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Vimes had always had a fairly low opinion of the Oblong Office and its decor. Now, however, any previous negative opinion he had developed was paling to a ghostly degree in comparison to the way it looked right now.
The desk had been overturned. Papers were strewn over the floor, completely illegible in places where an ink bottle had come unstoppered in the chaos and was now dripping from the desk chair onto the rug. Even the curtains seemed to have been yanked, which Vimes would have taken as evidence of a struggle in any other room, but seemed like overkill in the office of a trained assassin who could kill as easily as blink. Seemingly confirming this, a stiletto dagger was lodged in the wood panelling of the far wall directly above the desk, its thin blade tinged red with still-drying blood.
“Ye gods,” said Vimes.
“I hope you understand now why I felt it appropriate to wake you.”
“Ye gods,” Vimes repeated.
The time was 4am. It was one which Vimes might have seen as downright socially acceptable a few years ago, when he lived on the schedule of a man perpetually on the night-shift. Tonight, though, he had been asleep for 2 entire hours before he had been woken by a knock on the door of the house in Scoone Avenue.
By itself, that wasn’t unusual for Vimes. What was unusual, though, was the fact that when he opened said door, the man on the other side was Rufus Drumknott, soaking wet and wearing a facial expression which could almost be described as fear.
“Commander Vimes,” the clerk had said. “Apologies for the uncivilised hour, but the Palace feels the need to request your presence. Immediately.”
Vimes was deeply grateful that he had thought to pull on a pair of trousers before answering the door, because that look in the clerk’s eye was enough that he didn’t bother to get the rest of the way dressed. He grabbed his sword and the closest armour to hand, and set off blearily into the rain.
The same rain beat down against the windows of the Patrician’s palace, hissing and crackling against the glass. Somewhere inside the room, disguised by the sounds of the storm, black liquid dripped rhythmically into the growing puddle on the floor. Outside the door, the clock ticked its erratic tock.
Typical, thought Vimes, absently. Someone put in all the effort to turn the office into a rubbish-dump, but left the ridiculous clock.
Behind Vimes, Drumknott shifted uneasily.
“Any idea when all of this happened?” Vimes asked, allowing his copper-brain to take over while his conscious one caught up with things.
“Not precisely,” Drumknott said. “His lordship had some paperwork which needed finishing before his upcoming trip to Uberwald, so he chose to work through the night in order to make sure it was completed. I left at 11pm to get some sleep, with the intention of returning somewhere around 5am. However, I found myself struggling to sleep, so I returned at half past 3 to get ahead on some of my own duties, and found this.”
The clerk gestured stiffly at the room. The place might have looked better if a bunch of Alchemy students had been let loose in it, explosions and all.
“And no sign of Vetinari?”
Drumknott shook his head. Vimes groaned deep in his soul, and looked back at the scene in front of him, suddenly wide awake.
There was something viscerally wrong with the Oblong Office looking like this. Vimes had seen it in a not-ideal state a few times: he had been in here when a dragon had taken command of the entire palace, and when Lord Rust had briefly been Patrician, which was almost worse than the dragon. He had even once walked in to see Vetinari collapsed on the floor, unconscious with lungs full of arsenic.
This, though. This was something else.
Vimes pushed down his unease and circled the upturned desk. From the state of the ink puddle, he would have guessed that it had been spreading for a good while – the edges were beginning to dry. The blood on the dagger was still slightly damp, though, which meant it probably couldn’t be more than an hour at high humidity. That made it… 3am?
Someone had broken into the Palace at three in the morning, turned the Oblong Office upside-down, and apparently somehow managed to kidnap one of the scariest and most competent men in the city without anyone noticing them arrive or leave.
Which led Vimes’s copper-brain to the more important question: who on the Disc could have done it, and where did they take him?
Usually, when investigating violent crimes, the first question any Watchman worth his salt would ask would be who had a motive. Unfortunately, this was not Vimes’s first time investigating a crime against the Patrician; virtually everybody in the city had a motive if you looked for one hard enough, Vimes included. Anybody who didn’t want the Patrician dead had either never had the misfortune of meeting him, or was insane enough to be suspicious regardless of circumstance. Guessing the guilty party would be like pulling a needle out of a haystack on the first attempt whilst blindfolded.
No, much like when Vetinari had been poisoned, motive was less of a dead end, and more of an entire library of options all pointing towards different directions. The Watch had managed to figure it out that time, at least. And at the very least, this time they wouldn’t be babysitting a Patrician who was high as a bird on arsenic.
…They would be wondering whether he was even alive instead.
Judging by the state of the place, the perpetrator was someone either incredibly angry, or somebody who wanted to be perceived that way. If Vimes was any judge, Vetinari could be counted lucky if he was even still alive by now. Luck had often been on the Patrician’s side, it seemed – but it was bound to run out someday.
A bead of congealing blood dripped from the trapped stiletto and fell to the floor with a soft ‘thud’.
Vimes felt a familiar sense of dread begin to settle in the pit of his stomach. Every ten damned seconds it seemed that somebody tried to depose Lord Vetinari, leaving him to pick up the pieces and pray he managed it before things got even worse. And he would do it every time, because the law had to be enforced, and because he had a duty to do so.
Vetinari understood that, too. Someone had to do the dirty work.
The Commander turned to Drumknott.
“Send a clerk down to Pseudopolis yard. Get them to ask for Sergeant Angua and Sergeant Littlebottom. If either of them aren’t on shift, get someone to wake them up on pain of Vimes. And while you’re there, send a message to Captain Carrot that he’s in charge for the time being,” he said.
Drumknott nodded a nervous little nod. “Of course, your grace.”
“Commander is just fine.” Vimes said, automatically. “And once you’ve done that, pack up Vetinari’s coach and send it out of the city as if he was actually going to Uberwald. The gods only know how we’re going to keep this kind of rumour from spreading in Ankh-Morpork, but that might at least buy us some time.”
“I had much the same thought, your grace,” said Drumknott. He made as if to leave, but seemed to hang by the door for a second, eyeing him as if hesitant to leave Vimes in the office unsupervised.
“Come on, get on with it, we don’t know how much time we have!” Vimes jerked his head towards the dagger in the wall. “What are you worried I’m going to do, trash the place?”
Lacking an answer, Drumknott made a small, mildly exasperated gesture and disappeared silently out of the door.
Vimes crouched down to examine the papers on the floor.
The chase was on.
Between them, Vetinari and Vimes just about managed to maintain order in a dysfunctional city. That was part of what made the mess in the office so jarring – the man who had established some strange form of order in a city like Ankh-Morpork would never have allowed his space to get into such a state unless it was that or death.
The problem with someone like Vetinari, Vimes thought, was that he was infuriatingly good at his job. A worse Patrician would not make so many enemies, and an even worse one than that would kill them before things escalated to this point. The city worked under Vetinari, and that made everyone angry.
Gods, Vimes hoped the Patrician wasn’t dead. For all his many, many flaws, things would be so much worse without him. Both for the city, and in some ways, for Vimes.
Well, if anyone was going to be able to prevent that from happening, it was Vimes. He had done it before, and he would do it again, as many times as was necessary, because that was his job as protector of the city. Vetinari’s personal guard.
It would take a lot to successfully kidnap Lord Vetinari, that was true. But to do so under the watch of Samuel Vimes? Gods help the poor bastards.
═══════════════════
“None of this makes any sense!” said Angua.
Dawn had broken by now, though the storm made it almost impossible to tell based on the light. Rain was still beating down on the windows, rumbling like rice poured on a drum.
“It does seem odd,” Cheri agreed, holding the ink-bottle up to the light.
After taking iconographs of the scene, Cheri had righted the desk, which had now become an impromptu evidence table. On it lay the stiletto from the wall, which had proved to be one of Vetinari’s own weapons, next to a stack of empty coffee mugs. The blood on the blade was fully dry. Outside, the floorboards creaked as Detritus paced up and down the corridor, club in hand. The door to the office was closed and barricaded with chairs.
“I mean, I can’t smell anyone. From the last few hours, it’s just the Palace staff and us three.” Angua paused to sniff the air, as if the result might change on the fifteenth attempt. “I can smell a lot of people from the past few days, but this is a meeting room, so that doesn’t tell us much. Other than a hint of blood and a cologne I haven’t smelled before, there’s nothing different from usual.”
“Couldn’t the cologne be a sign of another person?” asked Cheri.
“I doubt it. Unless it belongs to someone with no blood, sweat, skin, or silicone equivalent, in which case I would wonder why they wanted to wear cologne.” said Angua.
“Could it be a golem, then?”
Angua shook her head. “I know what golems smell like. All the ink might mask it a little bit, but I would still be able to pick it out if it was there. It’s much more likely that one of the servants had a date planned after work.”
There was a ‘clink’ as Cheri placed the almost-empty ink bottle back on the desk.
“Well, that clerk seemed nervous when we came in,” she suggested. “Every time I’ve seen him before, he’s been completely calm. That seems strange.”
“He definitely smelled scared. He might be hiding something.” Angua agreed.
“He looked bloody terrified when he came to wake me up, that’s for damn sure.” Vimes said, finally turning around from where he had been staring out of the window. “I don’t know about ‘hiding something’, but there’s something going on with that one. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him smile, let alone look like he’s on the verge of bursting into tears!”
“Is he close with Vetinari, sir?” Cheri asked.
“I don’t think anyone is close with Vetinari,” said Vimes, but he doubted himself even as he said it. He had seen the two men have entire conversations through barely a glance when he was trying to find something to think about during especially boring meetings. It was uncanny, the way that employer and employee understood each other instinctively.
Quite like Vimes and Vetinari, in a way.
“This is the first time Vetinari’s actually disappeared, sir. At least when he was poisoned, there was always someone keeping an eye on him. Drumknott smelled like he was worried about something, more than anything. He might just not be dealing well with the uncertainty,” Angua said.
“I don’t think Drumknott’s involved,” Vimes agreed. “He’s a creepy little bastard, but I think I trust him. Call it copper’s intuition, if nothing else.”
“The ink seems normal,” said Cheri. “I might be able to do something with the blood on the dagger, but other than that, I have no idea where to start. Sorry, sir.”
“Which leaves us back at square one,” said Angua. She sat down on the chair barricade.
Vimes sighed, and flexed his fingers. Damned Vetinari and his inability to go a few months without somebody trying to kill him. There were probably only a few hours, maybe days at best, before the Guilds cottoned on to the situation, at which point all hell would break loose. A time-limited locked-room mystery, with virtually no clues. It was just so typical of the Patrician to disappear like this.
If Vetinari wasn’t dead when Vimes found him, he might have to kill him himself.
Coppering hadn’t always been so complicated, had it?
Vimes scanned the room again. There must be something useful. No matter how competent the criminal, they always left behind some kind of trace. Even the Assassins had tells, if you were smart and knew what you were looking for. The main problem here was that he didn’t know what he was looking for.
In the process of moving the desk, some of the papers on the floor which Vimes had checked earlier had been disrupted, their corners dipping pathetically into the now-drying puddle of ink in the carpet. Partially obscured by one of the other pieces of paper was an envelope which almost looked like…
Vimes crouched down and picked it up. Black ink stained his fingertips.
Vimes had checked this envelope already, and he was sure that before touching the ink, the paper had been white. Now, as was to be expected of paper which had fallen into an ink puddle, most of the paper was now a deep black. What was not to be expected, though, was the fact that a small section of the envelope seemed to have been wholly unaffected by the dark stain.
Vimes ran his hand over the surface. As he had suspected, part of the paper had been coated with some kind of waterproof wax, preventing the ink from penetrating the section which had been covered.
It would have been almost impossible to notice without the spill. Now, though, it was unmissable: the effect created was a plain black envelope starkly emblazoned with a large, off-white padlock.
The dread which had been pooling in the Commander’s stomach began to congeal.
“Oh gods,” said Vimes. He turned the envelope over in his hands. “I think I’ve found our clue.”
Angua looked over incredulously. “They left a note?”
“Assassins leave calling cards, don’t they?” Vimes said, reaching for his sword in the absence of a letter-opener. The sword seemed like a better option than the stiletto, at least. “I reckon our man wants to be found.”
“Be careful opening it, sir,” Cheri said. “It could be a trap.”
Vimes nodded, and pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth. The other two other Watchmen did the same. Slowly, he slitted the top of the envelope with the tip of the sword. The damp paper squelched, and slipped from his hand.
For a moment, everyone held their breaths.
The paper flopped unceremoniously to the floor. Nothing happened.
After a while, Vimes gingerly picked up the sticky envelope and peeled it away from its contents. He inspected it.
The sheet of paper inside was high-quality, and covered in the same waxy substance which had been used to create the emblem on the envelope. Beneath the wax, a message had been written in rough print.
It was a Clue, in the derogatory sense of the word; intentionally designed to point in a specific direction. The three Watchmen crowded together to read it.
Dear Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork pigs,
“It’s for me,” said Vimes.
As you may have guessed, you are running out of time.
Your beloved Patrician seems to have left you out in the cold.
If you want your precious city to have a future,
You must follow him where the sun doesn't shine, in the chill of the grave.
We will be waiting.
“How lovely,” said Angua, flatly.
“Does this mean he’s already dead?” asked Cheri.
“I doubt it,” said Vimes. “I don’t think many people would go to this much effort just to make us hunt for a corpse. Someone wants something, and they’re willing to do whatever the hell they feel like to get it.”
“From what I’ve heard, I can’t imagine that Lord Vetinari would make an especially good hostage,” said Angua.
“No, he wouldn’t,” said Vimes. “There’s something more to this, I can feel it. But if we want to find out what it is, I think we need to do what they want for a little while.”
“They want you to follow them somewhere cold,” Cheri said thoughtfully, leaning over Vimes’s shoulder to get a better look at the note. With him crouched on the floor and her standing fully upright, they were almost the same height.
“Pigs in the cold, in a city with no future,” said Vimes. “By the gods, for people who can manage to kidnap Lord bloody Vetinari in the middle of the night, this lot aren’t very subtle with their pretentious riddles.”
“No, sir?” said Cheri, who despite not generally getting on with Dwarf society, had still not fully got to grips with all the intricacies of human metaphors.
Vimes smiled grimly. “Get your coats. We’re going to Pork Futures.”
═══════════════════
By rights, a city street should be relatively sheltered from the wind and rain – after all, there were all those buildings protecting you from the elements, weren’t there? In reality, though, Ankh-Morpork seemed to have configured her streets only to funnel bad weather down one specific path, aiming her projectiles at misfortunate inhabitants with pin-point accuracy and the insistence of a literal force of nature.
Even during the relatively short walk to the Pork Futures warehouse, the rain was enough to soak through multiple layers of clothes. Vimes huddled into the collar of his nightshirt, which he still hadn’t had time to change out of. It didn’t help much, on account of the fact that it was stuck to him, creating a second layer of freezing skin between his body and his armour (also cold).
Vimes tried not to allow his teeth to chatter as he half-walked, half-jogged a few paces behind Angua, and a few steps ahead of Sergeant Littlebottom.
It was difficult to see through the rain. Usually, this wouldn’t have been a problem, as Vimes could read the city through the soles of his feet. Now, though, his feet were so numb that he couldn’t say with any confidence that they were still attached to his body, let alone which part of the Disc they were currently standing on. He relied on Angua’s nose, which was much less fallible than human senses. That was the hope, anyway.
After an indeterminate length of walking, Angua stopped dead, causing Vimes almost to walk straight into the back of her. She craned her neck, whole body coiled and ready to spring like a dog hearing something move in the undergrowth.
“What is it, Sergeant?” Vimes asked.
“I’m not sure, sir,” Angua’s voice was a hiss. “But I can smell something coming from the warehouse. I think it might be a body. I’m not sure, the rain is making it difficult to tell for certain, but there’s definitely blood.”
The thick soup of dread in Vimes’s stomach lurched with a sickening bubble of cold fear. A body… Surely not…
“Vetinari?” he asked. His voice came out scratchier than he intended.
The Sergeant cocked her head to one side. “I don’t know, sir. Like I said, the rain is making it difficult to smell properly. We have to get closer.”
Slowly, the three Watchmen crept towards the looming silhouette of the Pork Futures warehouse as it emerged between the torrents of water. Not that there was much point in creeping – the sound of footsteps, even in heavy boots, were easily drowned out by the deluge. They approached from the side, keeping close to the wall under the overhanging roof, and inched along slowly in case of an ambush.
It was Cheri who reached the front door first. Vimes saw her eyes widen as her hand touched the surface of the door, and she took a step back into the street.
“I think I’ve found some of the blood Angua was smelling, sir,” she said, somewhat shakily.
Vimes stepped outwards and followed her gaze. A hot rush of anger surged into the spaces where the dread had been displaced. Angua’s nose was rarely wrong; if he was any judge, the charge of kidnapping had just been upgraded to murder.
On the metal surface of the door, shielded by the roof’s overhang, was a symbol. The symbol was the same as the one on the envelope they had found in Vetinari’s office, except for one crucial detail: rather than wax, this one was drawn in blood.
“Good grief,” said Vimes. “They like making a statement, don’t they?”
“There’s more inside,” said Angua. “This isn’t even human; it smells like pigs’ blood, a few days old.”
“Now why would they go to the trouble of getting hold of pigs’ blood to smear on the door when there’s a dead body inside? Surely the corpse inside had some blood going spare,” said Vimes.
“Perhaps they needed the human blood for something else,” Cheri suggested, pulling her uniform closer around her throat with a shudder.
“I really wish you hadn’t said that, Sergeant,” said Vimes.
There was a pause as all three of them considered this possibility with a mounting sense of unease. Eventually, it was Vimes who spoke.
“You two, stay out here. I need someone to grab anyone who makes a run for it, though I don’t think that will happen, since they directly invited me here. Mainly, if you don’t hear from me in a few minutes, I want you to grab as much backup as you can get from the Watch Houses, and surround the place.”
“Sir, surely it makes more sense for at least one of us to go in with you,” said Angua. “If the letter was a trap, then you’re going to need backup.”
It could easily be a trap, it was true. It made all the sense in the world: if you’re going to kidnap Vetinari, you neutralise the man most likely to find him and stop you. It’s what Vimes would do in this situation, if he was in the attackers’ shoes. And yet…
“The invitation was addressed to me, so I’m going in alone. I’ve dealt with situations like this before, and the more Watchmen I bring in, the more we’ll upset them,” Vimes said. And the more funerals we’ll have to hold at the end of the week, he didn’t add. He didn’t want to think about what someone capable of kidnapping the Patrician might do to a Watchman – and especially what they might do to him. Even a werewolf might struggle against somebody like that.
Right now, there seemed to be a chance that whoever had kidnapped Vetinari was toying with Vimes. And as long as that was true, it was unlikely that they would kill him until they had finished playing with their food. People who messed around with envelopes and symbols loved being hunted almost as much as Vimes enjoyed the hunt.
Or at least, that was what Vimes really, really hoped.
On another level, though… if Vetinari was actually dead in there, it seemed right that it would be Vimes alone to find him. He always imagined he would be the one to kill him, in the end. He had definitely saved him enough times to earn that right.
Vetinari’s guard.
With some reluctance, both Cheri and Angua nodded their consent.
Vimes placed his hand on his sword, and carefully tried the door. It opened with a rush of frigid air, fractionally colder than the rain, but much drier.
The interior of the warehouse was almost completely dark, leaving Vimes unable to see more than a few feet in front of him. Half-corporeal pig carcasses loomed in the blackness like ghosts.
Sword ready, Vimes crept forwards. Rain drummed on the iron roof, creating a wall of white noise which could easily have disguised the sound of movement in the blackness if the mover knew what they were doing. Though, Vimes’s intuition told him that he was probably alone – the air was far too still for there to be anybody else breathing it, and the mist of his breath barely moved in front of his face until he walked through it.
As he advanced, a pale shape began to emerge at the far end of the warehouse.
In some ways, the body looked like one of the future pig carcasses suspended from the ceiling. Its skin was almost completely white, as if drained of all of its blood. It lay splayed out on the floor, crumpled unceremoniously as if it had simply been thrown there instead of placed deliberately. It was tall, too; taller than Vimes, definitely, and very thin.
About the same height and build as Vetinari, actually.
Vimes felt his heart drop at the same moment that anger bubbled up his chest and into his throat like stomach acid. They waved as they passed each other.
Slowly, checking the ground for traps, Vimes inched closer to the corpse until he was standing directly over it. It was facing away from him, so the only identifiable features were a mess of straight, dark hair and what looked like the remains of a long, black robe.
Vimes desperately didn’t want to turn it over. He wasn’t squeamish about corpses, but absolutely no part of him wanted to confirm the suspicion which was rapidly mounting in the back of his mind. Vetinari couldn’t be dead – it was impossible. No matter what the world threw at him, the Patrician always managed to survive, often coming back even stronger and more smug than he had been before, like a deadly weed.
Vetinari was a fixed point around which the machine of the city revolved. He was infuriating, and he was a bastard, but he was an infuriating bastard who Vimes had grown to appreciate. He understood the city as nobody else did, and he, like Sybil, had believed in the potential of Sam Vimes even when he had believed himself to be a lost cause.
They were a team, in a way. A dysfunctional team, but a team nonetheless.
If this was Vetinari, and he was dead, somebody would pay.
Hands shaking not just from the cold, Vimes drew his sword. Slowly, he extended the handle towards the corpse, and levered the shoulder so that the body was lying face-up on the warehouse floor.
It took Vimes a few moments to convince himself to look at the face. When he did, though, he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.
The face, gaunt and pale as it was, was not Vetinari’s.
Firstly, this man was at least a decade younger than the Patrician, and it showed in his skin. His nose was different, too, softer and less pointy. Most definitively, though, the eyes which stared glassily at the ceiling were deep brown, and not that icy blue which seemed to be able to pierce your very soul and get at the squishy bits underneath.
Vimes wiped his hand over his face and knelt beside the unknown body.
Upon closer inspection, the traces of robe the man wore were not the same as the one Vetinari preferred. From what Vimes could tell based on what little was left, this one had at some point had a hood – in fact, it looked a lot like the ones worn by some of the shadowy figures which were occasionally seen entering the Oblong Office at strange times of day.
This was one of the Dark Clerks, then. Vimes had never officially met one, but he was aware of their existence. Had this man been there when Vetinari had been kidnapped, and was killed in the same scuffle as had destroyed the Oblong Office?
The body was freezing cold to the touch, but in a place like this, that said nothing about how long he had been dead. His skin was a network of criss-crossing cuts and scrapes, all relatively fresh but almost completely bloodless. The result was like a wax figure which had been in an unfortunate accident involving a piece of cheese-wire.
Maybe Cheri was right, after all.
Vimes was suddenly very glad that he hadn’t yet encountered one of the criminals responsible. Anybody who could take down both Vetinari and one of his most highly trained spies in one go was not a force to be messed with without preparation and backup.
Gently, Vimes leaned over and closed the man’s eyes, then stood up.
Even through the relief of knowing Vetinari was not the one on the floor, rage bubbled in the Commander like bile. The charge of kidnapping had definitely been upgraded to one of murder. The victim didn’t have to be the Patrician in order to deserve justice. At the end of the day, a man was dead, and Vimes was the Commander of the Watch.
Vimes sheathed his sword and marched more quickly than was strictly necessary towards the door.
There was an audible sense of relief between the two Sergeants when Vimes emerged from the warehouse with all of his limbs still attached.
“Did you find the corpse, sir?” Cheri asked.
“Yes, and it’s not Vetinari,” said Vimes. “One of his spies, if I’m any judge. Can’t tell you how long he’s been there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was killed at the same time that the Oblong Office got ransacked. Angua was wrong about one thing, though: I couldn’t find any blood whatsoever. Not outside him, or inside him.”
“Could it be vampires, then?” Cheri suggested.
“I hope not. Not unless vampires have decided that biting someone isn’t enough, and have started tearing unlucky sods to pieces,” said Vimes.
“And I’d be able to smell them for a mile away,” Angua said, with a grimace. “Vampires smell almost as strong as a body.”
“And I suppose it wouldn’t explain the note, if they were just hunting for food,” Cheri agreed. “By the way, sir, did you find another one?”
The Commander shook his head. “There wasn’t one I could see, but I didn’t stick around for long after I saw the sorry state of the lad on the floor. Go back to Pseudopolis Yard and get a team together and search the place, and get Igor to have a look at him, see if he can find anything useful. But be subtle about it. As far as anyone else knows, this is just a bog standard murder case, and Vetinari is perfectly fine and on his way to Uberwald. We need to keep it that way.”
“Yes, sir.”
Cheri set off into the rain, and Vimes turned to Angua.
“Can you smell anybody else in there, Sergeant? It felt like I was alone, but it was too dark to tell anything for sure.”
Angua shook her head. “There’s a hint of Lord Vetinari again, and obviously there are all of the warehouse workers, sir, but I can’t make out anything else over the pork.”
Vimes raised an eyebrow. “You think Vetinari was here?”
“Trust me,” Angua said. “I know what he smells like.”
“Good grief,” Vimes said. He rubbed his temples with frozen hands. “I don’t mind telling you, Sergeant, that I really don’t like this.”
“I know, sir,” said Angua.
“Vetinari disappears off the bloody face of the Disc, and now a man is dead in a warehouse with not no blood in his body, and for now we’re no closer to actually finding the people responsible.”
“Yes, sir.”
Vimes sighed. “I have no idea what to do next.”
“You should go home, sir,” Angua said, gently. “You’re right, we don’t have any real clues to work from right now, so there shouldn’t be any harm in getting changed and warming up a bit. We’ve all had a long night, and things might make a little more sense once we’ve regrouped.”
“You know, you sound more like Captain Carrot every day,” Vimes said. “They’ve killed someone, now! The longer we leave it, the more chance they have of doing it again.”
“You’re shaking like a leaf, sir,” said Angua. “And he’s not getting any deader in the time it takes you to have a hot bath.”
“No,” Vimes agreed. “But Vetinari might.”
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Vimes did go home, though he did it more out of concern for Lady Sybil than for his own health. This was far from the first time he had disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving her to wake up in a cold bed with no real means of contacting him – but he was trying to be better to her than he had been. There was only so much fear a marriage could take before somebody broke, and Vimes would not let that happen if he could avoid it. Especially now, with everything else which was going on.
As Ramkin women tended to, Sybil seemed to be handling pregnancy relatively well, both physically and mentally; while her stomach wasn’t noticeably larger than it had been before, it did look rounder, losing some of its comforting squish. Still, Vimes supposed it was only natural that she would be a little nervous, and this seemed to manifest as spending most of her free time making sure everything was perfect before the baby arrived.
He found her in the Ramkin family nursery, fractionally adjusting and re-adjusting furniture and decor as she did so often these days. When Vimes appeared in the doorway, she looked up from the knit blanket she was folding, and smiled.
“Oh, Sam!” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”
“Sorry, dear,” Vimes said, as she made her way over to him in order to kiss him on the forehead. “I didn’t mean to leave without telling you, but there was some trouble at the Palace. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Well, in that case, I appreciate you coming back,” said Sybil. She took Vimes’s hand, and frowned. “Sam, you’re freezing! And look, your night shirt is soaked through. You’re drenched to the skin!”
Vimes gave an apologetic smile. “I didn’t have time to change before I left.”
“Honestly, your lips are turning blue!” said Sybil, picking the knit baby blanket up and wrapping it around Vimes’s shoulders. “One of these days I am going to have a word with Havelock about how hard he works you.”
Vimes's stomach twisted at the mention of Vetinari. Even under normal circumstances, hearing the Patrician’s first name made him slightly uneasy – and that was when he hadn’t spent his morning half expecting to trip over the man’s dead body every time he walked into a room. If his discomfort showed on his face, though, Sybil was too busy fussing over him to notice.
“He can’t constantly have you running around at all times of the night, probably catching your death in the rain,” she said. “It’s not fair on you, and it’s not safe.”
“I’ll tell him you said so, if I see him,” Vimes said. “Alhough somehow I doubt that’s going to happen any time soon.”
“Oh, of course, he’s on that diplomatic trip to Uberwald. It’s strange, really; he already sent you out there, and I think we did a splendid job with the fat trade agreements, if I do say so myself. I wonder what other issues he might be going out there to sort out,” Sybil said, adjusting Vimes’s collar. “Not that it matters much, I suppose. Havelock has always been a bit of a mystery to everyone but himself. Now, you go and sit by the fire downstairs while I draw you a bath and make you a nice warm cup of tea.”
“Of course, dear,” Vimes said, powerless to disagree with his wife.
He made his way into the drawing room, where a fire had been carefully maintained all night (the midwife had insisted that it was essential that the house be kept warm while Sybil was pregnant, because cold was bad for the baby), and sat down heavily in an ancient armchair, basking in that faint pink glow which always seemed to appear in situations involving his wife and their soon-to-be offspring.
After a few minutes, when the fire had breathed some life into Vimes’s hands and feet, a mug of warm, slightly under-sugared tea was pushed into his hands, and he was led by Sybil up to the master bathroom, where a generously bubbly bath waited for him.
In a strange, dreamlike state of numb exhaustion, Vimes sank gratefully into water which was just this side of too warm. Outside, rain still beat against the windows, its insistent thrumming slightly muffled by thick curtains. In the next room, Vimes could hear Sybil bustling around, muttering quietly to herself.
It was times like these when a man could almost forget why he was so cold in the first place; Vimes enjoyed a grand total of five minutes of peace before the warmth began to revive more than just his frozen limbs.
There were few things which made Vimes more angry than violence for the sake of violence. Killing someone was always a crime, no matter how you justified it – he hadn’t stopped a war for no reason – but sometimes, there were situations where you could almost understand where someone was coming from. A woman killed a husband who raised his hand one too many times, and you saw the desperation in her eyes, and you understood that this seemed to her like the better option than living like that for another day. It was horrible, but it made sense.
The man in the warehouse may have raised a hand in self-defence, or even in the name of malice. From the looks of the cuts all over his body, however, that wasn’t the reason for his death. Bodies didn’t end up that covered in wounds like that unless the person inflicting them was enjoying it.
And the worst part was that somewhere, in the cold and the dark, Lord Vetinari was trapped with those same people. He was stronger than he looked, yes, and intelligent, and skilled in a million different ways which Vimes was sure he didn’t even want to know about, but there was only so much suffering anyone could take.
And that was if he was even still alive.
The man Vimes had found in the warehouse had been so, so cold. Even enveloped in the warmth of the bathwater, Vimes felt himself shiver at the memory. It was a popular rumour that the Patrician’s skin was constantly cold as the grave, but Vimes knew first-hand that this was not the case; when he had been shot, and the Commander had carried him from the carriage to the Great Hall, Vetinari was as warm as anybody else would have been. When he had been poisoned, he had practically burned.
There was something deeply, fundamentally wrong with the idea of a psychopathic monster extinguishing that burning flame, somewhere cold and secret and far away from the Palace where Vetinari had shaped the city into what it was. The architect of the new world deserved more than a painful death hidden from the countless eyes of his creation.
The old Ankh-Morpork was not somewhere where Vimes would have been happy to raise a child, for one thing.
In his capacity as Commander of the Watch, Vimes had saved Vetinari so many times that it was almost becoming a routine. The thing was, this time felt different – like the world was suddenly made of some kind of alchemical concoction, ready to detonate at a second’s notice. The problem with a streak of good luck was that it had a tendency to run out, and that rarely went well for anyone involved.
Could this finally be the time that Commander Vimes fails to save Lord Vetinari?
The thought entered Vimes’s mind before he had the chance to push it away.
Not if I can bloody well help it, he growled in reply.
What was that thing that Carrot liked to say? Personal is not the same as important. Vimes had never really believed it, but in this case, if you stripped away the personal, the situation was incredibly simple: Vimes was a copper, and somebody had committed, and was continuing to commit, a crime. And like any good copper, he would hunt the criminal down until there was nowhere left in the city for them to run.
Ankh-Morpork was Vimes’s city, and Vetinari was Vimes’s Patrician, and godsdammit they would both go out on Vimes’s terms. He would make sure of that.
Far away, there was a knock at the door. In the hallway outside the bathroom, there was a shuffling of feet as Sybil went to answer it.
Knowing that he wasn’t going to wring any more relaxation out of the bath, Vimes got out and started to dry himself, wincing as his abused muscles were forced to support his weight without the help of warm water.
After a few moments of hushed and distant talking, there was another knock, this time at the bathroom door.
“Sam, one of your Watchmen is here to see you,” Sybil said, her voice muffled by the wood. “It’s Sergeant Littlebottom. She says they’ve found a letter of some kind. She didn’t tell me much, but it sounded rather urgent, so I think you’d better hurry up and talk to her.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Vimes.
Deep inside him, the Beast was baying for blood.
═══════════════════
Back at Pseudopolis Yard, Vimes, Cheri, and Angua huddled around a table, on which lay a folded letter which nobody could quite bring themselves to touch.
“Where did Igor find this, again?” Vimes asked, in the vague hope that he had misheard the first time.
“Inside the victim’s chest cavity, sir,” said Cheri, faintly.
“Right,” said Vimes. He had not, in fact, misheard.
“It was wrapped in some kind of waterproof wax paper, and the body was completely fluidless, sir, so it shouldn’t be contaminated with anything,” Cheri said.
“Well then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t open it, Sergeant,” said Vimes.
Cheri didn’t move.
There was a long pause.
“Oh for gods’ sake,” said Angua, reaching over to put on the medical gloves which Igor had graciously provided. Holding her breath, she unfolded the note, and placed it flat on the table with a grimace.
“Huh,” grunted Vimes.
After the first note, Vimes felt that the second one was somewhat anticlimactic, if you ignored where it had been found. There was no painfully amateur pseudo-poetry, or insults to his position. In fact, most of this note was entirely blank.
That was, except for a single sentence, written in that same rough print as the first.
Have you met dear Aunt Bobbi?
“If I saw that sentence in almost any other context I would have assumed it was a euphemism,” said Angua.
“It’s not one I’ve ever encountered, I can tell you that much,” said Vimes. “And I’ve been changing in Watchhouse locker rooms almost as long as you’ve been alive.”
“Bobbi isn’t a very common name for a woman,” said Cheri. “Even in Ankh-Morpork, she can’t be that hard to find.”
“That’s assuming it’s even talking about a person,” said Angua. “Though, I can’t think of any place in the city with that name.”
“Nor can I,” said Vimes. “And you saw their first note, they don’t exactly seem to be ones for subtlety. They’re not going to risk accidentally pointing us in a direction other than the one they want us to go in. This may well be a wild goose chase, but they clearly have a specific destination in mind.”
“I can ask around the Watchhouse and see if anyone knows of a woman called Bobbi, sir,” said Cheri. “I’ve never heard of anyone that Captain Carrot, Sergeant Colon, or Corporal Nobbs didn’t know.”
“Good idea, Sergeant,” said Vimes, reaching into his pocket for his cigar case. “Let me know if you find anything. I’ll be up at the Palace if you need me.”
Cheri frowned. “I thought we completely searched the Oblong Office, sir?”
“That’s true, we did,” said Vimes. “But the Watch aren’t the only people in the city who know everyone.”
═══════════════════
For the second time in one morning, Vimes set off into the rain without bothering to put on a coat. Rage twisted and coiled around itself like a serpent in his stomach, burning more than hot enough to keep him warm. It propelled him through the streets with the insistence of a house fire until he reached the palace.
Vimes stopped to wait under an overhang just outside the main entrance. He lit a cigar and revelled in the cool rush of nicotine as it mingled with the chill of rain water down his spine.
Moments like this, when he was cold and alone to drink in the terrifying bleakness of the world, were becoming strangely nostalgic. You could say what you wanted about the bad old days, but at least they were simpler. Back then, criminals ran, and if they were unarmed and not very big, the Watch might chase them. They didn’t kidnap the bloody Patrician and leave a trail of cryptic notes tailored specifically for Vimes to not be able to resist following.
The hunter becomes the hunted.
Vimes tried very hard not to think about what might happen when he arrived wherever they were taking him. He shuddered, and huddled further into his breastplate.
As he had been expecting, it was not long before Vimes became aware that he was not alone. He took a long drag from his cigar, and breathed it pointedly out into the semi-darkness.
“You know, his lordship would very much prefer if you didn’t smoke on Palace property, your grace,” said Drumknott, emerging from the shadows to Vimes’s left.
“Morning, Mr Drumknott,” said Vimes, moving over so that the clerk could stand under the overhang beside him, out of the rain. “His lordship isn’t here to find out, as far as I can tell. Unless I’ve just spent the better part of all morning running around after him for no reason. And that’s Commander.”
Drumknott’s face flickered. “Unfortunately, Commander, the Palace has indeed heard nothing from his lordship. I was hoping that you might have had more luck than us, in truth.”
Once again, the look of damp hope in the clerk’s face was enough to inspire genuine pity in Vimes’s emaciated heart.
“We’re definitely getting somewhere, though I have no idea where,” Vimes said, taking another drag from his cigar. “We found a body, for one thing.”
Drumknott’s eyes widened.
“–Not Vetinari’s,” Vimes added hastily, and the clerk relaxed slightly. “Some poor sod who was working for him, I reckon. But we also found a note.”
“You found one of the Dark Clerks, I would imagine,” Drumknott said, with a hint of sadness. “That is… concerning. I will try and find out if anybody is unaccounted for,” he paused. “And what of the note?”
“The note is why I’m here,” said Vimes. “It’s a bit of a head-scratcher. Thought you might be able to help me decipher it.”
“Any help the Palace can provide, we will give.” Drumknott said, in the tones of somebody who had said that sentence a thousand times.
“Well, it seemed to be trying to point us towards a specific person, but it was a name I hadn’t heard of,” said Vimes. “You wouldn’t know anything about an Aunt Bobbi, would you?”
Drumknott raised an eyebrow in a way which reminded Vimes disconcertingly of his boss. His chest twisted very slightly. “Ah, yes. If I am not mistaken, I believe that Bobbi is a nickname sometimes used by his lordship’s Aunt Roberta.”
Vimes frowned. “I knew Vetinari had an aunt, but I was under the impression that she didn’t live anywhere near Ankh-Morpork?”
Drumknott nodded. “That is correct, Commander. However, I am fairly certain that she has a property in the city; not far from Pseudopolis Yard, as it happens. If I were you, I would start there. It should not be difficult to provide you with the address.”
Vimes raised an eyebrow. “His own aunt’s house seems like a strange place to take him, but I don’t claim to understand the minds of lunatics,” he said. He dropped his cigar, and stamped it out with the sole of his boot. Next to him, Drumknott winced. “Well, you know where to find me.”
“Regrettably, Commander, that is true,” said the clerk.
Vimes grinned, and turned as if to head back to the Watchhouse. He only got a couple of steps, though, before Drumknott stopped him.
“Commander?”
Vimes turned around. “Yes, Mr Drumknott?”
“If you find his lordship, please bring him back here in one piece.”
If Vimes didn’t know any better, he would call that tone pleading. If he’s faking that look, I might suggest a change of career paths when all this is over, he thought, and gave a grim smile.
“I’ll try my best,” Vimes said.
If it’s not too late already, he didn’t add.
═══════════════════
Apparently, ‘it should not be difficult to provide you with the address’ did not mean the same thing as ‘we will be able to provide the address quickly’. When Vimes got back to the Watchhouse, he headed straight to his office, where he dried his admittedly somewhat limited hair with an old towel, and began to wait.
Few things in life made Vimes angrier than senseless violence, but having to wait for something when he needed to catch a criminal was arguably one of them. Even under normal circumstances, the idea of spending time sitting still and waiting for something to come to him instead of chasing it down on his own damned feet was excruciating. Now, though, the Beast snapped impatiently at his heels like a dog on too short of a leash, demanding something solid to bite.
Vimes was, fundamentally, a man of action. Once the chase had started, almost nothing could stop him from moving towards his target; grabbing on and never letting go, like the terrier he was constantly compared to.
The Forensics team (aka, Cheri and Igor) had informed Vimes upon arrival at the Watchhouse that there was nothing for him to do – so far they had found nothing strange on the body other than the note he had already seen, and could he please leave them to continue searching in peace, or words to that effect. The search team at the warehouse had also turned up nothing, which on its own proved that despite the state of chaos they had left the Oblong Office in, the kidnappers were very good at covering their tracks when they wanted to be.
That left Commander Vimes with very little to do. This was the problem he always found with outsourcing and delegating: when there was no Commander-ing to do, it left Vimes untethered, with no action to ground him until the next piece of paperwork arrived.
Nothing could stop him from chasing except, apparently, bureaucracy.
Vimes stared daggers at the amorphous piles of paperwork stacked on every available section of floor. They seemed to cower away from him, as if expecting a swift kick. To maintain an element of surprise, Vimes kicked a chair instead. It clattered across the floor and hit the wall with a hollow ‘crash’. He didn’t feel better.
Damned waiting.
Back during the attempted war with Klatch, Vimes had watched in horrified awe as Carrot had taken a nap while in hot pursuit of Angua’s kidnappers. Personal is not the same as important. It was a nice thought, it really was, but Vimes truly could not bring himself to truly believe it. Even at the time, he had thought that he would never be able to think the same thing if it was Sybil on that Klatchian ship.
Outside, rain still hammered on the windows. It made Vimes’s teeth itch.
It wasn’t Sybil who was missing now, but Vimes felt that his suspicion was being confirmed regardless. The chances that he could sleep now were about as high as the number on the average Gamblers’ Guild bank account; he didn’t think he could even sit down without driving himself insane with restlessness. His skin itched with invisible energy, like the crackle of the air during a storm.
This was Vimes’s city, rain and all. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t sometimes want to wrestle it to the ground and throttle it. And the city was without a Patrician, possibly permanently.
The worst part was that there was absolutely nothing Vimes could do about it but wait.
Personal is not the same as important.
The impersonal was Carrot’s game… Because it wasn’t really about the city, was it?
Over the years they had been working together, as much as Vimes hated to admit it, he and Vetinari had gotten very good at working together, bad habits and rough edges and all. Vetinari was manipulative and sly as a sly thing on sly day, but Vimes had got used to that about him. In recent years, he had even thought he might be seeing beneath it.
Vetinari understood what it was to be a politician, and Vimes understood what it was to be a policeman. More than that, though, they both understood what it meant to be a human being who wanted to leave the world better than they had found it. They were allies, in a way, fighting for the future of Ankh-Morpork in the eternal battle against that creeping darkness that lay in the hearts of even the most honest men.
Between them, they would do whatever it took. They would drag the world into the light, kicking and screaming if necessary.
At least, they would if Vetinari lived to see the light again.
Right now, Vetinari was fighting against some of the worst evils the Disc had to offer. Vimes had seen wounds like the ones on that man from the warehouse before, and it had not been a sight he would regret in a hurry. At such a formative age almost 30 years previously, the dead-eyed expressions of the people in that basement had tattooed themselves on his inner eyelids.
Nobody deserved something like that, but the idea of it being Vetinari of all people made Vimes feel sick. Vetinari, who spent every second of his life toiling to keep the city safe. Vetinari, who had had no small part in saving Vimes from himself.
Vimes wanted to taste blood. He wanted these monsters dead. And when he got that address, he would chase, and he would grab, and he would tear until he saw proof that Vetinari was free.
Gods, he hoped that the man was still alive. If he wasn’t, Vimes wasn’t sure he would be able to keep the Beast under control.
In his mind, he could almost picture the feverish warmth of the Patrician’s skin under his hands, and the skittish beating of his heart. That body in the warehouse had been so much colder, so much stiller than Vetinari had ever been – the chill lingered on Vimes’s fingers even now, hours after he had bathed away the worst of the cold.
Warm water was not enough; he needed to feel the beat of the Patrician’s heart, and the hot breath on his skin, to chase away the ice.
When Vimes found him, he would latch on and never, ever let go. He would give his word on that, if he had anyone to give it to.
There was a knock at the door. Vimes uncoiled like a tight spring, and practically pounced on the handle.
“Yes?” he barked.
“Afternoon, sir,” it was Captain Carrot. He frowned slightly when he saw Vimes’s face. “Is everything alright, sir?”
“Fine,” growled Vimes. “What is it, Captain?”
If Carrot didn’t believe him (and if Vimes knew him, he almost certainly didn’t – he could be deceptively perceptive at times) he didn’t let it show. “We’ve had a message from the Palace, sir. The Patrician’s secretary came by personally, and gave me a note to pass on to you.”
Vimes held out a hand. “Out with it, then, Captain!”
Carrot produced a note from a pocket and held it out to Vimes. He took it hungrily, and unfolded it with clumsy hands.
The note was simple: all that was on it, written in impeccably neat cursive, was the address of one of the large old houses on the intersection between Pseudopolis Yard and Broad Way.
Right under my bloody nose. The bastards!
“Thank you, Captain,” Vimes said, squeezing past Carrot and making a beeline for the stairs. “You’re in charge, for now. I wish I could talk longer, but apparently I have a meeting with the Patrician.”
Carrot might have said something, but Vimes was already too far away to fully hear anything by the time he fully processed what was happening. He might have made out a faint, “I’ll just make a start on the paperwork, shall I?”, but it was difficult to tell over the rush of blood in his ears.
Ethics be damned, this was personal and important. Whatever Vimes found in that house, he was going to make sure somebody paid for their crimes against what the Commander considered to be the most important man on the Disc. If he had to move mountains to do so, then he was damned if he wasn’t going to find a shovel.
Those bastards weren’t going to know what had hit them.
It was time for the Beast to bite.
═══════════════════
The door to the Meserole house was already open when Vimes arrived, creaking gently as it was buffeted in the wind. The hardwood floor of the entranceway was wet with rain, suggesting it had been open for some time. Slowly, Vimes crept inside, propelled by the wrath which simmered under his skin.
The place was eerily silent other than the hammering of rain and the thrumming of his heartbeat in his throat. He had been half expecting screams, or at least some sound of movement – though, that kind of thing was actually quite rare in the few cases of torture the Watch had investigated before. People who were willing to plan this thoroughly were usually also willing to invest in sound-proofing.
It was a silence which reminded Vimes of cemeteries. He shivered.
The house was dark, but there were a few still-warm candles near the door, so he rummaged for a match in his pocket lit one. As the flame fizzed to life and Vimes looked around, he found that the interior looked very similar to how the Pseudopolis Yard Watchhouse had looked before the Watch had moved in; grand, but not showing off about it, as if it believed its antique opulence to be completely normal and unremarkable. Most of the furnishings were covered in a thin coating of dust.
It looked like the kind of place Vimes imagined Vetinari must have grown up in.
One thing set this house apart from any of the other admittedly few upper class properties Vimes had ever entered, though: in the middle of the floor, where an expensive rug should have been (and until recently had been, judging by the way the wood varnish had faded less in some places than others), was a huge hand-painted padlock.
Vimes inched towards it, avoiding floorboards which looked like they might creak. By the looks of it, the paint was still tacky in places – though that seemed like a much less useful piece of information than the fact that it had clearly been very wet earlier, and somebody had been impatient. The shape was smudged in long, rough smears as if someone had been dragged through it before it had dried.
The Commander followed the trail with his eyes, and mentally winced.
What is it with maniacs and cellars? he thought, vaguely.
Candle in hand and heart in his boots, Vimes broke into a run.
The door to the cellar turned out to be unlocked, but Vimes only discovered this after he had kicked it in. It swung open easily under the excessive force of the kick, and clattered loudly into the underground wall.
Vimes had imagined virtually every possibility for what he could find when he finally opened the door at some point over the past 24 hours. And yet, nothing could have prepared him for what he actually saw when he peered inside.
“Ah, Vimes,” said Vetinari. “Lemonade? I know wine is more traditional, but given your circumstances I thought you might prefer something without intoxicating properties.”
For once in his life, Vimes found himself speechless. He stared, open-mouthed, at the scene in front of him, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
The cellar wasn’t exactly brightly-lit, but it was far from the dingy basement Vimes would have associated with a torture dungeon. The walls were wood-panelled and draped with deep red curtains, and notably devoid of any kind of chains or shackles or suspiciously stained ropes. In the centre of the room, where a complicated machine or table of farmyard equipment should have been, somebody had placed a deep velvet sofa, on which the Patrician was draped almost lazily in his shirtsleeves. On the floor beside him, a pitcher of lemonade sat in a woven picnic basket.
Vetinari must have noticed Vimes’s dumbfounded expression, because he raised an eyebrow. “I must admit, this is not necessarily the greeting I was expecting.”
Vimes finally found his voice. It was a shout. “What the fuck?”
Vetinari’s eyebrow climbed even higher. “Hmm?”
“You were kidnapped! I thought you might be dead!” Vimes looked around the room as if the surroundings were about to change back to something that he could mould into making any kind of sense. The Beast twisted this way and that, scrambling around inside Vimes’s mind like a lost puppy. “I’ve spent my entire bloody morning investigating what I thought was going to be your murder!”
“Ah,” Vetinari frowned. “I see. Well, this is slightly unfortunate. I may have marginally overestimated your analytical ability.”
Vimes shot him a look which was intended to be a glare, but came out more confused than anything else.
Vetinari sighed. “You did find the messages that I left for you, did you not?”
“I found some cryptic bullshit and padlocks drawn with pigs’ blood, if that’s what you’re on about,” said Vimes.
The Patrician blinked. “You do know my first name, don’t you, Vimes?”
“Yes of course I know your bloody–” Vimes stopped dead mid-sentence, and groaned. “Havelock.”
Vetinari nodded slowly. With nothing better to do, Vimes continued to gawk at him.
“But we found a corpse!” he spluttered.
“There are many ways to acquire a body in this city without having to kill anybody, if that’s what you’re concerned about, Commander,” said Vetinari. “In this case, the Assassins’ Guild happens to keep a collection of donations for the purpose of teaching students anatomy. Lord Downey happens to owe me quite a number of favours, and I found that that one was eminently suitable.”
Vimes frowned. “He looked like he’d been tortured.”
Vetinari inclined his head. “I am assured that all donations are byproducts of usual Guild business, and are therefore acquired ethically. For a given value of ‘ethical’, of course.”
Vimes scoffed. “Right, ethical assassinations. Got it,” he paused as the cogs of his brain worked overtime to wrap his head around what he was hearing. “I bloody knew there was something weird going on with Drumknott. Good grief, was he in on this?”
“Ah, yes,” Vetinari smiled, barely perceptibly. “Drumknott is an extremely talented actor, I was happy to discover. If only he were as adept at expressing real emotions as he is at false ones, he could be quite the charmer.”
As confusion receded, it made way for anger. Renewed rage bristled under Vimes’s skin. There had been many situations over the years where he had wanted to give Vetinari a proper sock to the jaw, but this one might have taken the proverbial biscuit.
It was truly ridiculous, the way the man was convinced that it was alright for him to play with people’s minds, treating their thoughts and feelings like an amusing game. And here was Vimes, plaything of the hour once again.
Vimes wiped a hand over his face as his brain finally began to get to grips with the gist of the situation. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, hang on, let me see if I’ve got this right: you wasted Watch time, desecrated a corpse, and destroyed your own office in order to fake your own kidnapping and lure me to your aunt’s wine cellar… for what? Fun? Had a slow few days at the office, needed something more interesting to do?”
All of the bloodlust which Vimes had saved up for the perpetrators was swirling around the cauldron of his belly, searching hungrily for a target. Right now, Vetinari seemed to be it. The Beast wanted to grab him by the throat, and bite until he tasted blood.
“Vimes, I would like to imagine that even I would not be cruel enough to subject you to that purely for my own enjoyment. Guess again,” said Vetinari.
Vimes stared at him uncomprehendingly, and tried not to imagine how satisfying it would be to kick him in the voonerables.
Vetinari sighed. “I had really hoped that you could have worked this out on your own by the time you got here. Alas, it appears to be up to me,” the Patrician leaned forwards on the sofa, resting his elbows on his knees. He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. “Forgive me, for I find that I am not especially good with emotions, but I have been advised by a trusted and interested party that there is a conversation that we need to have. I had hoped that this endeavour may, as it were, grease the path.”
“Sorry, sir, but I’m struggling to imagine any kind of conversion which could be helped by scaring me half to death when I’m already shitting bricks waiting for my wife to give birth to my bloody son,” said Vimes, pointedly.
Vetinari smiled faintly. “It’s funny you should mention Lady Sybil, actually. She was the one to suggest that I broach the subject with you. She pointed out that it may be for the best if we were to have the conversation before the baby arrives and… complicates, what I am sure is already a deeply complex situation.”
Vimes tried his best to keep his face blank, and focused on the space behind Vetinari’s ear, mostly by force of habit. Somewhere in the darkness of confusion, a tiny star of comprehension was being born.
“Yes, sir?”
Vetinari closed his eyes for a second, in a gesture which would have looked like a minor display of nerves if Vimes didn’t know any better. He stood up, and slowly crossed the cellar until he was directly in front of Vimes.
Vimes’s breath hitched as he found himself suddenly eye-level with the Patrician’s mouth. He was acutely aware of the Patrician’s breath near his face, and the heat of his skin only a few inches away, radiating out like a furnace. If he leaned forwards just a tiny bit, he would have bet anything that he would be able to feel Vetinari’s pulse in his throat.
Despite every cell in his body screaming at him to punch the man, Vimes felt a sense of relief wash over him. The Beast was still spinning in circles, desperate to find its prey, but he ignored its pleas for blood.
Those piercing blue eyes were fixed on Vimes’s face, staring at him through dark lower lashes.
Ye gods, thought Vimes.
“Commander?”
For the first time in his life, Vimes thought that Vetinari actually looked a bit nervous; it wasn’t obvious, but the set of his shoulders was slightly more rigid than usual, his control seeming to come from stiffness rather than immaculate poise.
He still isn’t sure how I’m going to react… Vimes realised.
Bugger it, this day wasn’t going to get any stranger, was it?
There was a moment where neither of them moved. Then, moving slowly as if trying not to startle a scared animal, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch squared his shoulders and kissed Lord Vetinari.
He was just as warm as Vimes remembered.
Vetinari made a small sound of what could have been surprise or contentment, and almost instantly he practically melted into the kiss. Vimes, emboldened by the reaction, responded by bringing his hand up to Vetinari’s neck and pulling him, revelling in the way the heartbeat quickened beneath his fingertips.
Because oh gods, Vetinari was alive.
Vimes was not certain of many things at this point, but he did know that there was no way he was going to let him disappear again.
Unfortunately, like most good things in life, the kiss had to end. It was Vetinari who pulled away, pushing Vimes gently away from him in an impeccable show of self-control, so that they were connected only at the hip and not the face. He let Vimes leave that hand on his neck, though.
“Ah. I am happy to say that that answers the first of my questions,” Vetinari said.
Vimes frowned. “Only one? That’s got to have been worth at least a couple.”
Vetinari rolled his eyes. “Alas, while we have successfully solved the conundrum of mutual attraction, Lady Sybil was very clear that we were not to neglect the emotional aspect of the situation. She was very insistent on that point; she seemed to believe that we would ignore it, although I can’t imagine why.”
“To be fair, it did take a staged kidnapping for us to even get this far,” said Vimes. He frowned. “Don’t you bloody dare do that again, by the way, or next time it might turn out to be a real murder.”
Vetinari raised an amused eyebrow. “Was that a threat, Sir Samuel?”
“Think of it as a warning,” said Vimes.
Vetinari laughed – a rare sound. “Very well. I daresay that in future I will find alternative ways of getting your attention.”
“Now, why does that fill me with dread?”
Vetinari rolled his eyes, and lightly waved away the question. He took a step back towards the sofa, dislodging Vimes’s hand from its position over his neck. Vimes suddenly felt very cold without the contact.
“Regrettably, most of the ice in the lemonade seems to have melted, but it should still be perfectly drinkable,” Vetinari said conversationally as he sat down on the sofa. He gently patted the cushion next to him. “Care to join me for a drink, Sir Samuel?”
Vimes looked from Vetinari to the lemonade, then to the sofa, then to Vetinari again. The Beast in the back of his mind was screaming at him that everything about this situation was absurd and unjust. He should be angry at this man and his manipulation – he was still angry, deep down. He should go home to his wife (who absolutely should not have been involved, and there would be words about that later) and forget about all of this. Possibly change his name and flee the city, even.
And yet, at the end of the day, when the adrenaline of the hunt had faded and everyone who mattered was safe, the animal in Vimes wanted nothing more than to curl up with its master and share a drink.
Vetinari’s terrier.
After a few moments of deliberation, Vimes shrugged, and sat down. He could feel the heat radiating off of Vetinari’s body, soaking into his aching bones like medicine. The two of them were a team, after all. Two knights of the city, fighting the good fight.
A man and his dog.
“I quite like lemonade,” Vimes said, faintly.
“Capital,” Vetinari smiled, and reached down to pour Vimes a drink.