “I am Commander of the Watch,” he hissed, no longer Mr. Friendly. He pointed at the cobblestones. “This is my street. I can stand where I like. You are standing on my street. It’s the public highway. That means that there are about a dozen things I could arrest you for, right now. That would cause trouble, right enough, but you would be bang in the middle of it. My advice to you, one guard to another, is to hop off smartly and speak to someone highe—further up the ladder, okay?”

  He saw worried eyes peering out from between the rampant eyebrows and the luxuriant mustache, spotted the tiny little tells he’d come to recognize, and added: “Off you go, ma’am.”

  The dwarf hammered on the door. The hatch slid back. Whispering transpired. The door opened. The dwarf hurried in. The door closed. Vimes turned, took up station beside it, and stood to attention slightly more theatrically than necessary.

  There were one or two outbreaks of laughter. Dwarfs they may be, but in Ankh-Morpork people always wanted to see what would happen next.

  The remaining guard hissed: “We’re not allowed to smoke on duty!”

  “Oops, sorry,” said Vimes, and removed the cigar, tucking it behind his ear for later. This got a few more chuckles. Let ’em laugh, said Vimes to himself. At least they’re not throwing things.

  The sun shone down. The crowd stood still. Sergeant Angua stared at the sky, her face carefully blank. Detritus had settled into the absolute, rock-like stillness of a troll with nothing to do right now. Only Ringfounder looked uneasy. This probably was not a good time and place to be a dwarf with a badge, Vimes thought. But why? All we’ve been doing in the last couple of weeks is trying to stop two bunches of idiots from killing one another.

  And now this. This morning was going to cost him an earful, he thought, although Sybil never shouted when she told him off. She just spoke sadly, which was a lot worse.

  The bloody family portrait, that was the trouble. It seemed to involve an awful lot of sittings, but it was a tradition in Sybil’s family, and that was that. It was more or less the same portrait, every generation: the happy family group against a panorama of their rolling acres. Vimes had no rolling acres, only aching feet, but as the inheritor of the Ramkin wealth, he was, he’d learned, also the owner of Crundells, a huge stately home out in the country. He’d never even seen it yet. Vimes didn’t mind the countryside if it stayed put and didn’t attack, but he liked pavement under his feet and didn’t much care for being pictured as some kind of squire. So far, his excuses for avoiding the interminable sittings had been reasonable, but it was a close-run thing…

  More time passed. Some of the dwarfs in the crowd wandered off. Vimes didn’t move, not even when he heard the hatch in the door open for a moment and then slide back. They were trying to wait him out.

  “Tcha-tcha-rumptiddle-tiddle-tiddle-tiddle-tchum-chum!”

  Without looking down, maintaining the stolid thousand-mile stare of a guard, Vimes pulled the Dis-Organizer out of his pocket and raised it to his lips.

  “I know you were turned off,” he grunted.

  “Pop up for alarms, remember?” said the imp.

  “How do I stop you doing that?”

  “The correct form of words is in the manual, Insert Name Here,” said the imp primly.

  “Where is the manual?”

  “You threw it away,” said the imp, full of reproach. “You always do. That’s why you never use the right commands, and that is why I did not ‘go away and stick my head up a duck’s bottom’ yesterday. You have an appointment to see Lord Vetinari in half an hour.”

  “I will be busy,” muttered Vimes.

  “Would you like me to remind you again in ten minutes?”

  “Tell me, what part of ‘stick your head up a duck’s bottom’ didn’t you understand?” Vimes replied, and plunged the thing back into his pocket.

  So…it had been half an hour. Half an hour was enough. This was going to be drastic, but he’d seen the looks the dwarfs were giving Detritus. Rumor was an evil poison.

  As he stepped forward, ready to go and summon Dorfl and all the problems that invading this place would entail, the door opened behind him.

  “Commander Vimes? You may come in.”

  There was a dwarf in the doorway. Vimes could just make out his shape in the gloom. And for the first time he noticed the symbol chalked on the wall over the door: a circle with a horizontal line through it.

  “Sergeant Angua will accompany me,” he said. The sign struck Vimes as vaguely unsettling; it seemed to be a stamp of ownership that was rather more emphatic than, for example, a little plaque saying MON REPOS.

  “The troll will stay outside,” said the figure flatly.

  “Sergeant Detritus will stand guard, along with Corporal Ringfounder,” said Vimes.

  This restatement of fact seemed to pass muster, suggesting that the dwarf probably knew a lot about iron but nothing about irony. The door opened further, and Vimes stepped inside.

  The hall was bare, except for a few stacked boxes, and the air smelled of—what? Stale food. Old, empty houses. Sealed-up rooms. Attics.

  The whole house is an attic, Vimes thought. The thud, thud from below was really noticeable here. It was like a heartbeat.

  “This way, if you please,” said the dwarf, and ushered Vimes and Angua into a side room. Again, the only furnishings were more wooden boxes and, here and there, some well-worn shovels.

  “We do not often entertain. Please be patient,” said the dwarf, and backed out. The key clicked on the lock.

  Vimes sat down on a box.

  “Polite,” said Angua. Vimes put one hand to his ear and jerked a thumb toward the damp, stained plaster. She nodded, but mouthed the word “corpse” and pointed downwards.

  “Sure?” said Vimes.

  Angua tapped her nose. You couldn’t argue with a werewolf’s nose.

  Vimes leaned back against a bigger box. It was comfort itself to a man who’d learned to sleep leaning against any available wall.

  The plaster on the opposite wall was crumbling, green with damp and hung with dusty old spide
rwebs. Someone, though, had scratched a symbol in it so deeply that bits of the plaster had fallen out. It was another circle, this time with two diagonal lines slashed through it. Some passion there; not what you’d expect around dwarfs.

  “You are taking this very well, sir,” said Angua. “You must know this is deliberate discourtesy.”

  “Being rude isn’t against the law, Sergeant.” Vimes pulled his helmet over his eyes and settled down.

  The little devils! Play silly buggers with me, will they? Try to wind me up, will they? Don’t tell the Watch, eh? There are no no-go areas in this city. I’ll see to it they find that out. Oh yes.

  There were more and more of deep-downers in the city these days, although you very seldom saw them outside the dwarf areas. Even there, you didn’t see deep-downers themselves, you just saw their dusty black sedan chairs being muscled through the crowds by four other dwarfs. There were no windows; there was nothing outside that a deep-downer could possibly want to see.

  The city dwarfs regarded them with awe, respect, and, it had to be said, a certain amount of embarrassment, like some honored but slightly loopy relative. Because somewhere in the head of every city dwarf there was a little voice that said, You should live in a mine, you should be in the mountains, you shouldn’t walk under open skies, you should be a real dwarf. In other words, you shouldn’t really be working in your uncle’s pigment-and-dye factory in Dolly Sisters. However, since you were, you could at least try to think like a proper dwarf. And part of that meant being guided by the deep-downers, the dwarfs’ dwarfs, who lived in caves miles below the surface and never saw the sun. Somewhere down there in the dark was true dwarfishness. They had the knowing of it, and they could guide you…

  Vimes had no problem with that at all. It made as much sense as what most humans believed, and most dwarfs were model citizens, even at two-thirds scale.

  But deciding that murder could be kept in the family? thought Vimes. Not on my Watch!

  After ten minutes, the door was unlocked and another dwarf stepped inside. He was dressed as what Vimes thought of as “standard city dwarf,” which meant basic helmet, leather, chain mail, and battle-axe/mining pick, but hold the spiky club. He also had a black sash. He looked flustered.

  “Commander Vimes! What can I say? I do apologize for the way you have been treated!”

  I bet you do. Aloud, Vimes said: “And who are you?”

  “Apologies again! I am Helmclever, and I am the…the nearest word is, perhaps, ‘daylight face’? I do those things that have to be done aboveground. Do come into my office, please!” He trotted off, leaving them to follow him.

  The office was downstairs, in the stone-walled basement. It looked quite cozy. Crates and sacks were piled up against one wall. There wasn’t much food in deep caves, after all; the simple life for dwarfs down below happened because of quite complex lives for a lot of dwarfs above. Helmclever looked like little more than a servant, making sure that his masters got fed, although he might have thought the job was rather grander than that. A curtain in the corner probably concealed a bed; dwarfs did not go in for dainty living.

  A desk was covered in paperwork. Beside it, on a small table, was an octagonal board covered in little playing pieces. Vimes sighed. He hated games. They made the world look too simple.

  “Oh, do you play at all, Commander?” said Helmclever with the hungry look of a true enthusiast. Vimes knew the type, too. Show polite interest, and you’ll be there all night.

  “Lord Vetinari does. It’s never interested me,” said Vimes.* “Hemclever’s not a common dwarf name. You’re not related to the Helmclevers in Tallow Lane, are you?”

  He’d meant it as no more than a bit of noncontroversial ice-breaking, but he might as well have cursed. Helmclever looked down and mumbled: “Er, yes…but to a…grag, even a novice, all of dwarfdom is his…family. It would not be…really not be…” He faltered into silence, and then some other part of his brain took over. He looked up, brightly. “Some coffee, perhaps? I shall fetch some.”

  Vimes opened his mouth to say no, but didn’t. Dwarfs made good coffee, and there was a smell of it wafting from the next room. Besides, the nervousness radiating off Helmclever suggested he’d been drinking a lot of it today. No harm in encouraging him to have more. It was something he told his officers: people got worried around coppers if the officer knew his stuff, and jittery people gave too much away.

  While the dwarf was gone, he took in more of the room, and his eye spotted the words The Koom Valley Codex on the spine of a book half-concealed in the paperwork.

  That bloody valley again, with added weirdness this time. Actually, Sybil had bought a copy, along with most of reading population of the city, and had dragged him along to look at that poor man’s wretched picture in the Royal Art Museum. A painting with secrets? Oh yes? And how come some mad young human artist a hundred years ago knew the secret of a battle fought thousands of years before? Sybil said that the book claimed he’d found something on the battlefield, but it was haunted, and voices drove him to believe he was a chicken. Or something.

  When the mugs were brought in, with just a little spilled on Helmclever’s desk because his hand was shaking, Vimes said: “I must see Grag Hamcrusher, sir.”

  “I’m sorry, that is not possible.”

  The answer came out flat and level, as if the dwarf had been practicing. But there was a flicker in his eyes, and Vimes glanced up at a very large grille in the wall.

  At this point, Angua gave a little cough. Okay, thought Vimes, someone’s listening.

  “Mr. Helm…clever,” he said, “I have reason to suppose that a serious crime has been committed on Ankh-Morpork soil.” He added: “That is to say, under it. But Ankh-Morpork’s, anyway.”

  Once again, Helmclever’s strange calm gave him away. There was a hunted look in his eyes.

  “I am sorry to hear it. How may I assist you to solve it?”

  Oh well, thought Vimes, I did say I don’t play games.

  “By showing me the dead body you have downstairs,” he said.

  He was obscenely pleased at the way Helmclever deflated. Time to press home…

  He took out his badge.

  “My authority, Mr. Helmclever. I will search this place. I would prefer to do so with your permission.”

  The dwarf was trembling, with fear or anxiety or probably both.

  “You will invade our premises? You cannot! Dwarf law—”

  “This is Ankh-Morpork,” said Vimes. “All the way to the top, all the way to the bottom. Invasion is not the issue. Are you really telling me I cannot search a basement? Now take me to Grag Hamcrusher or whoever is in charge! Now!”

  “I—I refuse your request!”

  “It wasn’t a request!”

  And now we reach our own little Koom Valley, Vimes thought, as he stared into Helmclever’s eyes. No backing down. We both think we’re right. But he’s wrong!

  A movement made him glance down. Helmclever’s trembling finger had teased out the spilled coffee into a circle. As Vimes stared, the dwarf’s fingers drew two lines across the circle. He looked back up, his eyes bulging with anger, fear…and just a hint of something else…

  “Ah. Commander Vimes, is it?” said a figure in the doorway.

  It might have been Lord Vetinari speaking. It was that same level tone indicating that he had noticed you and you were, in some small way, a necessary chore. But it was coming from another dwarf, presumably, although he wore a rigid, pointed black hood, which brought him up to the height of the average human.

  Elsewhere he was completely shrouded—and that was a well-chosen word—in overlapping black-leather scales, with just a narrow slit for the eyes. Were it not for the quiet authority of the voice, the figure in front of Vimes could be mistaken for a very somber Hogswatch decoration.

  “And you are—?” said Vimes.

  “My name is Ardent, Commander. Helmclever, go about your chores!”

  As the “daylight face” s
cuttled off at speed, Vimes turned in his seat and allowed his hand to brush across the sticky symbol, wiping it out. “And do you want to be helpful, too?” he said.

  “If I can be,” said the dwarf. “Please follow me. It would be preferable if the sergeant did not accompany you.”

  “Why?”

  “The obvious reason,” said Ardent. “She is openly female.”

  “What? So? Sergeant Angua is very definitely not a dwarf,” said Vimes. “You can’t expect everyone to conform to your rules!”

  “Why not?” said the dwarf. “You do. But could we just, together, for a moment, proceed to my office and discuss matters?”

  “I’ll be fine, sir,” said Angua. “It’s probably the best way.”

  Vimes tried to relax. He knew he was letting himself get steamed up. Those silent watchers in the street had got through to him, and the look he’d gotten from Helmclever needed some thinking about. But—

  “No,” he said.

  “You will not make that small concession?” said Ardent.

  “I am already making several big ones, believe me,” said Vimes.

  The hidden eyes under the pointy cowl stared at him for a few seconds.

  “Very well,” said Ardent. “Please follow me.”

  The dwarf turned and opened a door behind him, stepping into a small, square room. He beckoned them to follow and, when they were inside, pulled a lever.

  The room shook gently, and the walls began to rise.

  “This is—” Ardent began.

  “—an elevator,” said Vimes. “Yes, I know. I saw them when I met the Low King in Uberwald.”

  The dropping of the name did not work.

  “The Low King is not…respected here,” said Ardent.

  “I thought he was the ruler of all dwarfs?” said Vimes.

  “A common misconception. Ah, we have arrived.”

  The elevator stopped with barely a jerk.